space exploration

This time next year, if everything stays on schedule, NASA will send its first crewed mission to the moon, since the end of the Apollo program. Artemis II will be the first flight around the moon in more than 50 years. Its goal will be to test out the Orion capsule and all the other equipment, so that by 2026, Artemis III can put astronauts back ON the moon. The Artemis program is aimed to kickstart a new, more enduring era of space travel that leads to Mars.It's also intentionally more representative than Apollo was. The Artemis program will eventually put the first woman on the moon, as well as the first person of color. It's all as historic and high stakes as it gets, and also pretty daunting. NPR's Scott Detrow goes behind the scenes at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to see how the team is preparing. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Space X’s highly anticipated Polaris Dawn mission is set to launch later this summer – with an all-civilian crew. And a big part of their mission is researching how space changes the human body.

After a nasty computer glitch five months ago, Voyager 1 is once again able to communicate with Earth in a way that mission operators can understand.

The Voyager 1 probe, the first human-made object to reach the space between stars, has suffered a serious problem that NASA experts are struggling to understand and repair.

With a mass 17 billion times larger than our sun, this black hole is the fastest-growing black hole ever recorded, Australian National University said.

NASA officials plan to take down the International Space Station at the end of 2030. They are collaborating with private industries, which will develop its replacement.

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope indicate that a galaxy known as GN-z11 has a supermassive black hole at its center — one that's far more massive than astronomers expected.

Two weeks ago, the Jet Propulsion Lab lost contact with the interstellar spacecraft after engineers mistakenly pointed its antenna away from Earth. On Friday, it responded and is operating normally.

The space plane provided great views and a few minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic says it hopes to begin regular flights in June.

William Shatner was excited to go to space last year. He didn't realize he'd be overwhelmed with sadness and go through "the strongest feelings of grief" that he'd ever experienced.