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Of the 12 people who have walked on the moon, zero have been women. NASA's Artemis program aims to change that by landing the first woman on the moon. "I have a daughter. She is 11 years old, and I want her to see herself in the same position that our current, very diverse astronaut corps currently sees itself, having the opportunity to go to the moon," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in an agency town hall May 14. "In the 1960s, young ladies didn't have the opportunity to see themselves in that role. Today they do, and I think...

A landing attempt for the first time on Moon's south pole. Previous landings (US, Russia, China) have all been near the equator. Live streaming will start 2:40 pm EST (1:10 AM India time)

President Trump met with Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, and the family of Neil Armstrong to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. First lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine also joined the president in the Oval Office to honor the Apollo 11 legacy and discuss future NASA missions, which include working with private space companies, returning to the moon and eventually landing humans on Mars.[Video at link]

The Washington Monument has been transformed into a stunning tribute to the first moon landing through a dazzling series of projections. Crowds packed the National Mall to watch the 17-minute show, which was projected three times each on Friday and Saturday, marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Cheers rose from the crowd as the Saturn V rocket was seen lifting off. The show also included various scenes of the stages separating, the moon landing, and splash-down as the hero astronauts returned to Earth.

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he set took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-63) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.

Billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, the founder of rocket company Blue Origin, will unveil plans on Thursday for missions to the moon tailored to the U.S. government’s renewed push to establish a lunar outpost in just five years, people familiar with the matter said. Bezos, the world’s richest man and also chief executive and founder of Amazon.com, is scheduled to host a rare media event at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) in Washington to provide “an update on our progress and share our vision of going to space to benefit Earth,” Blue Origin said in an advisory. Blue Origin spokeswoman Caitlin...

“So you’re telling me there’s a chance!”This famous line, spoken by Jim Carrey’s famous Lloyd Christmas character, has become bigger than the quirky, outgoing limousine driver who once traveled the world with an abandoned suitcase full of money to pursue a girl that had no interest in him.Over the last several days, Carrey’s line has essentially been said over and over by many starry-eyed space geeks, who are pushing NASA to use inappropriate, flashy technology for President Trump's long-anticipated Moon mission. The insistence and persistence of these Star Trekkies is putting personal curiosity over America’s mission success, timeliness, and cost...

The United States plans to land astronauts on the moon within the next five years, Vice President Mike Pence announced today (March 26). The nation had been shooting for a 2028 lunar touchdown, but "that's just not good enough," Pence said during the fifth meeting of the National Space Council (NSC), which he chairs. "We're better than that." So, it is now the official policy of the United States to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2024, the vice president stressed, invoking a 21st-century space race with China and Russia.

Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space. The spacecraft slipped out of the huge bubble of particles that encircles the solar system on November 5, becoming the second ever human-made craft to cross the heliosphere, or the boundary between the sun and the stars.Coming in second place is no mean achievement. Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to exit the solar system in 2012. But that craft’s plasma instrument stopped working in 1980, leaving scientists without a direct view of the solar wind, hot charged particles constantly streaming from the sun (SN Online: 9/12/13). Voyager 2’s plasma sensors are still working,...

While Ivanka Trump has a high-profile job advising her father, the president of the United States, she told the International Space Station Expedition 56 crew Thursday (Sept. 20) that she had different childhood ambitions. "I think I can speak for all of us here to say you inspire us all. You actually have my dream job," she told the crew via a video call from NASA's Mission Control Center. "I always wanted to be an astronaut, and I always wanted to go to space. You are fulfilling my dream up there." Trump made her comments while touring NASA's Johnson Space Center with...

NASA wants to build another space station, but this one won’t live in a close orbit around Earth. Within the last year, NASA has begun planning for a much smaller astronaut outpost in orbit around the Moon, a new destination dubbed the Gateway. The idea is for this space station, which will be a fraction of the size of the International Space Station, to serve as a place for astronauts to live and train for excursions to and from the lunar surface. A crucial piece of hardware needed for this Gateway will, of course, be habitats — spaces for a...

Pres. Trump at CA Marine base: "Very soon we're going to Mars. You wouldn't have been going to Mars if my opponent won." https://t.co/7t9dGZXwSH pic.twitter.com/a3Cw5OIsue — ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 13, 2018 President Trump told troops in California on Tuesday that the U.S. would be going to Mars in the very near future. "Very soon we're going to Mars. You wouldn't be going to Mars if my opponent won, that I can tell you. You wouldn't even be thinking about it," Trump said. Trump signed a directive in December aiming to send Americans to the moon, and eventually Mars....

President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign his administration’s first space policy directive in a White House ceremony Dec. 11, one that will formally direct NASA to send humans back to the moon. A White House schedule of the president’s activities, released late Dec. 10, includes a 3 p.m. Eastern “signing ceremony for Space Policy Directive 1.” The schedule didn’t provide additional details about the event or the document, but a White House official later confirmed that the directive is linked to human space exploration policy. “The president, today, will sign Space Policy Directive 1 (SPD-1) that directs the NASA...