Space Travel

ESA is looking at using the world's thinnest known material to build lighter, more efficient solar sails. By making sails out of one-atom-thick graphene sheets, the space agency aims to make sails capable of propelling unmanned interstellar missions.

Most oxygen in the universe isn’t in the form that we need to breathe: molecular oxygen, or O2. Now, researchers at Caltech claim to have created a reactor that can turn carbon dioxide into molecular oxygen, which could help us fight climate change here on Earth or generate oxygen for life in space.

An examination of the tissues ​of rodents that orbited the Earth in a Russian spacecraft revealed that the reduced load on their joints caused the breakdown of cartilage and signs of arthritis-like degradation​.

The lack of gravity in space means that muscles begin to waste away, and scientists have been studying these health effects on Earth with extended bed-rest experiments. In the latest, those beds will be put in a centrifuge to mimic artificial gravity, to see if that can help offset the issues.

Several experiments have shown that the EMDrive can generate thrust from basically nothing – in apparent violation of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Unfortunately, a German team has now built and tested their own EMDrive, and found that environmental factors may have been responsible for false positives.

There are plenty of strange phenomena in the universe, and fast radio bursts are among the more mysterious. So far, we don't know the source of these high-energy light bursts, but Harvard researchers propose they're caused by planet-sized alien transmitters for powering interstellar spacecraft.

At this moment, two Voyager probes are speeding out into the unknown each carrying a "golden record" with information about our planet, our many different languages, our sciences and arts. But if a new theory about life in the universe is correct, those records may never find an audience.

NASA’s Journey to Mars mission got a step closer with the successful ground test of the launch booster on the Space Launch System (SLS), the world’s most powerful rocket. It’s the second and final ground test on the booster before a crewless test flight in late 2018 with the Orion spacecraft.

Having previously announced that it had signed a launch contract in pursuit of the Google Lunar XPRIZE, Moon Express has now received official verification of the contract from XPRIZE. It is the second team receive verification, after SpaceIL. The news kicks off a new space race.

A new study out of MIT says that, although possibly a little out of the way, the Moon would make a worthwhile refueling pit stop for manned missions to Mars by reducing the mass of a launch from Earth by 68 percent.

NASA has announced the winners of its 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge Design Competition. The contest sought architectural concepts for how 3D printing might be used to create shelters on the Red Planet. The overall winner, Ice House, would be built using the planet's predicted abundant water supply.​

One danger of space travel is fast-flying orbital debris piercing the ship's hull. Scientists may be on their way to a solution, however, in the form of a new self-healing material.