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News Articles: space travel

The third test flight of Starship is set to launch Thursday March 14 at around 8AM.

Third time is the charm for Elon Musk's giant Starship rocket.

The rocket is the largest ever built. It has yet to complete a full test flight, but the third time might be the charm.

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By:
  • Geoff Brumfiel
Frank Rubio is helped out of the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft just minutes after he and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan on Sept. 27, 2023.

His spacecraft sprung a leak. Then this NASA astronaut accidentally broke a record

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio holds the record for the longest U.S. space flight, but he wasn't trying to earn that title.

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By:
  • Ari Shapiro,
  • Kai McNamee,
  • and 1 more
SpaceX's mega rocket Starship launches for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday.

A 'successful failure': SpaceX's Starship achieves liftoff, loses contact mid-flight

The rocket cleared the launchpad and separated from its booster, surpassing the first attempt. But minutes later, controllers lost contact with the vehicle.

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By:
  • Geoff Brumfiel
Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques has his blood sampled on board the International Space Station for an experiment that examines the space-related changes that occur in blood and bone marrow.

Why do some people get rashes in space? There's a clue in astronaut blood

A new study of astronaut blood finds that space travel reduces the expression of 100 genes related to the immune system.

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By:
  • Ari Daniel
The remains of actress and singer Nichelle Nichols will be launched into deep space later this year, according to company Celestis.

Nichelle Nichols' remains will go explore strange new worlds

A portion of the trailblazing actor's ashes will travel to deep space later this year. Along for the journey are remains of the show's creator and another star from the series.

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By:
  • Rachel Treisman and
  • Dustin Jones
The NASA Artemis 1 rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard moves slowly on an 11 hour journey to a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Thursday, March 17, 2022.

NASA's Artemis 1 moon rocket reaches the launch pad

NASA's Artemis 1 rocket, the Space Launch System, reached the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B on Friday. The successor to the Apollo program could one day send humans back to the moon.

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By:
  • Brendan Byrne
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins waves at the audience during the astronaut graduation ceremony at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in January 2020. In April 2022, she will become the first Black woman to live and work on the International Space Station.

Jessica Watkins will be the first Black woman to live and work on the space station

Watkins will join the fourth SpaceX Crew next April on her way to entering the ranks of other history-making women at NASA like astronauts Mae Jemison and Sally Ride.

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By:
  • Deepa Shivaram
In a first, the SpaceX mission set to launch Wednesday night will carry four civilians: Chris Sembroski (from left), Sian Proctor, Jared Isaacman and Hayley Arceneaux.

The 1st All-Civilian Crew Is About To Orbit The Earth

Marking the latest step in the commercialization of space, the SpaceX mission set to launch Wednesday will carry four civilians, including a billionaire CEO, a physician assistant and a geoscientist.

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By:
  • Deepa Shivaram