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Email In a key milestone for NASA’s plan to return humans to the moon, the space agency today announced that SpaceX will build the vehicle that will land astronauts on the lunar surface. The current plan, known as Artemis, calls for astronauts to launch on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, fly to lunar orbit on the space agency’s Orion space capsule, and then transfer to SpaceX’s Starship rocket to make the final descent to the surface. The contract, worth $2.9 billion, will go toward developing a moon-ready version of the Starship rocket. The futuristic-looking vehicle is stil...

" " A NEMO float, which is part of the Argo program, sits atop the waters of the Arctic Ocean after being deployed from the German icebreaker Polarstern. Argo Program The ocean is massive. It covers more than 70 percent of Earth's surface. The Pacific Ocean alone blankets 60 million square miles (155 million square kilometers) of the planet. This water regulates our climate and weather patterns by funneling heat from the equator to the poles, produces more than half of the world's oxygen, and absorbs 50 times more carbon dioxide than our atmosphere. The secrets the ocean holds can tell ...

Government-only model? >> well, the government is always going to have a big part in this, and let me just make one correction. there isn't nearly as much private money going into these efforts as most people think. what has funded spacex, for instance, primarily has been nasa. not only the commercial crew program but the commercial cargo program. they're customer es. spacex' customers are nasa, other governments and military. and so you can't have those private ventures unless you have a government agency like nasa that has a destination that it's going to, and that will fund those private co...

It will take three to five years some say to get astronauts to be on the commercial space flights. why would it take so long? >> nasa has contracted with several other companies alongwith spacex to develop astronaut transport to the station and nasa estimated it will take to 2017, five years from now, for that to really happen. these companies are developing private spacecraft. they don't have the depth of engineering experience, 50 years of experience that nasa has even though they have been sharing information and they're being very careful,. nasa does not want to risk its astronaut safety o...