As NASA pushes back to the Moon, the space agency faces a major engineering challenge: building a new spacesuit in time for the 2024 deadline.
The big picture: Spacesuits are arguably an astronaut's most important tool in space. The suits are designed for a particular mission and tailored to a specific astronaut to allow him or her to work safely in a vacuum.
Blue Origin is just a few test flights away from flying people to suborbital space by the end of the year, CEO Bob Smith told Axios.
Why it matters: If the Jeff Bezos-founded company does manage to fly humans to the edge of space aboard its New Shepard system before the end of the year, it makes the company a major player in the suborbital game.
Last week, NASA extended the life of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Telescope for two more years, through at least 2022.
Why it matters: TESS is tasked with searching for potentially Earth-like worlds around cool stars not far from our own, and it’s expected to find dozens of them during its life in space.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Puerto Rico yesterday, demanding the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló — whose administration has been rocked by alleged corruption and a series of leaked chat messages that included everything from sexism to making fun of Hurricane Maria casualties. Dan digs in with New York Times correspondent Frances Robles, who's been reporting from San Juan.
President Trump has set his sights on the Moon. Elon Musk's are on Mars. But some of the edgier talk urges an even bolder national aim — a human mission to Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
Driving the news: A mania broke out in the U.S. last week over the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, and returning to the Moon by 2024 and possibly Mars in the 2030s. But if the aim is an awe-inspiring mission leading to the colonization of space, neither may be the best practical answer.
