What is not controversial is that NASA needs a new spacecraft capable of relaying communications from Mars to Earth. NASA’s best communications relay today is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has now been there for 20 years. It’s a great spacecraft, but it’s getting long in the tooth.

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. On Wednesday, after concerted efforts to remotely reset the spacecraft's ...

NASA officially declared its Mars MAVEN spacecraft dead on Wednesday, marking the end of a mission that was led by the University of Colorado Boulder for more than a decade. The MAVEN spacecraft, or the Mars Atmospheric and Volatile EvolutioN,

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission, better known as MAVEN, has slipped into an unnerving silence just as it finished a rare close look at an interstellar visitor sweeping through the inner solar system. The loss of contact with a long lived ...

A researcher says he found a possible shortcut to Mars that would halve the time it takes to travel to the planet and back to less than a year.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft just used Mars as a giant gravitational slingshot to continue its journey toward a strange metal rich asteroid. The close flyby boosted the spacecraft’s speed by about 1,000 mph while also producing rare crescent images of Mars glowing through its dusty atmosphere.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft used Mars’ gravity to gain speed on its journey toward a strange metal-rich asteroid deep in the solar system.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft just used Mars as a giant slingshot on its journey to a mysterious metal world that could reveal what’s hidden inside planets like Earth.