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Missions on Mars are something you got kind of used to by now. From time to time, some rocket headed to Mars is launched, and this gets in the news for a brief time. At least that’s how most of the people see this. The ones who are more into the field and more curious about the topic know that this is not something we humans casually do. And we don’t do it just for the sake of it. A mission to Mars with the whole package, a rover, and everything, costs about 3 billion dollars. So when we send something to Mars, it’d better bring back something significant.

The mission in preparation right now is called ExoMars, and its rover is planned for launch in 2022.

We might be witnessing the start of the private space station race.

Dare we say that a new type of space race is heating up? Blue Origin, the space tourism firm founded by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced a partnership with Sierra Space and Boeing to build and launch a commercial space station called Orbital Reef by the end of the decade, a press statement reveals.

If Lockheed Martin and Nanoracks have their way, Orbital Reef won’t be the first commercial orbital outpost in low Earth orbit, as the two firms are collaborating to launch their own station by 2027.

O,.o.


A Canadian aerospace company has chosen an eyebrow-raising name for a hypersonic space plane it plans to launch in 2022: “Sexbomb.”

Space Engine Systems (SES) announced that it wants to launch the, uh, Sexbomb in Manitoba, according to a press release from the company. The vehicle will be used to test the company’s spacecraft engine prototype.

In an interview with RT, the president of the Russian Federation’s national aerospace agency, Roscosmos, expressed satisfaction with the number of trips performed by the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation’s (SpaceX) Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS).

After being developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Dragon recently achieved another historic milestone in aerospace history by ferrying a private crew to an orbit higher than the International Space Station (ISS), which serves as a global space laboratory.

Roscosmos uses Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft for its crewed flights, and it plans to stop its ISS missions by 2024. The station includes components from all over the world, and it will have spent 22 years in orbit in November, having been the only destination for travelers to space.

SpaceX is hoping to launch its first orbital Starship test flight in the next few months from its Starbase facility in Texas and a new video captures the company’s work so far on the massive rocket.

The 90-second montage, which SpaceX showed off on Twitter, offers views of the company’s massive Starship spacecraft being wheeled to the launch pad, taking off, performing complex flips and then landing safely on the ground. You also catch a glimpse of Earth from up high.