In what seemed intended as a display of technological advance, Iran said on Wednesday that it had fired a rocket into space carrying living organisms — a rat, two turtles and worms, according to the state-run Press TV.

NASA's grand plan to return to the moon, built on President George W. Bush's vision of an ambitious new chapter in space exploration, is about to vanish with hardly a whimper. With the release Monday of President Obama's budget request, NASA will finally get the new administration's marching orders, and there won't be anything in there about flying to the moon.

A physicist has launched a new space start-up to develop a theoretical, 1-kilometer-long cannon space powered by hydrogen that could be housed below the surface of the ocean and could significantly reduce space launch costs.

President Obama's plan for America's space program, according to early reports, represents a fundamental shift for human spaceflight, some experts say.

Space solar power advocates may soon get their day in the sun, as different projects aimed at beaming energy to Earth from orbit begin to take shape. But at least one space power scientist worries that a U.S.-based project may be promising too much, too soon.

NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have teamed up to take a hard look at the issues and challenges of de-cluttering space of human-made orbital debris. The result: A first-of-its-kind International Conference on Orbital Debris Removal

The heads of the U.S. and Chinese civil space agencies will exchange visits next year to discuss potential cooperation in space exploration, including human spaceflight, according to a U.S.-China joint statement issued Thursday.

America's once clear dominance in space is eroding as other nations, including China, Iran and North Korea, step up their activities, a panel of experts told the House subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Thursday.

The non-governmental Planetary Society has announced that it has secured funding to build and fly a series of solar-sail spacecraft dubbed LightSails, first in orbit around the Earth and eventually into deeper space.

Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is moving forward on their plans for a Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometres in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere,capture solar energy, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves.