After the end of the space shuttle program, NASA turned to private companies to fill the gap. That isn't working out for the ...

A European-Japanese spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos yet of Mercury's north pole as part of only the second human survey of our solar system's innermost planet.

Largely because McDonnell farsightedly started designing space capsules long before Washington asked for them, his company won the coveted Mercury contract, a $130 million program. It has turned ...

Orion—like Crew Dragon and Starliner—is a space capsule similar to the spacecraft of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, as well as Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. But the Orion capsule is ...

Here’s a look at human spaceflight programs in the United States and around the world. Facts The United States ended its crewed space shuttle program with the launch of Atlantis on July 8, 2011, and ...

This timeline highlights key manned and unmanned missions and tests of NASA’s Project Mercury. The primary ... in space and recover human and spacecraft safely.