A mission to Mars will be mankind's next giant leap. But one expert has suggested it might be simpler to get to the red planet in a series of smaller jumps - using asteroids as stepping stones.

'One giant leap for mankind', proclaimed Neil Armstrong from the moon's surface. Did that just underscore the status of women's future in space?

Billionaire Jeff Bezos will team up with a Boeing-Lockheed Martin to develop US-made rocket engines, in competition with Elon Musk's SpaceX venture.

Nasa has awarded its first private contracts for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

An asteroid nicknamed after a maligned dog and with the potential to cause catastrophic damage will pass within 40,000km of Earth this morning.

Night-time images captured by US defence satellites show a New Zealand much brighter than it was in the early 1990s.

Satellites in orbit are routinely used for communication, imaging and navigation - yet many people don't understand how these satellites remain in space.

The US space agency's Opportunity rover has now clocked more kilometres on Mars than any man-made vehicle to reach another celestial body, Nasa has said.

India has declared itself the world's leader in cheap space exploration after its prime minister claimed that its Mars mission will cost less than the Oscar-winning science fiction film Gravity.

Astronomers have discovered an alien planet that could offer some of the most Earth-like conditions seen to date in the galaxy.

Sovereignty in outer space is always a tricky subject, but out of all the lifeless rocks in the Solar System it was safe to say Mars was more American than most.

Most people associate Nasa with rocket science but now the American space agency has turned its attention to rocket salad.

Nasa has revealed that one twin will be put in a rocket and the other kept on the ground as part of a study on the effects of orbiting the Earth.

Following the release of Oscar-winning film Gravity, NASA has released a series of photographs depicting the 'real-life Gravity'. Including photos on the International Space Station, Space Shuttle, NASA astronauts and various images of Earth captured from space.

A mysterious rock which appeared in front of the Opportunity rover is “like nothing we’ve ever seen before”, according to Mars exploration scientists at Nasa.

The sun has fully "flipped upside down", with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, Nasa has said.

The sun is set to “flip upside down” within weeks as its magnetic field reverses polarity in an event that will send ripple effects throughout the solar system.

The European Space Agency says one of its research satellites re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on an orbit that passed over Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.

A one-tonne satellite operated by the European Space Agency has run out of fuel and will fall back to Earth in an unknown location sometime in the next few days.

The Curse of Mars also applies to Asian countries, writes Gwynne Dyer. About two-thirds of the attempted missions to Mars have failed, many of them even before leaving Earth's orbit.

Qantas is rolling out a near life-size replica of Mars rover Curiosity around New Zealand to promote its frequent flyer programme.

NASA's Jupiter-bound spacecraft hit a snag soon after it used Earth as a gravity slingshot to hurtle toward the outer solar system, but mission managers said it's on course to arrive at the giant planet in 2016.