If the mission is successful, it would make Israel the fourth country to land on the lunar surface – after the U.S., the former Soviet Union and China.
As the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing nears, some say the site of the first footprints on the moon should be protected. But historic preservation off our planet is unprecedented.
It would be under the umbrella of the Air Force to try to simplify the process. This represents a shift; Trump had stated that he wanted a space force that is "separate but equal" from the Air Force.
A spacecraft named Beresheet is set to be Israel's first spacecraft to land on the moon. It came about because Israeli scientists lost a contest — but continued with the work anyway.
Kindergartners from Georgetown Day School in Washington D.C., help NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro field questions to McClain, who's an astronaut serving on the International Space Station.
NASA's six-wheeled rover landed on the red planet in January 2004 for what billed as a 90-day mission. The robot was still going until a dust storm on Mars last summer killed it.
Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., announced Tuesday that they will make one last attempt to reach the Mars rover Opportunity though they are not expecting a response.
They had initially thought the object four billion miles from Earth looked like a snowman. The New Horizons spacecraft flew by it on New Year's Day and new images give scientists a clearer picture.
The company had recently whittled down its list of would-be Martians to 100 names, after more than 202,000 people applied to leave the Earth for a one-way journey.