Bill Nelson

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is set to visit Romania and Bulgaria starting Thursday, October 17, as part of his ongoing efforts to enhance international cooperation and promote the peaceful use of outer space. Both nations have endorsed the Artemis Accords, a framework aimed at ensuring responsible exploration of space.

Two astronauts, a billionaire and an engineer, completed the world's first private spacewalk on Thursday outside a SpaceX capsule, marking a significant achievement in commercial spaceflight. Wearing newly designed spacesuits, they ventured outside the Crew Dragon capsule, a task previously reserved for astronauts from national space agencies, Reuters reports.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to stay in space for eight days, but will now remain there for eight months due to ongoing issues with the Starliner. These problems led to the difficult decision not to use this spacecraft to bring the two American astronauts back to Earth.

Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore were initially supposed to stay on the ISS for only one week, but they have now been in space for nearly three months.

On the second day of his visit to Washington, the Minister of Finance, Asen Vassilev, visited the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the USA. He met with the agency's director, Bill Nelson, whom he invited to visit Bulgaria on behalf of the government. Nelson confirmed that he would come in October.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which made history by achieving the first powered flight on another world, has officially ended its nearly three-year mission after sustaining rotor damage during its last outing, the space agency said Thursday.

Japan on Saturday became only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing, but its "Moon Sniper" spacecraft was running out of power due to a solar battery problem.

After a nail-biting 20-minute descent, space agency JAXA said its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) had touched down and communication had been established.

Jeff Bezos' rocket company has won a NASA contract to land astronauts on the moon, two years after it lost out to SpaceX.

Blue Origin received a $3.4 billion contract to lead a team to develop a lunar lander named Blue Moon.
It will be used to transport astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2029, following a pair of crew landings by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

For the first time, a woman and an African-American will go to the moon. NASA announced on Monday the names of the four astronauts who will orbit Earth's natural satellite at the end of 2024 after more than 50 years of absence, reported AFP.

NASA unveiled the crew on April 3 for its first human mission to the Moon in more than 50 year, including the first woman and Black man to voyage into deep space.

Christina Koch, a NASA astronaut who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, will be a mission specialist on next year's Artemis II flight around the Moon.