Early peer-reviewed results of soil-sample analysis by an instrument on the Curiosity Mars rover hold potentially good news for future human explorers who will need to live off the land as much as possible, and bad news for scientists looking for evidence of past life on the planet.

I began my career in the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry as an export sales manager for a European missile manufacturer (now MBDA). It was a somewhat unusual career move for a business school graduate with no engineering background. Today, even fewer graduates have A&D high on their lists when they look for jobs as sales or marketing managers. This is, after all, an industry built by engineers, and its reputation is based primarily on products and the technological innovations that underpin them.

New Russian launch site aimed at curbing reliance on Baikonur

Now that Orbital Sciences Corp. has launched its Antares/Cygnus combo off to the International Space Station, NASA soon will have two routes to the orbiting laboratory. That will come in handy as the U.S. agency works to use the $100 billion engineering marvel as much as possible. Building the ISS was an accomplishment without precedent, but keeping it supplied with experiments and food is not that easy either.

A U.S. and Russian Soyuz crew docked with the International Space Station late Sept. 25, completing a third consecutive “express” four-orbit launch-to-rendezvous transit to restore the orbiting science lab to a crew of six. The Soyuz TMA-10M rocket lifted Expedition 37 Soyuz commander Oleg Kotov, NASA flight engineer Michael Hopkins and Russian flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy. The crew launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 25 at 4:58 p.m. EDT (Sept. 26 at 2:58 a.m., local time).

China aims for Moon launcher more powerful than Saturn V

After ISS, a mix of human outposts

When the nearest hardware store is 350 mi. straight down, tool control takes on a whole new dimension. Take away gravity, and air, and it gets even harder. Just ask Jill McGuire, a private pilot who was also the engineer in charge of crew aids and tools for the last servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009. “You have to take everything with you,” she says. “You don't get a chance to run to Home Depot.”