NASA specialists recently signaled the all clear for nibbling.

While it sizes up high-value landing site candidates for its next Mars rover, NASA is developing strategies for protecting dozens of potential rock and soil samples cached on the red planet for harvest and return to Earth at some time in the future.

This week's top aerospace and defense news you need to know.

"This will put us in the right place at the right time," said Dan Johnston, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project manager.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson says the investigation will “help make the fledgling commercial space industry safer and better.”

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is expected to adopt findings that the co-pilot’s earlier-than-planned unlocking of the feathering tail mechanism on SpaceShipTwo was the probable cause of the fatal accident that struck the suborbital project on Oct 31, 2014.

A 1932 paper by famed German aerodynamicist Ludwig Prandtl inspires NASA Armstrong work on a tailless flying-wing aircraft that could eventually fly on Mars.

New Horizon mission scientists believe they may have caught Pluto’s atmosphere just as it is beginning to freeze onto the dwarf planet’s surface