MADRID Spanish company PLD Space said it plans its first test of a suborbital reusable rocket on Wednesday,

BEIJING China sent three astronauts to its now fully operational space station as part of crew rotation on

By Steve Gorman In the 2015 sci-fi film "The Martian," Matt Damon stars as an astronaut who survives

BEIJING China will send three astronauts to its now fully operational space station on Tuesday as part of

TOKYO Japanese startup ispace inc said on Friday the cause of its failed Hakuto-R moon landing mission last

By Hyonhee Shin and Soo-hyang Choi SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea's domestically produced space rocket successfully delivered a commercial-grade satellite into

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Richard Branson's bankrupt satellite launch firm Virgin Orbit said in a Tuesday court filing it plans to sell

About 20 per cent of US academic respondents in a survey have reported that they, or someone they know, have seen unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Over a third of the nearly 1,500 respondents are interested in conducting research into such unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), suggested the results of the survey, published in the journal Humanities and Social Science Communications. The US government has undertaken new hearings, reports and investigations into UAP, with a report by the Pentagon suggesting there were over 500 reports about UFOs with the agency as of August 2022. In the current research, scientists, including those from the University of Louisville, surveyed 39,984 academics, including professors, associate professors and assistant professors from 144 US universities across 14 different disciplines. Despite the stigma associated with the topic, researchers said these developments merit asking university faculty about their perceptions on the sightings of UFOs. Researchers asked the 4 per cent of individuals who responded to the survey about their perceptions of, experiences with and opinions of UAP. Nearly a tenth of the participants worked in political science, another tenth in physics, 10 per cent in psychology and 6 per cent in engineering. About 276 of the respondents – or 19 per cent of participants – reported that they or someone they knew had witnessed UAP. A further 9 per cent said they or someone they knew “may have witnessed” UAP, according to the study. Thirty-nine percent of all the participants said they did not know what the most likely explanations for UAP were, but a fifth of them attributed the sightings to natural events and 13 per cent to devices of unknown intelligence. About 4 per cent of participants said they had conducted academic research related to UAP, and over a third said they had some degree of interest in conducting research in this area. Among the respondents, 37 per cent ranked the importance of further research into UAP as either “very important” or “absolutely essential”, while nearly two-thirds of them considered academia’s involvement in UAP-related research to be “very important or absolutely essential”. The findings hinted that many American academics across disciplines consider academia’s involvement in research into UAP to be important. “Results demonstrated that faculty think the academic evaluation of UAP information and more academic research on this topic is important,” scientists wrote in the study, adding that curiosity on the topic “outweighed scepticism or indifference”. Researchers also suggested many may be cautiously willing to engage with UFO research if others they consider to be reputable within their field also do so. However, they said more surveys among larger and diverse cohorts are needed to understand attitudes of academics towards UAP. Read More Some strange ‘highly manoeuvrable’ UFOs seem to defy laws of physics, scientists say UFOs, UAPs and ETs: Why some people believe aliens are visiting us right now Nearly 200 recent UFO sightings in US remain unexplained, Pentagon says Ancient galaxy discovered 25 million light years away Watch: Axiom Mission 2 arrives at the International Space Station Nearly 350 licences issued to UK space companies

Saudi biomedical scientist Rayyanah Barnawi will carry out breast cancer research while in orbit.

Nasa has named Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin as the second company to build a lunar lander under its Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon for the firs time in more than 50 years. The US space agency awarded the first contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2021 in a $3 billion deal that was disputed by Mr Bezos at the time. Those initial missions using SpaceX’s Starship system are slated for later this decade. “We want more competition, we want two landers,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said at an event in Washington on Friday. “It means you have reliability, you have backups. It benefits Nasa, it benefits the American people.” Today’s announcement evokes deja vu for Amazon.com founder Bezos and defense contractor Dynetics Inc, the head of a partnership with Northrop Grumman. Those companies lost out to SpaceX for the 2021 contract, part of an initial moon lander procurement program. Nasa under that program said it could pick up to two companies, but blamed budget constraints for only going with SpaceX. The new contract is the biggeset ever deal for Blue Origin, which Mr Bezos founded in 2000. The Amazon founder has invested billions of dollars into the company to compete for high-profile commercial and government space contracts with SpaceX. After losing in 2021, Blue Origin unsuccessfully fought to overturn Nasa’s decision to ignore its Blue Moon lander, first with a watchdog agency and then in court. Blue Origin and lawmakers had pressured Nasa to award a second lunar lander contract to promote commercial competition and ensure the agency has a backup ride to the moon. Nasa in early 2022 announced the program for a second lander contract. Nasa chief Bill Nelson said at the time: “I promised competition, so here it is.” Blue Origin has already named its corporate partners for the lunar lander: Lockheed Martin , Boeing, spacecraft software firm Draper, and robotics firm Astrobotic. Northrop Grumman, previously a key partner in Blue Origin’s unsuccessful Blue Moon bid in 2021, switched teams to join its former rival Dynetics. Nasa’s multi-spacecraft plan for the Artemis moonshots involves its Space Launch System rocket launching astronauts toward the moon aboard the Lockheed-built Orion capsule. That will dock in space with a lunar lander that will ferry the crew the rest of the way to the Moon’s surface. Additional reporting from agencies Read More ‘It’s becoming like an airport’: How SpaceX normalised rocket launches Watch live: Nasa reveals who will build second Artemis lunar lander Nasa Mars lander study reveals ‘main source of heat’ on Red Planet Saturn’s rings are no more than 400 million years old – study

By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A team led by Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin won a coveted NASA contract

By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON Elon Musk's SpaceX has tapped NASA's former human spaceflight boss Kathy Lueders to help