On Saturday, NASA will be launching the new rover "Curiosity," also known as Mars Science Laboratory. The mission is meant to examine chemical ingredients to see if the planet can support human life. The spacecraft will explore a crater the size of a large lake. Curiosity is delivering a rover equipped to test if there is methane in the air. This could be a key sign that the "Red Planet" may be able to support life.

Just a few months ago, the future of NASA seemed in doubt. But the space agency announced on Wednesday a new rocket design that it says will be the centerpiece of a deep-space exploration program for decades to come. The Space Launch System could lift astronauts farther than ever before, making it eventually possible to journey to Mars.

The landing of the space shuttle Atlantis at Cape Canaveral this morning marked the bittersweet end of NASA's 30-year-old shuttle program. In this video, host Celeste Headlee reflects on the legacy of the space shuttle program, remarking that today is a day to honor all those responsible for the success of the program as well as a time to look to the future. Celeste says she's optimistic that we may one day send shuttles to Mars and make visits to asteroids, and suggests that perhaps the contributions of America's very rich will make these dreams a reality.

The space shuttle Atlantis returned this morning, marking the end of an era. The space shuttle program began with the launch of Columbia on April 12, 1981. The program advanced space exploration into the twenty-first century. Contrary to the Apollo missions, which sparked fierce competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the space shuttle program existed mostly in an era of collaboration and cooperation between nations.

As the space shuttle Atlantis landed this morning, ending NASA's shuttle program after 30 years without another method for astronauts to get into space on American-led missions, some are asking if this is a great leap forward for the space agency, or a small step back for manned space travel.

This morning marked the end of the space shuttle era for the nation and the world as the Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. How will astronauts get to space in a world without the shuttle? They will be hitching a ride with the Russians on the Soyuz space craft. The BBC's Oleg Boldyrev has been taking a look at what it's like riding inside of the Soyuz, which American astronauts liken to riding in an old Soviet Lada automobile.

The mood was bittersweet in Cape Canaveral. this morning, as the space shuttle Atlantis landed, bringing NASA's 30-year-old shuttle program to a close. A permanent marker will be placed on the runway where Atlantis touched down just before 6:00 AM EDT. In its final mission, the 135th of the shuttle program, Atlantis brought supplies to the International Space Station. With the end of the shuttle era, NASA's involvement in future space flight has been called into question.

Today's launch of space shuttle Atlantis marks the last of NASA's manned shuttle missions. With the closing of the shuttle program comes, not only an unclear future for future space exploration, but also a sadness for those aspiring astronauts who have spent years training to go into space. Kate Rubins, a member of the astronaut class of 2009, discusses the implications of the program's end and how she'll be an astronaut in a post-shuttle world.

The Shuttle Endeavour is set to blast off one last time Monday morning./ The space shuttle will be carrying a $2 billion particle physics detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will search for dark matter. It is an emotional day for commander Mark Kelly, who is heading the mission. His wife, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head is at the launch site. Kelly is carrying a wedding ring into space. Science reporter for The New York Times, Henry Fountain is at the launch.

The Space Shuttle Endeavor is schedule to launch at 3:47 PM on today. Big crowds are expected at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida — because this is not any ordinary launch. The 14-day mission will be the Endeavor’s 25th and FINAL voyage and it is the second to last space shuttle launch in the foreseeable future. The program will be ending in June.

Since the start of the Apollo program in the 1960s, NASA has woken up its astronauts on the day of their space launch to the time’s most popular songs. Traditionally, the crew members, their family and friends choose the song. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman shot earlier this year, chose U2’s “Beautiful Day” when her then-boyfriend (now husband) Mark Kelly went into space in 2006. Now Mark Kelly is the commander of the space shuttle Endeavor, making its twenty-fifth and final launch this Friday and NASA have invited the public to vote on what song the crew should wake up to. We review the musical eclecticism of past NASA wake-up songs and ask our listeners for their final launch song suggestions.

Photographs of Mercury have come to earth for the first time. The Messenger spacecraft entered Mercury's orbit on March 17 and has just sent back its first batch of photographs. The very first image received shows a crater near the planet's southern pole, an area that has never been seen before. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of "Star Talk Radio." He helps explain why these photos are important.

When the space shuttle Discovery lands at Kennedy Space Center later today, its odometer will read somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000,000 miles. The shuttle has flown 39 missions in its 27 year career. After today's landing, it will retire on planet earth. With Discovery's retirement, an era of American space exploration comes to a close; and, due to political and economic realities at home, future chapters remain in doubt. Yesterday, the US National Research Council reported that two planned rover missions to Mars, which NASA intended to launch along with ESA in 2018, may be about $1 billion outside of the U.S. budget.

Today will mark the last launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, which made its maiden voyage back in 1984. This starts the countdown to the end of the Space Shuttle program, with final launches of Endeavor and Atlantis scheduled. Was the Shuttle Program worth it? To answer that question is Peter Spotts, science reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

Twenty five years ago today, NASA launched the Challenger, sending one of its most highly anticipated and diverse space crews ever into space. The astronauts included one African American, one Asian-American, one Jew, and two women, one of whom was a school teacher named Christa McAuliffe. And the mission ended only 73 seconds into flight, when the Challenger exploded nine miles above the Atlantic. Millions of people across the world, including McAuliffe’s students and fellow teachers, watched the tragedy live and in repeated news clips. We’re joined today by two people who knew our first official teacher in space.

NASA has recently agreed to partner up with the Colorado Association for Manufacturing on an effort they hope will accomplish two goals: speed up the commercial rollout of space technologies, and, more importantly in this down economy, create jobs. The two groups hope to create 10,000 jobs in Colorado over the next five years because of this agreement. As a benefit, the partnership should allow more rapid prototyping, meaning new technology products could hit the market much sooner than before — 18 months, say, instead of five years.

Since it was launched in the 1970s, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is reaching the edge of the solar system, and it has made an interesting discovery. 11 billion miles from home, the particles that surround it — emanating from the sun — are no longer moving outward but sideways. The craft's long trip, which will only end when it runs into something in mostly-empty space, continues to beam back basic data homeward. Dan Andrews, an expert in planetary science especially the study of comets and asteroids at the Open University in the UK, joins us for more on Voyager 1's recent discoveries and continuing journey. 

The space shuttle program will come to a close as of 2011, and NASA is preparing to retire the three remaining orbiters and find them new homes. Retiring each orbiter is an involved process that will cost $28.8 million. Twenty-one institutions across the country are competing for the rare honor of housing an orbiter. Plans are already in the works for Discovery to go to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where Enterprise (a test shuttle) currently lives. Enterprise will likely be made available to another institution, along with Atlantis and Endeavour.

Today, or possibly tomorrow, the Falcon 9 rocket is slated for test launch at Cape Canaveral. When the 18-story rocket fires into orbit - or crashes into the ocean - it will be carrying no cargo, no astronauts, just one heavy load: Obama's hopes for space.

The oil industry, Wall Street, and NASA all have this in common: very smart people have the freedom to take huge risks – and those same very smart people are the only ones who can fix it when things go wrong.