BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Elton John might have said it best in his iconic song "Rocket Man" – "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids." More than 50 years after we sent humans to the moon – the closest celestial body to Earth – the plan is still to head to Mars, something many astronauts who have flown in space thought we would have already accomplished. "I just assumed by the time I got to be old enough to go into the space program, you know we'd be living on Mars or I'd be working on Mars just as a scientist," Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space, told university students at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in December 2019. But despite the fact humankind has been unable to send anyone to another place in the universe besides the moon, there are still many with the hopes and expectation that we will become a multi-planetary species in the near future, starting with our red next-door neighbor. Billionaire entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and aspiring young astronauts like Alyssa Carson, a sophomore studying astrobiology at Florida Tech, hope to one day live on Mars. "Eventually the sun will run out of fuel to burn … and conditions on Earth are going to be very different from our normal regular life now," Carson told Florida Today, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Washington – NASA is considering approving by next April up to two planetary science missions from four proposals under review, including one to Venus that scientists involved in the project said could help determine whether or not that planet harbors life. An international research team on Monday described evidence of potential microbes residing in the harshly acidic Venusian clouds: traces of phosphine, a gas that on Earth is produced by bacteria inhabiting oxygen-free environments. It provided strong potential evidence of life beyond Earth. The U.S. space agency in February shortlisted four proposed missions that are now being reviewed by a NASA panel, two of which would involve robotic probes to Venus. One of those, called DAVINCI, would send a probe into the Venusian atmosphere.

NASA has announced it wants to buy Moon rocks from private companies in a bid to kick start lunar mining operations. The space agency is taking proposals from companies on how they will collect rock from the Moon, using robotic surface rovers. NASA then plans to purchase the samples in amounts of 50 to 500 grams for between $15,000 and $25,000. The collection of lunar rock and transfer of ownership to NASA is a proof of concept for conducting space commerce on the Moon, NASA said. In other words, the initiative will help to establish the early principles for how mining operations between'space entrepreneurs' will work, which could help sustain future astronaut missions.

NASA is set to launch an ambitious mission to Mars on Thursday with the liftoff of its next-generation Perseverance rover, a six-wheeled robot tasked with deploying a mini helicopter, testing out equipment for future human missions and searching for traces of past Martian life. The $2.4 billion mission, slated for liftoff at 7:50 a.m. from Florida's Cape Canaveral, is planned as the U.S. space agency's ninth trek to the Martian surface. The United Arab Emirates and China separately this month launched probes to Mars in displays of their own technological prowess and ambition. Launching atop an Atlas 5 rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance, the car-sized Perseverance rover is expected to reach Mars next February. It is due to land at the base of an 820-foot-deep (250 meters) crater called Jezero, a former lake from 3.5 billion years ago that scientists believe could hold traces of potential past microbial Martian life.

As NASA gears up to send humans to the moon and Mars it is also working on new advances to protect the space terrains from human germs. The American space agency released updates to its Planetary Protection Policies that provide new requirements for both astronaut and robotic missions. The added policies note that no biological matter is left on or around the moon, along with humans are to not contaminate any part of Mars with biological materials or return to Earth with germs from the Red Planet. The first woman and next man are set to head to the moon in 2024 and the first crewed mission to Mars is planned for the 2030s – and as early as 2035. The added policies note that no biological matter is left on or around the moon.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. An asteroid hitting Earth is one of humanity's greatest existential threats, making it imperative that asteroid detection is a vital task for government space agencies around the world. Using advanced artificial intelligence, researchers in the Netherlands have discovered several "potentially hazardous objects" that were not spotted by humans. The research, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, looked at space objects more than 100 meters in diameter that were likely to come within 4.7 million miles of Earth.

NASA will send a golf cart-sized robot to the moon in 2022 to search for deposits of water below the surface, an effort to evaluate the vital resource ahead of a planned human return to the moon in 2024 to possibly use it for astronauts to drink and to make rocket fuel, the U.S. space agency said on Friday. The VIPER robot will drive for miles (km) on the dusty lunar surface to get a closer look at what NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has touted for months: underground pockets of "hundreds of millions of tons of water ice" that could help turn the moon into a jumping-off point to Mars. "VIPER is going to assess where the water ice is. We're going to be able to characterize the water ice, and ultimately drill," Bridenstine said on Friday at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington. Because water ice represents something significant.

Fox News Flash top headlines for Oct. 25 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com NASA has unveiled its plan to send a new lunar rover, VIPER, to the surface of the Moon. "VIPER is going to rove on the South Pole of the moon and assess where the water ice is," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine during a wide-ranging speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington D.C. on Friday. The government space agency notes that the Moon has vast reservoirs of water ice, an amount that could potentially reach millions of tons.

A newly launched investigation could finally get to the bottom of a mystery that has baffled scientists since the 1950s. For decades, scientists have observed brief flashes of light that appear on the surface of the moon several times a week. But, no one knows exactly what's causing them. Now, using a specially designed lunar telescope in Spain that boasts two cameras, a team will keep an eye on the moon's activity every night in hopes to capture these strange phenomena and ultimately pinpoint the source. For decades, scientists have observed brief flashes of light that appear on the surface of the moon several times a week.

NASA's next trip to the moon will entail 37 separate launches over a decade and culminate in the construction of a moon base by 2028, according to leaked documents that detail the agency's'Artemis' plan. Information on the nascent mission come from documents obtained by Ars Technica, and, for the first time, show a detailed glimpse of America's first human-led mission to the moon since 1972. In a graphic, NASA breaks down a year-by-year guide of the construction of the'Gateway' a space station and waypoint on the way to the moon, human test flights, and a lunar landing slated for 2024. Russia and the United States are cooperating on a NASA-led project to build the first lunar space station, codenamed the Lunar Gateway. The agreement, signed in September 2017, is part of a long-term project to send humans to Mars.