Orbital missions will unlock the next phase of Starship's development, providing better data on the performance of the spacecraft's heat shield and allowing for tests of in-orbit refueling, which will be essential for missions to Mars. Save this storyIt has been two weeks since SpaceX's last Starship test flight, and engineers have diagnosed issues with its heat shield, identified improvements, and developed a preliminary plan for the next time the ship heads into space. Bill Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX executive in charge of build and flight reliability, presented the findings Monday at the American Astronautical Society's Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland. The rocket lifted off on August 26 from SpaceX's launch pad in Starbase, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border. It was the 10th full-scale test flight of SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, combining to form the world's largest rocket. There were a couple of overarching objectives on the August 26 test flight.

At first glance at these images, you'd be forgiven for mistaking them as stills from the latest science fiction blockbuster. But the flying saucer-like object depicted in the images is very much real - and is set to be launched into space by NASA next month. The Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) is scheduled for November 1 and will see a huge heat shield launched into low Earth orbit. Once there, it will inflate, before descending back to Earth. NASA hopes the test will demonstrate how the inflatable heat shield can slow down a spacecraft enough to survive atmospheric entry.

On Thursday morning, NASA is scheduled to launch its new Mars rover, Perseverance, on a six-month journey to the Red Planet. The car-sized rover will be boosted into space atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket departing from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's the third and final Mars mission to depart Earth this summer; earlier in July, China and the United Arab Emirates also launched their first Martian explorers. Perseverance is essentially an alien-hunting self-driving car. It's primary mission is to find possible signs of ancient life hidden in the Martian soil and bottle them up so they can be returned to Earth by another robotic mission later this decade.

You can simulate it, sure, but the most valuable lessons are learned during actual attempts. When things go poorly, those lessons are also the most expensive. The fact is, most missions to Mars don't make it, though NASA has a better track record than most. The agency has executed seven successful touchdowns on the red planet. On Monday, November 26th, it will attempt its eighth, when it endeavors to land the $830-million InSight spacecraft on Elysium Planitia, a vast plain just north of the Martian equator.

This artist's concept depicts the entry of NASA's Curiosity rover through Mars' upper atmosphere. The Mars 2020 mission will use aspects of this design for its project. The heat shield for NASA's upcoming Mars rover suffered a fracture during testing recently, but the incident won't change the mission's launch date, agency officials said. The Mars 2020 mission is designed to search the Red Planet's surface for signs of ancient microbial life, and the six-wheeled robot will also hunt for and characterize potentially habitable environments. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2020, when Earth and Mars are properly aligned for an interplanetary mission, and arrive at the Red Planet in early 2021.

A small robot probe could make history today by becoming the first European spacecraft to survive a landing on Mars - and it is likely to be a bumpy ride. Scientists will be crossing their fingers as Schiaparelli flies itself on autopilot through the Martian atmosphere, which is expected to welcome the probe with stormy weather. The probe will take images of Mars and conduct scientific measurements on the surface, but its main purpose is to test technology for a future European Mars rover. A small robot probe could make history today by becoming the first European spacecraft to survive a landing on Mars, and it might be a bumpy ride. Scientists will be crossing their fingers as Schiaparelli (artist's impression) flies itself on autopilot through the Martian atmosphere, which is expected to welcome the probe with stormy weather You can watch the livestream on MailOnline, at Esa's website, or via its livestream channel.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, engineers started looking into the problem of aerodynamic heating; the challenge was devising a way to have a warhead launch on a missile and reenter through the Earth's atmosphere unscathed so it could explode on target. The same principle carried over into spaceflight. In the early space age, a man took the place of the warhead on those same missiles. This ultimately led to the ablative heat shields that kept Apollo astronauts safe during their fiery returns through the atmosphere before splashdown, but they were a new technology in the 1960s. That meant, that like so many piece of Apollo, it was proved during the Gemini program.