With the last Mission: Impossible film, Dead Reckoning, the long-running franchise officially entered science fiction territory by making intelligent AI its villain. We've seen Tom Cruise's Ethan hunt jump off of buildings and hang from the side of planes, but how can he fight a computer program? The latest trailer for the series' next film, and potentially the last to feature Hunt, doesn't answer that question, but clearly it will involve even more death-defying stunts (like hanging on to a flipping bi-plane!), As I wrote in my review of Deck Reckoning: "As much as I love other action film franchises – like John Wick's increasingly elaborate choreography, or the sheer ridiculousness of the Fast and the Furious – Mission: Impossible remains uniquely enjoyable. It's committed to delivering astonishing practical stunt work. And a part of me hopes that somehow, a team of geeks can also fight back against the excesses of AI." Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning hits theaters on May 23.

SpaceX has said it has earmarked December 28 for the launch of the United States military's X-37B robot space plane on its seventh mission to orbit. "Now targeting no earlier than Thursday, December 28 for the Falcon Heavy to launch USSF-52 to orbit from Florida," SpaceX said in a post on X on Friday, after it delayed the launch earlier this week to perform additional system checks. The original plan to send the spacecraft to orbit late on Sunday was scrubbed due to poor weather conditions at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The delays came on what was to have been the seventh mission flown by the unmanned X-37B, and its first launch atop a Falcon Heavy, composed of three reusable rocket cores strapped together and capable of lofting the vehicle far higher in orbit than ever before. Roughly the size of a small bus and resembling a miniature space shuttle craft, the X-37B is built to deploy various payloads and conduct technology experiments in long-duration orbital flights.

May 7, 2018 --A streak of rocket fire pierced the foggy predawn skies of southern California Saturday, as NASA sent off its latest Mars mission. The InSight mission is set to rack up a series of "firsts." It will also be the first time CubeSats will deploy in deep space. And, if the mission is successful, it will be the first time that scientists gather direct data on the interior of another planet and detect quakes on another planet. Despite all these firsts, the mission marks the 45th time humans have sent robotic envoys to uncover Mars's secrets (although only about half of those missions are considered a success).