Space · Daily series
Race to Mars
Every episode covers a different team, technology, or milestone in the global competition to put people on Mars. From SpaceX's Starship to NASA's Artemis program to China's plans, each story reveals the engineering, politics, and ambition driving humanity's next giant leap.
Episodes
- 8SpaceX Flight 15: Catching Booster and ShipMusk says a double tower catch is "a profound technology milestone." Here's why Mars depends on it.
- 7Japan's MMX Mission to Land on Mars' Moon Phobos and Bring Samples HomeOn October twentieth JAXA launches the first attempt ever to grab a piece of Phobos — and fly it back to Earth.
- 6Why SpaceX Must Refuel Starship in Orbit Before Any Mars LaunchThe 2028-29 Mars window is a one-month appointment slot — and nobody has ever transferred cryogenic propellant between two ships in orbit.
- 5How SpaceX and NASA Are Choosing the First Human Landing Site on MarsIce, flat ground, and no rock taller than half a meter: the brutal checklist that picks the first Martian town.
- 4Why Radiation, Not the Van Allen Belts, Is the Hardest Problem for a Mars CrewA Geiger counter on America's first satellite read zero. It wasn't broken — it was overwhelmed. And the thing that could actually hurt a Ma…
- 3China's Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return and the Plan to Land TaikonautsTwo rockets launch in 2028 to bring Martian rock home. Beijing says crews follow in the 2030s. How real is that timeline?
- 2Artemis II Flew Around the Moon — and NASA Rewrote the Landing PlanFour astronauts rounded the Moon in April twenty twenty-six. Six weeks before they splashed down, NASA had already torn up the plan for act…
- 1SpaceX Starship Flight Fourteen: The Orbit Test and the Mars ProblemOn September twenty-eighth, Starship finally reached orbit. One test SpaceX has never attempted still stands between it and Mars.