NASA could take advantage of a rare planetary alignment in 2033 to send the first crewed mission to orbit Mars and, on the way back, Venus. The short trip—which would be the first interplanetary crew ever—could be a pathfinder mission for the first crewed landing on the red planet in 2037.

It’s “the best time to go to Mars in the next 25 years,” said Matt Duggan, mission management and operations manager at Boeing, addressing the 2023 Humans To Mars Summit on Wednesday at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington D.C. “That’s in terms of the amount of energy and fuel you have to spend to get to Mars—it’s a unique opportunity that comes around once every 15 years.”

A mission plan to send crew in existing spacecraft on a 570-day return trip to orbit Mars and Venus will only work every 15 years—and the next opportunity is 2033.

Blue Moon will be the second lunar landing system for the Artemis Program.

The first time Blue Origin bid for the landing system for Artemis, they lost to SpaceX. With Artemis V the company gets to show its stuff.

SpaceX rolled the Ship 25 Starship upper-stage prototype out to the launch pad early Thursday morning (May 18) to test-fire its six Raptor engines.

SpaceX plans to be back up on its feet just two months after testing the Starship rocket for the first time.

This week at Starbase Ship 25 goes through another round of cryo testing, work continues on Booster 11, Ship 29 and the new mega bay, and crews begin working on new pilings for the water deluge system, while over at Cape Canaveral SpaceX continues their rapid pace of launch and recovery operations.

A commercial space station called Orbital Reef may be deployed this decade, one of many planned for low-Earth orbit.

In Part 1 looking at LEO space station deployment we focus on two front runners: the Axiom Space Station and Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef.