It won’t be cheap, but your holiday plans could include a trip to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere or beyond—before the end of this year. Several space tourism companies are zeroing in on their first launch.

Bob Smith, CEO of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, told CNBC: “We think we still have that possibility of getting that done this year.”

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson shared similar sentiments, revealing that the thing he was most excited about in 2018 was “hopefully going into space,” presumably in one of his own company’s ships. The news follows a recently restarted series of test flights after a tragic test flight crash in 2014.

Astronomers have accomplished a difficult feat: determining the 3D structure of an interstellar cloud, where stars are born.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a plan allowing SpaceX to build and operate a facility at the Port of L.A., where the Hawthorne space company will produce its next-generation BFR rockets and spacecraft.

Manned, long-term, deep space missions are an exciting prospect, but one that remains in the realm of distant possibilities–particularly because we don’t have all the technological innovations needed to make it happen.

One major consideration is the time it takes to reach the destination. Mars, which is at the top of various space programs’ go-to destinations for manned missions, is about six months if travel time away from Earth. If we wanted to explore even further, keep in mind that New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft to leave Earth, took nine and a half years to reach Pluto.

Science fiction conveniently sidesteps this challenge by putting the space explorers into deep sleep–a state of suspended animation. But slowing the human metabolism down while ensuring that a person will stay alive for extended periods is a lot easier said than done.

This could be the key to exploring space at a low cost.

This pioneering mission to the farthest planet was done with 20% of the (inflation-adjusted) budget as the storied Voyager exploration, writes Alan Stern, the man who led the project.

NASA’s next Red Planet explorer has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California — a big step forward in the countdown to T-zero. The spacecraft is called InSight — short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — and it’s being tested, fueled and encapsulated for launch aboard the powerful United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The upcoming liftoff will mark the first time an interplanetary mission has launched from the West Coast.