The four astronauts of the private Ax-2 mission returned to Earth in their SpaceX Dragon capsule late Tuesday night (May 30).

That Dragon, named Freedom, undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) earlier in the day at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT), ending a 10-day mission that included eight days docked at the orbiting lab. Freedom returned to Earth 12 hours later with a flawless splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida at 11:04 p.m. EDT (0304 GMT on May 31), ending the Ax-2 mission by SpaceX for the Houston-based company Axiom Space.

Gui Haichao, a professor at Beijing’s top aerospace research institute, will join two others on a mission to the Tiangong space station.

China will send its first civilian astronaut to orbit with the latest crewed launch to the country’s Tiangong space station.

The mission, scheduled to launch tomorrow morning, May 30, will lift a crew of three aboard the Shenzhou 16 spacecraft attached to a Long March-2F rocket, a report from South China Morning Post reveals.

On Tuesday, the CEO of the UK Space Agency Graham Turnock announced the UK would be working more closely with Australia in a “world-first Space Bridge” agreement which will focus on delivering a plane—or rocket, really—to shuttle passengers from continent-to-continent in just four hours. While flights from London to the Big Apple will reportedly take a skerrick over 60 minutes.

It’s all courtesy of a new hypersonic engine SABRE (Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine)—which the scientists at Reaction Engines are currently developing. Fueled by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, SABRE is capable of powering a plane to Mach 5.4 (4,000 mph) for speedy commercial travel—that’s around five times the speed of sound—or Mach 25 (19,000 mph) when soaring in space. It’s supposedly greener and cheaper than current air travel, too.

The firms claim they want to set up a “constant supply chain to Mars” by sending missions every 26 months.

Two private space companies, Impulse Space and Relativity Space, recently announced that their private Mars mission is now expected to launch sometime in 2026, a report from SpaceNews reveals.

Good things come to those who wait, the saying goes, and the two firms announced the delay to the mission at the Humans to Mars Summit, held in Washington DC from May 16 to May 18.

Forever intrigued by attempting the impossible, we’ve made traveling faster than the speed of light a staple of our works of science fiction. Most science fiction stories feature some way of getting from point A to point B faster than light, whether it’s via activating the warp drive or jumping into hyperspace.

United Launch Alliance (ULA) is gearing up for a critical test firing of its next-generation rocket after a recent fueling check, and it could happen as soon as this week.

On Monday morning (May 22), Bruno stated on Twitter that the company’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket was returning to Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Now that the rocket is back at the pad, Vulcan’s static fire test (in which the rocket’s engines are ignited while it remains on the ground) could happen any day. “We are targeting as soon as tomorrow for the Flight Readiness Firing,” a representative from ULA told Space.com on Tuesday (May 23), “but it will depend on range availability.” On Wednesday (March 24), ULA CEO Tory Bruno intimated on Twitter that the test could happen as soon as Thursday (March 25).

Virgin Galactic has released a video introducing the public to the pilots who fly the company’s VSS Unity space plane, which is gearing up for its final test flight.

The suborbital flight, known as Unity 25, is set to take off on Thursday (May 25) and will be the final step on Virgin Galactic’s long journey to realizing commercial space flight.