Update: Elon Musk has confirmed the bonus mission — landing a Falcon 9 rocket stage on ship at sea — was a failure, but noted SpaceX "didn't expect this one to work." See our full story here.

SpaceX successfully launched a super-fueled rocket tonight at 6:35 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, delivering a communications satellite 25,000 miles above the Earth.

"Successful launch, we're in orbit!" said John Insprucker, SpaceX's launch webcast announcer.

The satellite, called SES-9, should soon boost communications coverage over Asia.

SpaceX CEO and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk confirmed the mission was a success on Twitter:

However, the latter part of the launch — after the satellite was deployed — was the moment most viewers were waiting for: the landing of the 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket's first stage on a robotic ship at sea.

The drone ship came into view on the webcast just minutes after the first stage separated from the rest of the rocket. The camera show the glow of rocket thrusters on the ship's deck... Then the feed switched off, showing only rainbow bars:

Lauren Lyons, another SpaceX webcast announcer, said "you saw what we all saw," noting the fate of the first stage was unknown at the time.

Why sticking a rocket landing is a huge deal

The Falcon 9 rocket is a very odd bird.

Most rockets cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, yet are rendered as garbage the moment they launch. Instead of being recycled, they crash into the ocean and sink to the bottom after lofting a payload into orbit.

But after delivering SES-9 into space tonight, the Falcon 9 tried to land about half of itself on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX attempted this feat in earnest on two separate occasions in the past year, but both rocket stages exploded into fireballs on a self-guided ship called "Just Read the Instructions."

A third SpaceX rocket was equipped to land but never got the chance, since it blew up shortly after launch.

Those experimental failures haven't inspired much confidence. In fact, the company said in a press release for this launch that "a successful landing is not expected."

Translation: We think our rocket will most likely explode into bits when it tries to land itself.

Still, the stakes can't be ignored.

Each Falcon 9 costs about $60 million. If the company can land even part of that hardware, clean it up, and refuel it for a future launch, it'd be a history-making event.

It might also help usher in an era of spaceflight that's radically less expensive.

Musk has said that a 100-fold cost reduction of access to space is possible, should his rocket-recycling scheme prove as repeatable and reliable as flying an airplane.

However, there's reason to believe SpaceX just might succeed this time. On December 21, 2015, the company launched and landed a Falcon 9 rocket on solid ground.

It's not a robotic platform bobbing and shimmying in the Atlantic Ocean, but it's still pretty impressive.

Stay tuned to this post as we wait for an update from SpaceX and Elon Musk on the fate of the first-stage rocket landing.

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NOW WATCH: This is how Elon Musk wants to drastically reduce the cost of space flight

SpaceX successfully launched a super-fueled rocket tonight at 6:35 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, delivering a communications satellite 25,000 miles above the Earth.

"Successful launch, we're in orbit!" said John Insprucker, SpaceX's launch webcast announcer.

The satellite, called SES-9, should soon boost communications coverage over Asia.

SpaceX CEO and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk confirmed the mission was a success on Twitter:

However, the latter part of the launch — after the satellite was deployed — was the moment many viewers were waiting for: the landing of the 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket's first stage on a robotic ship at sea.

The drone ship came into view on the webcast just minutes after the first stage separated from the rest of the rocket. The camera showed the glow of rocket thrusters on the ship's deck... Then the feed switched off, showing only rainbow bars:

Elon Musk later confirmed that the rocket "landed hard" on the ship and "did not survive," according to Matthew Travis, a journalist on the scene in Florida:

While it's a bummer that SpaceX did not succeed at it's historic landing attempt, it was a bonus mission the company didn't actually expect to work (more on this in a moment).

And there's at least one potential bright side: We might soon see some footage from Musk or SpaceX of the rocket trying (and failing) to land on the ship.

Musk shared such a clip on Vine during the last landing attempt at sea, and the explosion was pretty impressive:

Why sticking a rocket landing is a huge deal

The Falcon 9 rocket is a very odd bird.

Most rockets cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, yet are rendered as junk the moment they launch. Instead of being recycled, they crash into the ocean and sink to the bottom after lofting a payload into orbit.

But after delivering SES-9 into space tonight, the Falcon 9 tried to land about half of itself on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX attempted this feat in earnest on two separate occasions in the past year, but both rocket stages exploded into fireballs on a self-guided ship called "Just Read the Instructions."

A third SpaceX rocket was equipped to land but never got the chance, since it blew up shortly after launch.

Those experimental failures haven't inspired much confidence. In fact, the company said in a press release for this launch that "a successful landing is not expected."

Translation: This is really, really hard and we think our rocket will probably explode into bits when it tries to land itself.

Still, the stakes can't be ignored.

Each Falcon 9 costs about $60 million. If the company can land even part of that hardware, clean it up, and refuel it for a future launch, it'd be a history-making event.

It might also help usher in an era of spaceflight that's radically less expensive.

Musk has said that a 100-fold cost reduction of access to space is possible, should his rocket-recycling scheme prove as repeatable and reliable as flying an airplane.

However, there's reason to believe SpaceX just might succeed the next time. On December 21, 2015, the company launched and landed a Falcon 9 rocket on solid ground.

It's not a robotic platform bobbing and shimmying in the Atlantic Ocean, but it's still pretty impressive.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This is how Elon Musk wants to drastically reduce the cost of space flight

On Friday evening, SpaceX saw its second successful launch of the year out of Cape Canaveral in Florida

The launch marked the start of two different missions, but only one would pan out:

1. Ferry the SES-9 communications satellite into Earth's orbit.
2. Land a rocket on board an ocean platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

While the first mission was a wonderful success, the second was decidedly not.

Shortly after the launch, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the rocket took a hard landing on the ship, meaning that it came in too fast and, in all probability, likely exploded on the platform.

But Musk also offered a thread of hope:

Landing rockets isn't just a fancy stunt for SpaceX. It's a critical goal that will prove whether or not the company can reuse the same rocket for different launches and save itself the cost of building a new multimillion-dollar rocket for each mission.

If reusable rockets prove a viable approach to spaceflight, the cost of a single launch could be drastically reduced.

While this is a missed opportunity to prove the revolutionary reusability of its Falcon 9 rockets, SpaceX — as Musk mentioned— is not surprised by this outcome.

What's more, there's hope for a more successful landing with SpaceX's next launch, which is scheduled for a yet-to-be-announced day this April.

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NOW WATCH: Mythbusters' Adam Savage reveals the surprising myth he regrets not busting

Scattered around the US are the remnants of a space race from half a century ago.

Before it fell completely into disarray, Roland Miller decided to capture the ruins on camera.

In his book, "Abandoned in Place" (now available via the University of New Mexico Press and Amazon) Miller gives a glimpse of life in the areas left over from the missions that took us to the moon.

Here are some of the images featured in his book:

NEXT: Mind-blowingly beautiful photos from Astronaut Scott Kelly's record-breaking year in space will make you fall in love with Earth all over again

SEE ALSO: Why astronaut Scott Kelly grew 2 inches during his year in space

Miller's interest in the project started in the early 90s, when he was working at a community college near Cape Canaveral. An environmental engineer who wanted Miller to help dispose some photography chemicals showed him Complex 19, which launched the Gemini missions, NASA second round of manned spaceflight projects. "It was immediately clear to me that I wanted to photograph it," Miller told Business Insider.

Source: NASA

Although it wasn't easy getting permission to run around on deactivated launch bases like this one on White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Miller was persistent. "It was obvious that it was already pretty badly decayed and wouldn't be there forever," he said.

Miller prefers to take his photos right when the sun is coming up. That lighting was particularly stunning at Cape Canaveral, where, he said, "If the Atlantic Ocean is calm enough, it's almost like you have two suns."

On March 1, astronaut and Instagram star Scott Kelly returned to Earth after spending 340 days in space, a record for a NASA astronaut.

Kelly's nearly year in space has been a critical mission for NASA, helping to reveal details that will be key to future missions to Mars.

For example, understanding how the human body reacts to long-term stays in zero gravity will be crucial.

During his time in space, Kelly drank nearly 200 gallons of recycled urine and sweat and traveled over 140 million miles, according to The New York Times. Here are some more extreme numbers from The Times about Kelly's historic time in space:

READ MORE: The fascinating and terrible things that would happen to you if you tried to fly on Jupiter — and other planets

SEE ALSO: The 12 most compelling scientific findings that suggest aliens are real

713 photos posted to Instagram — that's two posts a day on average.

#Water #YearInSpace #spacestation #iss #space

A photo posted by Scott Kelly (@stationcdrkelly) on Feb 28, 2016 at 2:32pm PST

915,000 Twitter followers, which he interacted with more than 2,000 times. Here's his Twitter profile picture:

5,440 orbits around Earth, while traveling at over 17,000 mph.

At 6:35 p.m. on March 4, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending a satellite called SES-9 into orbit far above the Earth.

It all happened fast; the rocket travels at thousands of miles per hour.

But if you were lucky enough to be on a nearby plane at just the right moment, you would have been treated to something that seems like a view from the future: a rocket streaming by in a bright flash of light as it began its 25,000 mile journey toward the stars.

Will Carr got that very view from his plane on Friday, and gave Tech Insider permission to share his photos here. (We first spotted them on Reddit.)

"The pilot made an announcement over the speakers saying that we were gonna slow down so that we could see it up close," he wrote on Reddit. "[P]retty much everyone was glued to the windows. After he said we had to speed up again everyone was clapping. It was amazing."

You can see the rocket begin as a small glowing orb near the ground and then quickly soar upwards beyond the clouds.

Check out Carr's photos below:

Will Carr was flying near Cape Canaveral, Florida, when he took these shots of a SpaceX rocket taking off.

The bright orange dot is not the sun — it's the nine engines of a Falcon 9 rocket burning hundreds of gallons of propellant per second.

This rocket, launched on Friday, March 4, was carrying a 11,620-pound communications satellite called SES-9.

Right before Astronaut Scott Kelly took off to spend a year in space, President Obama told him,"Good luck Captain. Make sure to Instagram it."

And he did. 

From tracking storms to catching all the colors of the Earth, here are some of the best shots from his record-breaking, year-long voyage:

NEXT: SpaceX’s new rocket fuel is causing problems with a mission that the company will try to launch for the fourth time tonight

SEE ALSO: NSA astronaut Scott Kelly is about to come home — here are 8 epic numbers about his record-breaking time in space

Here's Kelly's first stunning shot of Earth from space, taken 27 weeks ago.

Good morning, Texas from the @ISS. Looks like Houston and Austin have some weather headed your way. #YearInSpace #ISS #Goodmorning #saturday #weekend #Texas #Houston #Austin #weather #wx #houwx #space #earth

A photo posted by Scott Kelly (@stationcdrkelly) on Apr 4, 2015 at 11:32am PDT

His photos are filled with striking colors, from neon greens...

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...to vibrant reds, like this shot above Africa.

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Scientists were stunned upon discovering an island on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in July of 2013. However, when the Cassini spacecraft returned in January 2015, the "magic island" had vanished.

Produced by Jenner Deal. Original Reporting by Jessica Orwig.

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British company Surrey NanoSystems has outdone itself.

Researchers there made the blackest material ever back in 2014, called Vantablack, and now they've made a material that's even blacker.

In a YouTube video the researchers posted March 4 (and we found via ScienceAlert), they run a red laser across the solid material to show just how black it is.

You can see how the material absorbs almost all of the light, reflecting nothing detectable back to our eyes:

They make Vantablack by tightly packing carbon nanotubes — rods of carbon that are much, much thinner than any human hair — so close together that light gets trapped inside, ScienceAlert reports.

Researchers say their new material is so black that even their spectrometers (machines that record colors and light) can't measure its darkness. It's likely higher than the original Vantablack, which could absorbed 99.96% of the light that hit it.

To be clear, Vantablack isn't paint and is unlikely to be as durable, too. Even a little bit of water can mess up other ultra-black materials made of nanomaterials — though the original Vantablack seems to hold up pretty well to dunking in water as well as liquid nitrogen.

Surrey NanoSystems isn't just making blacker and blacker materials to set records. They've tested Vantablack to see if it could withstand going into space. There, it could be used to calibrate NASA's powerful cameras to take more accurate photos of our universe. (Artists are also interested in using the black material.)

Maybe the blackest material could help us see through the darkness.

Watch the company's video below:

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NOW WATCH: Astronomers discovered something extremely rare hiding behind this mysterious red cloud

The total solar eclipse will begin on Tuesday, March 8 at 6:19 p.m. ET and last through 11:34 p.m. ET. The most spectacular part of the event, when the Moon is directly in front of the Sun, will take place at 8:59 p.m. ET.

Produced by Emmanuel Ocbazghi. Original reporting by Jessica Orwig.

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On Tuesday, the celestial event of the year will take place: a total eclipse of the sun, which happens when the Moon passes between Earth and the sun, blocking the sun from view.

This is the only total solar eclipse we'll see this year, but sadly for the US, only people in certain parts of Southeast Asia will witness the total eclipse.

Others in parts of Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and America Samoa will experience a partial solar eclipse, when the moon eclipses part of the sun.

Though the rest of us cannot observe this spectacular event firsthand, NASA and the Slooh Community Observatory will be hosting live coverage of the eclipse.

NASA's coverage begins at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and Slooh's starts earlier in the evening at 6 p.m. ET. We've provided the live feeds for both at the end of this post.

The most stunning part of the eclipse, called totality — when the moon is directly in front of the sun — will take place at about 1:59 UT, which is 8:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

The map below, from TimeandDate.com, reveals who will see the eclipse. The thin, dark blue line stretching through Southeast Asia and making its way across the Pacific marks who will see a total solar eclipse, whereas the rest of the shaded regions show who will see a partial eclipse.

What's going on in space

The reason only a small part of the world can see a total eclipse at one time is because the moon is about the same size in our sky as the sun.

Therefore, when the moon passes directly between Earth and the sun, it casts a small shadow on Earth. There are two parts to this shadow, called the penumbra and the umbra, shown below:

If you are standing underneath that penumbra, you will witness a partial solar eclipse, but if you're underneath the much smaller umbra, then you get the rare treat of experiencing a total eclipse of the sun.

Remember that no one should look directly at the sun during a partial or total eclipse without proper equipment, as it can damage the eyes.

Because the moon orbits Earth, both the penumbra and umbra move across the face of our planet during an eclipse. On Tuesday, the shadow will traverse across 8,800 miles, stretching from just west of Southeast Asia all the way past Hawaii.

For a better idea of how the moon's shadow moves across Earth, watch this 60-second NASA animation:

The next time the US will get a chance to see a total solar eclipse will be on August 21, 2017. And that's a date for Americans to mark their calendars because it will be the first total solar eclipse visible from the entire US since 1979!

Slooh will begin live coverage of the solar eclipse at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday:

NASA's live coverage will start at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday:

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk just tweeted some bad and good news about SpaceX's historic rocket-landing attempt

READ MORE: 5 mind-blowing feats of superhuman endurance

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NOW WATCH: Astronomers discovered something extremely rare hiding behind this mysterious red cloud

Pyramids in the far reaches of the solar system might sound like a science fiction writer's fever dream.

But just take a look at this mountain on a dwarf planet called Ceres in the asteroid belt.

NASA has no idea where it came from:

That's a view from above, so it might be a little tough to see.

Luckily, NASA also created a 3D side view, below, to make the mountain pop. (If you have red-blue glasses, get them out and gaze upon this stereoscopic version.)

NASA described the pyramid-like mountain, called Ahuna Mons, as "mysterious" in a press release issued Monday.

The images hail from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which orbits the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The space agency said they're among the most detailed views yet of the world.

"No one expected a mountain on Ceres, especially one like Ahuna Mons,"Christopher Russell, a planetary scientist who leads the Dawn mission, said in the release. "We still do not have a satisfactory model to explain how it formed."

Astronomers first spotted Ahuna Mons in 2015 and it's absolutely huge: At 12 miles wide and 3 miles high at its steepest point, it's taller than Mount Kiliminjaro, the highest mountain in Africa.

Both mountains also have a curiously flat top:

And yet Ceres — the largest object in the asteroid belt — is less than one-tenth of a percent the size of Earth and less than 2% the size of the moon:

Ahuna Mons isn't the only big mystery on Ceres.

Scientists have also spotted nearly a dozen bright-white spots across the dwarf planet, which scientists think may be salt deposits. The enigmatic world may also contain clues about the origin of water on Earth and the solar system's formation.

And like Earth, the layers of Ceres are made of different materials — one of which might harbor frozen water:

Expect to hear about other surprises on Ceres in the coming years.

The Dawn spacecraft is in such a stable orbit around the world, one Dawn mission scientist told the BBC, that it could stay there for a century or more and become "a perpetual satellite."

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NOW WATCH: NASA scientists are baffled by a mysterious pyramid structure they found in space

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly recently returned to Earth after living in space for 340 days.

While the opportunity to live in space for that long is a privilege reserved for a special few, this honor comes with a cost.

In space, astronauts are exposed to cosmic radiation that would otherwise be absorbed or deflected by Earth's protective atmosphere. 

In fact, experts estimated for Scientific American, that astronauts are exposed 24 times more radiation per year than the average human is on Earth.

According to the World Nuclear Association there's no evidence to suggest anything below 100 millisieverts per year poses a significant risk to human health. However, space radiation particles carry more energy than most radioactive sources on Earth, and could have more harmful affects on the human body.

Therefore, radiation exposure is a major concern for astronaut health as NASA embarks on longer, deep-space missions to Mars and beyond. For an idea of what types of radiation you're exposed to on a daily basis, check out this chart:

READ MORE: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is about to come home — here are 8 epic numbers about his record-breaking time in space

SEE ALSO: We're on a collision course with the Andromeda Galaxy — here's what will happen to Earth

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Astronomers discovered something extremely rare hiding behind this mysterious red cloud

Want to watch Tuesday's total solar eclipse? Twice?

Bookmark this page and return at 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday March 8, 2016.

The only places you can see the eclipse from the ground include Indonesia, Australia, southern Asia, Hawaii, and Alaska. But you don't need to travel the globe to catch the astronomical spectacle.

NASA and a site called Slooh will stream live video of the event, which officially begins on Tuesday, March 8 at 6:19 p.m. ET, and we've embedded their video players below.

Because the eclipse slowly tracks from East to West, and each feed will come from a camera in a different part of the world, one feed will show the eclipse before the other. (This also means you have two chances to watch the eclipse peak live.)

Here's how to watch.

Live feed #1: Slooh

Tech Insider highly recommends watching Slooh first, and not only because it will be the first to show the eclipse.

The company has partnered with more than two dozen observatories from all around the world, allowing them to record and stream almost any astronomical event.

Slooh fills their feed with interesting commentary from a rotating cast of astronomers and other experts, giving you the low-down on what's going on and why.

Their feed will be recorded from Indonesia (one of the first locations to see Tuesday's eclipse) and broadcast through YouTube Live. It should go live around 6 p.m. ET and, weather permitting, the eclipse will peak in totality starting at 7:37 p.m. ET.

Tune in sooner than that, however, to watch the eclipse progress and absorb the helpful information. Their feed should stay live through about 9 p.m. ET:

You can follow chatter about the Slooh feed on Twitter through the hashtag #ShadeUp.

Live feed #2: NASA TV (Public)

If you miss Slooh's feed — or are looking for an encore — tune into NASA TV's public feed.

The space agency may lack the energy of Slooh's hosts, but if you're looking for something a little less chatty, sort of like watching a golf game on television, this is your kind of webcast.

NASA TV broadcasts through a LiveStream account. Their coverage should start around 8 p.m. ET, and you can expect to see totality starting at 8:38 p.m. ET (but again, tune in sooner than that):

NASA's official hashtag on Twitter for the eclipse will be #eclipse2016.

Live feed #3: NASA TV (Educational)

This is the same feed as the one above, but it starts at 7 p.m. ET and will have absolutely no commentary or audio.

So if you're looking to take in a digitized total solar eclipse in peace and quiet, this is your feed:

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This 60-second animation reveals who will see tomorrow's rare total solar eclipse

Tuesday, March 8 is International Women's Day, and we are celebrating by giving you some of the top female scientists today.

Yes, the one feature that all these scientists have in common is that they are women.

While that might seem insignificant, it's actually a big deal considering that women are generally underrepresented in science — especially in the upper ranks of professional research.

Here, we've highlighted 15 female scientists who are doing amazing things, pulled from our article last year listing groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world.

From a woman who developed a revolutionary blood test that will transform the way we measure our health to an astrophysicist who's trying to find another Earth, here are some of the most amazing women in science.

SEE ALSO: 50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world

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Cori Bargmann is uncovering the causes of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and autism.

Through her studies on roundworms, Cori Bargmann is uncovering how neurons and genes affect behavior. Because many of the gene mechanisms in roundworms mimic those of mammals, Bargmann is able to manipulate certain genes and observe how that affects changes in behavior.

For example, in one study she manipulated a gene that caused the male worms to bumble around while trying to mate, ultimately failing. Bargmann developed the Brain Research Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative, which researches the root causes of conditions such as Alzheimer's and autism by looking at connections between brain function and behavior.

Bargmann is the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor in the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at Rockefeller University.

Cynthia Kenyon is developing ways to help us live longer and healthier lives.

Cynthia Kenyon joined Google's Calico venture last year, where she helps a team of scientists develop methods to slow aging and prevent age-related diseases.

The goal of Calico is to extend human lives by up to 100 years. Kenyon gained prominence in the science community in 1993 for her discovery that altering a single gene in roundworms could double their life span. Since then, Kenyon has pioneered many more breakthroughs in aging research, including pinpointing which genes help us live longer and determining that a common hormone-signaling pathway controls the rate of aging in several species, humans included.

Kenyon is the vice president of aging research at Calico.

Elizabeth Holmes developed a groundbreaking blood test that will transform the future of healthcare.

Not only is Holmes on a mission to change the healthcare industry, she's the youngest self-made female billionaire in the US.

Holmes dropped out of Stanford during her sophomore year to create Theranos, a blood-testing company that uses a prick of blood to get the same test results as you’d get from an entire vial. The concept is disrupting and revolutionizing the industry by making blood tests faster, simpler, and, most important, cheaper. Theranos has raised $400 million in funding.

Holmes is the founder and CEO of Theranos.

A total solar eclipse is going to cast a shadow over the western world today, Tuesday March 8, starting at 6:19 p.m. ET. (You can watch the event live here.)

Astronauts and cosmonauts in space typically have incredible, obstruction-free views of this astronomical phenomenon — just look at the photo above, taken over Britain in 1999.

Unfortunately, the crew on board the International Space Station (ISS) right now won't see today's rare eclipse.

Tech Insider reached out to the Johnson Space Center, which manages the American astronauts aboard the ISS. The operations team alerted the crew about the event, but the station's orbit puts it on the wrong side of the Earth to see anything.

Astronauts who are in the right place at the right time get a unique "zoomed out" view of the umbra, or shadow of the moon on the Earth's surface, like this view from the total eclipse that occurred over Turkey in 2006:

The reason astronauts will miss out this year is because of power. The ISS runs on solar energy, so it follows a wavy path (a sinusoidal orbit) around the Earth, oscillating between the poles as it orbits. This allows its solar panels to take in as much sunlight as possible.

That path also means it's not always in the best spot for great views of a total solar eclipse.

You can follow the orbit of the ISS around the Earth in real time using the ISS Tracker site.

And today you can watch live video of the eclipse starting around 6 p.m. ET, via webcasts from Slooh and NASA.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This 60-second animation reveals who will see tomorrow's rare total solar eclipse

Russia just joined a new kind of space race: The race to develop reusable rockets to ferry wealthy people into space.

Space tourism is a growing business opportunity made possible by the advent of reusable rocket technology, which has only begun to take off in the last year.

In the lead are the privately owned American space companies Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, but Russia's private space company KosmoKurs could soon offer some healthy competition.

Last week, Russia's space agency Roscosmos approved KosmoKurs' designs for a reusable rocket and spacecraft that could transport tourists into space, 124 miles above Earth's surface.

The approval puts into motion the design for a reusable space launch system that KosmoKurs hopes to start flying in 2020.

Each flight will last 15 minutes. For about five to six minutes of that time, passengers will float around like astronauts on the International Space Station. This trip is similar to what Amazon Jeff Bezos' aerospace company Blue Origin is offering.

Blue Origin has now flown two successful unmanned test flights with its New Shepard launch vehicle (shown below). When it will start selling tickets, and how much they will cost, is still unclear.

The other company deeply invested in space tourism is Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic, which plans to take paying customers to about 62 miles above Earth's surface, providing about 4 minutes of weightlessness, in a rocket-powered plane called SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic unveiled SpaceShipTwo earlier this year, and says it will soon begin conducting thorough tests. A ticket for a seat on Virgin Galactic will cost you around $250,000 — which is about the same as what KosmoKurs plans to charge.

According to the Russian state-owned news agency, TASS, KosmoKurs will charge between $200,000 to $250,000 per ticket.

That's certainly steep for the average person, but it's nowhere near the $70 million per seat that NASA is shelling out to Roscosmos to send its astronauts into space.

(In case you are wondering where SpaceX fits into all of this — it doesn't. SpaceX is in the business of transporting satellites and other payloads into space. Eventually it will transport astronauts, but it is not in the space tourism business.)

READ MORE: This $14-billion machine is set to usher in a new era of nuclear fusion power

SEE ALSO: Here's how to watch the spectacular total solar eclipse that's happening Tuesday

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch Scott Kelly's awesome reaction to landing safely on Earth after his record-breaking time in space

If you ever thought about driving across the US, or some other country, now is the time to do it. 

The oil industry is in the midst of a historic downturn, which is plunging the price per barrel of oil to all-time lows across the globe.

International markets sell oil for a fixed price. But drivers are subject to fluctuating fuel costs depending on their location.

Taxes and subsidies play a large part in this, and the fluctuations are quite impressive, ranging from as little as $0.20 per gallon all the way up to $5.64.

Here, we've compiled fuel costs for 17 different gas stations across the world in order from most to least expensive. 

CHECK OUT: Scott Kelly exposed himself to 24 times more radiation in space than the average human

SEE ALSO: Stop hurting your engine by idling the car when it's cold out

Llanteg, Wales

Location: Murco gas station in Llanteg

Date: Jan. 28, 2016

Cost per liter: 103.9 pence ($1.49) 

Cost per gallon: $5.64

(*All of these fuel prices are subject to changes in exchange rates.)

London, Britain

Location: BP gas station near Heathrow Airport in west London

Date: Jan. 30, 2016

Cost per liter: 101.9 pence ($1.44) 

Cost per gallon: $5.45

Santiago, Chile

Location: Copec gas station in Santiago

Date: Feb. 7, 2016

Cost per liter: 760 pesos ($1.08) 

Cost per gallon: $4.09

On Monday, March 7 at 8:42 a.m. ET, a rogue asteroid passed by Earth, missing us by a safe 2.54 million miles.

This was obviously great news for our planet, considering scientists predicted back in February that there was a chance it could swoop as close as a staggering 11,000 miles from Earth — about 22 times closer than our moon. That would've been a near-miss.

Scientists have been keeping a watchful eye on this errant space rock they've dubbed asteroid 2013 TX68 since they discovered it a few years ago.

In 2013, it swooped within 1.3 million miles of our home planet, measuring about 100 feet in diameter, roughly the size of an airplane.

While new NASA calculations say that this particular rock isn't going to hit us within the next 100 years — even on its next pass slated for September 28, 2017 — others might.

Though the likelihood is small, the consequences of a strike would be enormous, according to Nahum Melamed, a project manager with the Aerospace Corporation.

Melamed recently spoke at an event for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Manhattan Beach, California, about what scientists refer to as planetary defense, and Tech Insider was in the audience.

Here's what asteroids have done in the past, and what scientists at NASA and other institutions are doing to mitigate their threat in the future.

About 30,000 objects are floating near Earth that could strike it someday — 1,600 of which NASA has labeled "potentially hazardous."

An impact by one could mean anything from broken windows to global extinction, which is why scientists are working hard to find and, if necessary, deflect or destroy these rogue space rocks.

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These space rocks are leftovers from the solar system's formation some 4.6 billion years ago. A big one slamming into Earth could mean our end.

In an experiment testing how well we can grow crops in space, scientists have managed to harvest 10 crops, including tomatoes, peas, and rye, from soil that mimics the conditions on Mars.

Although the Mars-equivalent soil produced slightly fewer crops than regular Earth soil, the difference wasn't huge, suggesting that, in the right conditions, early settlers might be able to sustainably feed themselves with crops grown on the Red Planet.

The dream of a Martian colony just got a little bit closer.

"The production of biomass on the Mars soil simulant was lower than on Earth control, but it was a minor difference and caused by one of the trays that showed less growth,"said lead researcher Wieger Wamelink from Wageningen University & Research center in the Netherlands. 

"That was a real surprise to us. It shows that the Mars soil simulant has great potential when properly prepared and watered."

The researchers also grew the same 10 crops — tomato, rye, radish, pea, leek, spinach, garden rocket, cress, quinoa, and chives — in soil that mimicked Moon soil, and showed that these crops were about half as successful as Mars crops, with spinach in particular struggling in the lunar environment.

So how do you find soil that's chemically similar to kind you'd find outside of Earth? You head to some of the most extreme places on our planet. The 'Mars' soil came from a volcano on Hawaii, while 'Moon' soil was collected in a desert in Arizona. These were then mixed with fresh cut grass in shallow trays, which made it easier to water the crops. A control tray contained regular Earth potting compost.

Before you get too excited and start packing your gardening gear for Mars, there are a few things to flag here - first of all, the results haven't been published, so we're currently taking Wageningen University's word for it (for the record, this is their second experiment on space crops, so it's not an unreliable word to take, but we're always wary until we see peer-reviewed findings).

The study also only mimicked soil on Mars and the Moon, and not the rest of their conditions — such as the harsh space radiation, or the bitter heat and cold.

The crops were grown in a glass house under Earth's atmosphere, with stable humidity, light, and temperature — but Wamelik explains that this is because "we expect that first crop growth on Mars and Moon will take place in underground rooms to protect the plants from the hostile environment". That's fair enough, but we still can't predict exactly how being on another planet will affect the process.

Finally, the most crucial phase of the experiment — determining whether these plants are safe to eat — hasn't commenced as yet. And there's no point growing crops if they're going to poison us.

"The soils contain heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and mercury and also a lot of iron,"said Wamelink. "If the components become available for the plants, they may be taken up and find their way into the fruits, making them poisonous."

The team is now crowdfunding further research on this subject, with experiments scheduled to start in April this year.

But despite the limitations, it's still pretty exciting to know that soil on the Red Planet is capable of growing our food crops — because there's nothing more comforting when you're billions of kilometers from home than fresh vegetables.

Last year, astronauts also managed to grow and eat the first lettuce on board the International Space Station — which looked pretty tasty — so we're getting closer to being able to pull a Mark Watney and farm extraterrestrial land than ever before. Bring it on. 

SEE ALSO: Eerie images of the ruins of America's Space Race will give you chills

MORE: Here's what it's like to live inside a tiny dome on 'Mars' for 8 months

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