On September 20, NASA announced the Mars Balance Mass Challenge, a new contest seeking design ideas for spacecraft payloads entering the atmosphere on Mars.

On September 23, NASA announced that they have contracted two private companies, Boeing and SpaceX, to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

On the morning of July 2, NASA launched a satellite tasked with measuring the global distribution of carbon dioxide.

On June 25, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a full committee hearing on the future of space exploration and NASA’s goal of landing humans on Mars.

NASA is asking the public for help in identifying asteroids suitable for study in its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), with the goal of capturing an asteroid with a robotic spacecraft, redirecting it to orbit the moon, and ultimately sending astronauts to study it.

On May 31, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a satellite to study damage caused by natural disasters, including effects of major earthquakes, tsunamis, and depleting rainforests.