Becoming an astronaut isn’t a cakewalk. You have to be somewhat smart and super fit. You are going to space, y’know. But if you’re a Chinese female looking to go up to the final frontier, you’d better be married and not smell, or you won’t be qualified.

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China’s strict rules for female astronauts: be married and no BO

The USGS has published a brand new map of the surface of Io, a moon of Jupiter and one of the most geologically active bodies in the entire solar system. The map shows hundreds of volcanoes, massive lava flows, and some of the most violently active surface features planetary scientists have ever seen.

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New map of Jupiter’s moon Io reveals epic volcanic violence

According to space transport company SpaceX founder Elon Musk, humans will be traveling to Mars in the next 10 years (15 at most), and by 2040 we’ll be sending people there on roundtrip vacations for $500,000. Yeaaaaaaah, how bout we start with the moon ? The secret to cheap space travel, Musk says, is modeling spacecraft after airplanes. Musk’s long term plan is to take this philosophy of reusability and ride it all the way to Mars. To do this, he’ll have to get the lifetime cost of the rocket down to the point where fuel is the primary expense, implying a per pound cost to orbit of just $10 or $20. If SpaceX can get a reusable deep-space system in place, that could potentially remove a large part of the infrastructure cost from an Earth-Mars passenger service, and all people would have to be able to afford would be the fuel. And at that point, SpaceX will be able to “offer a round trip to Mars that the average person could afford — let’s say the average person after they’ve made some savings.” First of all, with the value of money over time, $500,000 will barely be enough to buy a large popcorn at the hologram movies in 2040. Secondly, A ROUND-TRIP TO MARS IS 520 DAYS. Imagine riding on an airplane with a bunch of people you hate for that long. I’d go f***ing crazy by the second day and the pilot would have to turn around. $500,000 round trip to Mars by 2040? SpaceX says yes [dvice] Thanks to Logan, who has every intention of upgrading to first class to avoid having a kid sitting behind him who perpetually kicks his seat.

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I Doubt It: $500K Visits To Mars (Roundtrip?) By 2040

NASA, for some reason that the agency has chosen not to share, is quite interested in just exactly what it takes to set off a Type Ia supernova . Thanks to a series of X-ray and ultraviolet observations from the SWIFT satellite, NASA says that “we have a clearer picture of what’s required to blow up these stars.” Oh, good.

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NASA has figured out how to cause a supernova

Private spaceflight has been inching along for the last several years, but next month may be a major stepping stone for the industry: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is scheduled to launch on April 30 on an unmanned cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station, offering NASA (and anyone else) a significantly cheaper way to get to orbit.

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SpaceX Dragon to deliver groceries to ISS next month

Next week, NASA is planning on launching a new space-based telescope: the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (or NuSTAR), which will start looking at all kinds of exciting and high energy astrophysical phenomena that are busily blowing up and/or tearing space to shreds.

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NuSTAR X-ray telescope to image most exciting bits of universe

NASA has just released a stunning new map of the heavens that catalogs over 560 million objects captured by the Wide-field Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA’s infrared space telescope. Many of the objects were first discovered by WISE as scientists studied the 2.7 million images and 15 trillion bytes of data it generated.

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NASA’s new atlas of the universe shows a vast sky of first finds

A draft of the Russian space exploration strategy from now up through 2050 has been leaked by Russia’s Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, and it includes plans for moon landings , manned Mars bases, and gigantic advanced orbital stations for research and tourism.

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Leaked doc reveals Russian plans for manned bases on Moon, Mars

DARPA, which DVICE readers will know from the agency’s endearingly insane projects (see here , here and here ), wants to send up a swarm of short-lived, rapidly produced satellites to allow for more extensive air surveillance alongside — or even in lieu of — manned recon aircraft and unmanned drones .

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DARPA dreams of launching swarms of disposable spy satellites

Studies recently concluded on astronauts who have flown long-term missions that could point to serious problems with prolonged exposure to microgravity. This adds to the list of physical concerns NASA is addressing when considering long-term space travel .

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MRIs show optical issues in astronauts; is long-term travel at risk?