In this passionate talk, legendary spacecraft designer Burt Rutan lambasts the US government-funded space program for stagnating and asks entrepreneurs to pick up where NASA has left off.

Ask any deep space navigator like Jill Seubert what makes steering a spacecraft difficult, and they'll tell you it's all about the timing; a split-second can decide a mission's success or failure. So what do you do when a spacecraft is bad at telling time? You get it a clock -- an atomic clock, to be precise. Let Seubert whisk you away with the ...

Danielle Wood leads the Space Enabled research group at the MIT Media Lab, where she works to tear down the barriers that limit the benefits of space exploration to only the few, the rich or the elite. She identifies six technologies developed for space exploration that can contribute to sustainable development across the world -- from observati...

While it may not be simple or easy, these fascinating talks make aerospace engineering a little more accessible to the average person.

Travel across the universe (or is it universes?) to see stunning images of Saturn's rings, hear haunting sounds from distant black holes and catch an infectious sense of wonder about galaxies far, far away.

What would it take to settle Mars? In a talk about the future of space exploration, Lynn Rothschild reviews the immense challenges to living elsewhere in the universe and proposes some bold, creative solutions to making a home off planet Earth -- like "growing" houses out of fungi or using bacteria to help generate electricity.

Charles Elachi is the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he oversees space exploration programs such as the Mars Rovers.

For those times when living a life far beyond our planet looks a little too appealing.

SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle has the potential to explore the solar system in a bold, new -- and supersized -- way. Planetary scientist Jennifer Heldmann talks about how reusable, large-scale spacecraft like Starship could help humanity achieve its next galactic leaps and usher in a new era of space exploration, from investigating the solar ...

Long before we had rocket scientists, the idea of spaceflight traveled from mind to mind across generations. With great visuals, TED Fellow and NASA economist Alexander MacDonald shows how 300 years of sci-fi tales -- from Edgar Allan Poe to Jules Verne to H.G. Wells and beyond -- sparked a culture of space exploration. A fascinating look at how...

Tweeting (and covering Bowie) from the International Space Station last year, Colonel Chris Hadfield reminded the world how much we love space.

How do companies like SpaceX make sudden breakthroughs on decades-old challenges? Emerging tech expert Antoine Gourévitch explains how deep tech -- a new approach to innovation that merges science, engineering and design thinking -- is unlocking solutions to problems in space exploration, biology, energy and more. As Gourévitch says: "[deep tech...

Engineer and daredevil cave explorer Bill Stone is obsessed with discovery -- on Earth and beyond.

Jon Nguyen is an award winning aeronautics and graphics engineer at NASA.

Megan McArthur is a mom, explorer and NASA astronaut. She has orbited the Earth 197 times and logged more than five million miles in space, so far.

To determine how life might persist on Mars, Nathalie Cabrol explores one of Earth’s most extreme environments: high-elevation Andean lakes and deserts.

Beyond our galaxy, there is much more to be discovered. Learn how we explore the universe with talks that are definitely out of this world.

Stuntman and record-setter Steve Truglia was a stunt coordinator, performer and action unit director in the UK.

Alan Eustace leapt to Earth from the edge of the stratosphere wearing only a spacesuit, shattering skydiving records and potentially revolutionizing the commercial space industry.

Melodie Yashar develops construction technologies to allow us to build on the Moon and, one day, Mars.

Carrie Nugent is part of a team that uses NASA's NEOWISE telescope to search the skies for and catalog asteroids.

Peter Diamandis says it's our moral imperative to keep exploring space -- and he talks about how, with the X Prize and other incentives, we're going to do just that.

Memory foam, air purifiers, scratch-resistant lenses: these are just a few of the everyday items originally developed for space missions. Aerospace engineer Eric Hinterman invites us to dream big and imagine what technological advancements could come next, explaining why establishing a human presence on Mars is a big step for life on Earth -- an...

What happens to astronauts' bodies when they are in space? Everything from disruptive metabolic changes to loss of muscle mass. In this talk, Víctor Demaría Pesce, a researcher at the European Astronaut Centre, explains how he and others in the field are pushing the envelope on physiological adaptability to ensure that humans can safely travel o...

In this quick, fun talk, astronaut Cady Coleman welcomes us aboard the International Space Station, where she spent nearly six months doing experiments that expanded the frontiers of science. Hear what it's like to fly to work, sleep without gravity and live life hurtling at 17,500 miles per hour around the Earth. "The space station is the place...

TED Senior Fellow Alexander MacDonald develops strategies to advance space exploration and encourage private-sector space activities.

As the leader of the Imaging Team on the Cassini mission to Saturn, Carolyn Porco interprets and shares the pictures coming back from this fascinating planet, its rings and its moons.

In 2004, legendary spacecraft designer Burt Rutan won the $10M Ansari X-Prize for SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded craft to enter space twice in a two-week period. He's now collaborating with Virgin Galactic to build the first rocketship for space tourism.

We're in the dawn of a new space revolution, says engineer Peter Beck: the revolution of the small. In a talk packed with insights into the state of the space industry, Beck shares his work building rockets capable of delivering small payloads to space rapidly and reliably -- helping us search for extraterrestrial life, learn more about the sola...

Xavier De Kestelier is an architect and technologist with a passion for human space exploration.