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NASA to film an Estée Lauder ad in space as the ISS opens for business

16 September 2020

NASA is trying to turn the ageing International Space Station into a hub for commerce and has partnered with the likes of Estée Lauder and Adidas

Should SpaceX be allowed to contaminate Mars with Earth microbes?

11 December 2019

The rise of the private space industry may mean allowing Earth microbes to escape to other worlds, but is it worth the risk?

Cookies and slime in orbit: What's the point of PR stunts in space?

21 August 2019

Companies that run hotels, build cars and make TV are beginning to operate in space. This in-orbit economy could finance deeper space exploration

Sorry, but NASA probably isn't sending astronauts to the moon in 2024

3 April 2019

The Trump administration has set NASA an ambitious goal of returning to the moon, but the agency doesn't have enough money or the right spacecraft to achieve this

Japan's Hayabusa 2 may finally kick-start the asteroid mining era

20 February 2019

The turn of the decade saw a huge surge of interest in asteroid mining, but now this would-be industry has flopped. Can a tiny Japanese probe revive it?

Row with Russia and SpaceX delays could leave NASA unable to reach ISS

3 October 2018

Talk of sabotage on the International Space Station has exposed cracks in the US-Russia space relationship that could see NASA unable to fly astronauts into orbit

Team moon vs team Mars: the battle over the future of NASA

20 June 2018

Decades of infighting and political interference have got NASA no closer to landing astronauts on the moon or Mars. Can its new leader spark a relaunch?

War in space may happen soon, but it won't be what you expect

11 April 2018

The US is making noises about increasingly militarising space, but orbital conflict won’t be a battle of spaceships and bombs

We must accept more risks if we want space travel to take off

10 January 2018

Going to space is already one of the most dangerous things a person can do, but we will need to take far more risks than we do in order to push space exploration forward