Russia’s nascent private astronautics sector is expanding rapidly, thanks in part to technology hubs such as the Skolkovo space cluster near Moscow nurturing a new wave of innovative startups

NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission will push space technology and astronauts farther than ever before, laying the foundations for a human path to Mars and beyond

Do current plans for manned missions to Mars fully allow for the physical and psychological strain such a voyage would place on crews?

India put a spacecraft in to orbit around Mars in September 2014. The achievement was met with understandable euphoria at home and by surprise abroad: how had India done this in such a short period of time and at so low a cost?

NASA’s MAVEN mission is the first to focus on the upper atmosphere of Mars. Currently in orbit around the red planet, it should deepen our understanding of how Mars’s climate has evolved over the last four billion years