Ian Whittaker

Unlike the short "joyrides" of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, this mission will be reaching the roughly 400km altitude needed to dock with the ISS.

A space station on the moon could be very useful to provide future space missions with a stopping point between Earth and deeper space. Why haven't we built one yet?

Three astronauts on China's new space station have performed the country's first spacewalk and are busy configuring the module for future crews.

The continuing research with exoplanets involves trying to identify their atmospheric composition, specifically to answer the question of whether life could exist there.

No-one has visited the Moon since 1972. But with the advent of commercial human spaceflight, the urge to return is resurgent and generating a new space race.

So how is space exploration likely to change going forward?

Neowise is the first bright comet to be visible with the naked eye from the northern hemisphere since the mid-1990s.

Almost as interesting as what they knew, however, is what they did not know.

It will be one of the most daunting, complicated and, potentially, scientifically rewarding missions ever undertaken to the red planet.

At an upcoming summit in early December, NATO is expected to declare space as a "warfighting domain," partly in response to new developments in technology.

But how is such a mission even possible?

Hopes of colonizing Mars rest on the premise that we could terraform the red planet, making it habitable for humans with a breathable atmosphere and clement temperatures.

You don't need to build a rocket, like "Mad" Mike Hughes, to prove the Earth isn't flat – here's the simple science.