November 2025
Searching for life beyond Earth
..., using ground-based telescopes to detect the tiny wobbles a planet induces in its host star’s motion. The challenge here is filtering out the ‘noise’ from the star itself, but progress is being made. The second approach takes us into space, where...
March 2026
Lessons learned on the way to space
... burns) and I felt that this time, the spaceship’s handling and performance were so good that the changes we had made in our piloting technique had finally solved the challenges faced earlier in the programme. It turned out I was wrong and...
May 2026
Focusing the world on planetary defence
... for metals like platinum and nickel, but these ventures raise complex legal and ethical questions. The challenge is not just technological but philosophical: will we exploit asteroids as we have Earth, or will we learn to approach space with...
September 2026
Who taxes space? - new challenges for the space economy
... international attention and dedicated regulatory effort that characterised the global response to the challenges of digital taxation. The different roles of taxation in the space economy Taxation is often seen as a constraint. In reality, it can...
