Magazine

The space issue

July/August 2019

50 years after Apollo 11, space technologies have radically changed life on Earth–and we’re still just at the beginning.

Read the issue

Letter from the editor

Editor’s letter: where to?

Features

Categorized in Space
What Neil Armstrong got wrong
Space technology has changed the world—but not in the way the dreamers of the 1960s imagined it would
Categorized in Space
Five schemes for cheaper space launches—and five cautionary tales
Spaceplanes, giant rockets, tethers and catapults
Categorized in Space
Does the world need a 3D-printed rocket?
Relativity Space, a well-funded startup, is going all-in on additive manufacturing. But is that too much of a good thing?
Categorized in Space
Can SpaceX and Blue Origin best a decades-old Russian rocket engine design?
The story of the RD-180, the big rocket engine that could
Categorized in Space
The number of satellites orbiting Earth could quintuple in the next decade
The coming explosion of constellations
Categorized in Space
Soon, satellites will be able to watch you everywhere all the time
Can privacy survive?
Categorized in Space
How to fight a war in space (and get away with it)
Satellites are so crucial that attacking them could be seen as an act of war. The bad news is, it may have already happened.

Also in this issue
- Who gets to send radio waves in space?
  Satellites aren’t much use if they can’t communicate
  
  Categorized in Space
- All the new Mars missions being launched in 2020
  China, the US, and the European Space Agency are sending vehicles to explore the red planet. They’ll be joined by a Russian lander and an Emirati orbiter.
  
  Categorized in Space
- The case for sending people back to the moon
  Hard to justify in practical terms, a return to the moon nonetheless seems almost inevitable
  
  Categorized in Space
- The world’s smallest big rocket company
  Dave Masten builds rockets on a shoestring in the desert—can he help NASA reinvent itself as a lean, agile enterprise?
  
  Categorized in Space
- How the asteroid-mining bubble burst
  A short history of the space industry’s failed (for now) gold rush
  
  Categorized in Space
- Inside Starshot, the audacious plan to shoot tiny ships to Alpha Centauri
  Starshot wants to build the world’s most powerful laser and aim it at the closest star. What could go wrong?
  
  Categorized in Space
- The write stuff: ten of the best astronaut memoirs
  Very short excerpts from books about space by people who have been there
  
  Categorized in Space
- The NASA engineers struggling to build a better heat shield
  As bigger probes get sent into space, the problem of how to slow them down again is getting harder
  
  Categorized in Space
- How music about space became music about drugs
  The rise and fall of space rock, from David Bowie to Radiohead
  
  Categorized in Space
- Where does space begin?
  The not-so-final frontier
  Categorized in Space
- In her light: space fiction
  A short story about nanosatellites, love, and freedom
  
  Categorized in Space

Updated

Magazine

The space issue

Letter from the editor

Features

What Neil Armstrong got wrong

Five schemes for cheaper space launches—and five cautionary tales

Does the world need a 3D-printed rocket?

Can SpaceX and Blue Origin best a decades-old Russian rocket engine design?

The number of satellites orbiting Earth could quintuple in the next decade

Soon, satellites will be able to watch you everywhere all the time

How to fight a war in space (and get away with it)

Who gets to send radio waves in space?

All the new Mars missions being launched in 2020

The case for sending people back to the moon

The world’s smallest big rocket company

How the asteroid-mining bubble burst

Inside Starshot, the audacious plan to shoot tiny ships to Alpha Centauri

The write stuff: ten of the best astronaut memoirs

The NASA engineers struggling to build a better heat shield

How music about space became music about drugs

Where does space begin?

In her light: space fiction

Past issues

The latest iteration of a legacy

Advertise with MIT Technology Review

About

Help