French astronaut Thomas Pesquet: ‘I couldn’t be more excited to go back into space’

Chinese astronauts make first space walk at new station

The 70-year-old British billionaire reached space nine days before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' planned flight. But Bezos' company said Branson was simply not flying high enough.

A new German military space command center has been officially inaugurated, with the goal of protecting satellites and monitoring threats in outer space. The focus is on asteroids and space junk rather than aliens.

China has opened the doors on what it bills as the world's largest planetarium, a new Shanghai facility that showcases the nation's recent extra-terrestrial exploits while notably downplaying those of space pioneers like the United States.

The European Space Agency will have two spacecraft fly by Venus this week. One probe was developed with NASA while the other is a joint project with scientists from Japan.

It’s naturally part of every human space exploration but remains taboo. Here’s what we do and don’t know about cosmic sex.

Star Trek actor William Shatner and his crewmates -- Chris Boshuizen, Audrey Powers, and Glen de Vries -- train ahead of their trip to the edge of space.

A Russian film crew has landed on Earth after filming scenes for the world's first feature movie shot in space.

South Korea has launched its first domestically developed space rocket but failed to put its dummy payload into orbit, a setback in the country's attempts to join the ranks of advanced space-faring nations.

We look at reactions to several key elections in the US. Papers in the UK and France report on the situation for migrants in Calais, five years after the dismantling of the "Jungle" migrant camp. As Madagascar faces the world's first famine caused by climate change, billionaire Elon Musk challenges the World Food Programme. We also explain why women should stop working for the rest of the year, while Norway's women's beach handball team finally gets to wear shorts!

It's an immense moment of pride for the whole team as French astronaut Thomas Pesquet and his crewmates return to Earth. The four astronauts splashed down successfully off the coast of Florida in a SpaceX capsule. It marks the end of Pesquet's six-month mission in space, where he became the first ever French astronaut to command the International Space Station. We spoke to his colleague and friend Rémi Canton, who led the mission for the CNES, the French space studies agency.

Flying into space is not just a billionaire vanity project anymore. Current trials by Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX could be the beginning of a whole new space tourism industry.