"Increasing Europe’s strategic autonomy" was one of the key themes at a recent conference in Paris, bringing together the European Space Agency’s 22 member countries. But for all the talk of being a leader in space, is Europe ready to walk the walk?

For the final episode of our series on the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, we take you where a significant part of the public relations war between the US and USSR took place: outer space. James André, Sylvain Rousseau and Achraf Abid have delved into the video archives, and interviewed astronauts and experts to find out how the Russian space agency has evolved over the past three decades.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover is currently sending extraordinary images back to Earth from the surface of Mars, with a Chinese spacecraft set to join it in a few months' time. We speak to Jean-Yves Le Gall, Director of France's CNES (National Centre for Space Studies), about his hopes for the latest Mars missions, his scepticism that humans will be colonising the red planet in the near future, and why the Moon is as relevant to space exploration as ever.

Africa's space race is accelerating as more countries on the continent launch satellites. This is bringing faster internet, better weather foresting and improved disaster management to the continent.