NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has far exceeded its planned mission duration, revealing that the Moon holds surprises: ice deposits that could be used to support future lunar exploration, the coldest places in the solar system in permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles, and that it is an active world that is shrinking, generating moonquakes and changing in front of our eyes.

Cui Tingting dyed her hair Mars red for the arrival of China's spacecraft at the planet known in Chinese as the Fire Star.

"This is a great era for space, and the future of mankind lies in the exploration of outer space," said Cui, director of the China Mars Society, the local chapter of a global advocacy network.

Space has long been seen as the domain of scientists and engineers, but space also needs diplomacy.

But what exactly is space diplomacy and why do we need it?

Professor Melissa de Zwart is a self-described space nerd and the Dean of Adelaide Law School.

She's a board member of ANGELS, a project that provides space legal and regulatory information to the public. She combines her passion for space with her expertise in law and diplomacy.

The dawn of space diplomacy

"Once space became possible, we had the Cold War powers recognize early on that, if they didn't reach international agreement, it was going to be curtains for everyone. Basically, mutually assured destruction," says Melissa.

The US and USSR were worried about Kessler syndrome, where broken pieces of space debris so pollute Earth's orbit that it would be almost impossible to send future satellites to space.

"Now we rely on the space industry for almost every aspect of our lives."

When the world powers set the laws for sending satellites to space, they thought only governments would do it.

But now businesses and even individuals are going to space, and we need new rules.

Water ice, especially any located in the sub-surface, has long been a focal point of Mars exploration efforts. Reasons abound as to why—from the need to grow plants to the need to create more rocket fuel to blast off the planet for a round trip. Most of that effort has focused on the poles of the planet, where most of the water ice has been found.

Unfortunately, these extreme latitudes are also difficult locations for manned missions, due to their slack of sunlight and extremely low temperatures. Now, a team from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) have mapped the density of water ice in a large chunk of the lower northern hemisphere, in an effort to help narrow down potential human landing sites at more welcoming latitudes.

A game of chess has 20 possible opening moves. Imagine being asked to start a game with tens of millions of openings instead. That was the task assigned to Adam Friedman, a 2020 summer intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.