Robotic spacecraft traveled throughout the Solar System in 2015 and gave planetary scientists different perspectives on objects ranging from microscopic dust particles at its outer reaches, to the gas giant Jupiter, to the hot clouds of Venus.

Today, small satellites must hitch a ride into orbit, but an array of small-payload vehicles are under development that promise low-cost, quick-response launches of spacecraft as slight as cubesat size.

France’s defense ministry will begin work on three new major space-system developments in the coming year, including an international collaboration with Germany in the area of remote sensing and an operational follow-on to the Elisa signals-intelligence demo.

2015 could well turn up in the history books as the year humankind finally realized it could be a spacefairing species, and started reaping the benefits.

Space was an exciting frontier in 2015, with New Horizons’ Pluto flyby and the confirmation of water on Mars’s surface dominating the news. But commercial competition in space was also an important trend.

UP Aerospace takes its experience building and operating low-cost suborbital sounding rockets and applies it to a dedicated launch vehicle for tiny cubesats.

The trick to making international collaboration work applies for 21st-century human space exploration just as it did for railroads in the 19th—standard interfaces.

Which comes first, small satellites or small launch vehicles? With the growth in plans for cubesat constellations, small booster development is moving into high gear.