Is a Great British Space Race about to take off?

Brits have, for many years, taken a back seat in the Space Race, but that could soon change. An all-UK team of astronauts could soon be heading into orbit, as a result of a deal signed by the UK Space Agency and Axiom Space, an American company that organises visits to the International Space Station (ISS). If the mission gets off the ground – and that does remain a big ‘if’ – it will remove a stain that has marked Britain since the 1950s when we ceded our space ambitions to America.

In the early days of the Space Race, there were three competing powers: the Soviets, the US and Britain. But the UK – despite successfully developing its own orbital launch capability, a rocket named Black Arrow – effectively fell out of the race before it really took off. The last Black Arrow rocket is collecting dust in the Science Museum in South Kensington, a monument to what might have been.