The business and technology of space.
Earth Observation

A single lightning flash recorded over the southern US in April 2020 stretched 768 kilometres across three states in a matter of seconds, a horizontal bolt long enough to reach from Boston to Washington DC, and satellite instruments only exist to measure it because ground observers cannot see that far

Nature's longest lightning bolt was invisible to the people beneath it, revealing how much of Earth's electrical drama unfolds beyond human perception.

By Space Mart Editorial Team · Aug 4, 2026

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Physics News

In 1665, Robert Hooke sliced a paper-thin sliver of cork, held it under a compound microscope of his own design, and saw rows of tiny empty compartments that reminded him of monks' quarters, giving biology the word 'cell' 174 years before anyone worked out what was actually inside one

How a Royal Society polymath, a leather-tubed microscope, and a sliver of dead bark gave biology its most fundamental word — and why it took 174 years to figure out what was actually inside a living one.

By Space Mart Editorial Team · Aug 27, 2026
Tech Space

Why does removing rats and stoats from a scatter of small offshore islands bring back flightless parrots and ground-nesting seabirds that had not bred on the mainland for over a century?

New Zealand's kākāpō population has climbed from 50 birds in the 1990s to over 200 today, entirely because rats, stoats and cats have been eradicated from three small offshore islands — Whenua Hou, Anchor and Chalky. Here's how removing one pressure lets an 80-million-year-old ecosystem reassemble itself.

By Space Mart Editorial Team · Aug 26, 2026
Wood Pile

How did a treeless volcanic island in the North Atlantic, stripped of its birch forests by Viking axes over a thousand years ago, begin clawing woodland back onto slopes of black ash and wind?

Iceland lost more than 95% of its birch forests after Norse settlement in 874 CE, and now plants three to four million trees a year to claw woodland back onto slopes of volcanic ash. Here's how the soil chemistry, the sheep economy, and a century of forestry are rebuilding the least-forested country in Europe.

By Space Mart Editorial Team · Aug 21, 2026
Water World

How does reintroducing a dam-building rodent to a drought-prone valley raise the water table, cool the stream, and store more carbon in the floodplain than the surrounding forest?

A single family of beavers on Devon's River Otter built an 80-metre dam holding a million litres, raised the water table by more than a metre, and turned a straightened ditch into a braided wetland storing more carbon than the surrounding forest — the mechanics of how one rodent rehydrates a valley.

By Space Mart Editorial Team · Aug 18, 2026
Africa News

How did an East African community, told to fence wildlife out for conservation, instead grant grazing rights across shared rangelands and see lion, elephant and giraffe numbers climb alongside their cattle herds?

In 2010, roughly 500 Maasai landowners in Kenya pooled 50,000 acres into the Naboisho Conservancy, kept their cattle on the land, and watched lion, elephant and giraffe numbers climb — while collecting monthly lease payments tied to the wildlife's return.

By Space Mart Editorial Team · Aug 13, 2026

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Satellite internet, VSAT networks, communications infrastructure, orbital connectivity, and the systems bringing broadband and data services across the globe.

About SpaceMart

The business and technology of space.

SpaceMart is an independent publication covering commercial space, space technology, satellite internet, aerospace engineering, and the companies building the global space economy. The site pairs a deep archive with current reporting on the research, companies, policy shifts, and technical breakthroughs shaping commercial space infrastructure and services. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows; every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed.

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