What is the future of space flight? With a successful Nasa landing on Mars and more commercial space travel in development than ever before, astronautical engineers are taking us into a new age. From lift off to landing, rapid innovations are radically changing what's possible and bringing us much closer to outer space. Presenter Kevin Fong meets Adam Steltzner, Nasa's chief engineer for the 2020 Mission to Mars, Anuradha TK, Geosat programme director for the Indian Space Research Organisation and David Parker, director of Human and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency.

Taking place over just eight months, four perilous and eventful space missions laid the foundations for a successful Moon landing. Each pushed the boundaries of technology and revealed new insights into our own planet. As we count down to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, astronaut Nicole Stott tells the story of the build-up to mankind’s giant leap.

Introducing the new podcast about how humans reached the moon. Theme music by Hans Zimmer. Search for 13 Minutes to the Moon or go to www.bbcworldservice.com/13Minutes #13MinutestotheMoon

A singing spaceman, a refugee who wants to beat gravity and a cosmonaut stuck in orbit. Three amazing stories from Outlook. Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield spent five months living on the International Space Station and won an online audience of millions with his tweets about daily life and his music recordings. Nujeen Mustafa was born with cerebral palsy, and for most of the first 16 years of her life had barely left her home in the Syrian city of Aleppo. She now lives in Germany and dreams about becoming an astronaut. Cosmonaut Abdul Ahad Mohmand is the only Afghan to have gone into space. It was 1988, in the last days of Russia's hold on Afghanistan, and Abdul went to visit the Mir space station with a Russian commander. But their attempts to return to earth didn't go according to plan.

Governing moon miners, asteroid hunters and space junk sounds pretty tricky, but we better get our act together. This year the majority of space launches included commercial enterprises. Space is no longer just the playground of governments but companies; companies that want to mine the moon for water that they could sell as rocket fuel, companies that want to mine the moon for helium -3 which could be sold and used as energy back on earth and companies that want to mine asteroids for platinum that they could sell for huge profits. But is this legal?

If history had been kinder, aviator Wally Funk might have become the first woman on the Moon. In the early 1960s, she was one of 13 female pilots who passed the same physical tests as the Mercury 7 astronauts. Unfortunately her chance never came and no one has walked on the Moon since 1972, after the cancellation of the Apollo space programme. But today, space agencies and commercial companies around the world are preparing to return to the lunar surface and Wally meets the scientists and entrepreneurs trying to make this a reality.

After 20 years in space, NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission is coming to an end. But it will go out with one big bang. Launched in 1997 on a billion-mile trek to Saturn, Cassini has transformed our knowledge of the planet, its rings and more than sixty moons. The spacecraft has discovered plumes of water on the moon Enceladus and the European Huygens lander has snapped images of Titan’s surface, revealing riverbeds, lakes and mountains carved by liquid methane. Both moons are possible candidates for life, maybe better candidates than Mars. Cassini’s fuel light is flashing red and so to protect the moons from accidental contamination, a dramatic ‘grand finale’ has been planned. On 15 September 2017, Cassini will dive into the toxic clouds of Saturn, burning up to become a part of the gas giant itself. The data the spacecraft collects, as it descends to its death, will give new insights into Saturn’s atmosphere and many scientists are even looking forward to its demise. In Cassini’s Last Adventure, space scientist Professor Lucie Green celebrates the spacecraft’s achievements and discovers how it has changed our views on where to find life elsewhere in the Universe. Photo: One of the images of Saturn's rings, sent back by the Cassini spacecraft Credit: NASA/JPL

Voyager 1 and 2: Still operating after 40 years in the depths of space. Voyager 1 is currently some 20 billion kilometres from Earth travelling at 15.5 kilometres a second. It takes 19 hours for a signal from the spacecraft's 20 watt transmitter to reach home. Voyager 2 is 17 billion kilometres away and will soon leave the Solar System. Launched in 1977, the twin spacecrafts have explored the giant planets and their strange moons, investigated the boundary of the Solar System and changed how we see our place in the Universe. The probes even carry a message for aliens in the form of a golden record. Retired NASA astronaut Ron Garan meets many of the original team still working on the mission, nursing the twin spacecraft through their final years. Photo: The Voyager 2 spacecraft passes by Saturn in 1981 Credit: NASA

Extra-terrestrials or other signs of life - is there anybody beyond planet Earth? Are we alone in space? It wasn’t until the late 1960s that humans started an organised, systematic hunt for intelligent life. We have listened to radio waves, peered through the celestial dust and beamed The Beatles to distant planets. So how’s it going? Is there anybody out there? This is the story of the search for extra-terrestrial life. Presenter: Helena Merriman (Photo: The ALMA, an international partnership project between Europe, North America and East Asia, with the cooperation of Chile. Credit to Getty)

The plans to set up human colonies in space and spaceships that will take us to the stars. Richard Hollingham travels to the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop in Chattanooga, Tennessee to meet scientists, engineers, doctors and anthropologists who are working on it. These are not dreamers - although they all have an ambitious dream - but well qualified experts. Several work at Nasa, others have day jobs at universities and research institutes. Richard hears of proposals to build giant space stations and worldships - vessels packed with the best of humanity. These caravans in space might be lifeboats to escape an approaching asteroid or perhaps the first step to colonising the galaxy. With contributions from Technical Adviser to Nasa's Advanced Concepts Office Les Johnson, Director of the Space Engineering Centre at the University of Arizona John Lewis, architect Rachel Armstrong and anthropologist Cameron Smith. This programme first aired in November 2016.