Space programmes can assist development work but are they taking cash better spent on ground-based efforts? Talent Ng'andwe investigates.

S. Romi Mukherjee outlines human rights-based approaches to science, technology and development, and what they mean for policy and practice.

India dreams of becoming a scientific powerhouse, but challenges lie ahead, including complex bureaucracy.

New technologies offer the promise of delivering environmental information to anyone who wants it, anywhere in the world. But we are not quite there yet.

A network of mountaintop research stations is being built across Asia to study how large bodies of ice respond to increasing temperatures.

Martin Sweeting, director of the UK's Surrey Space Centre, outlines why the time is ripe for Africa to harness space technology.

Bernie Fanaroff, director of South Africa's Square Kilometre Array project, tells SciDev.Net how hosting the world's most powerful radio telescope would benefit Africa.

Although massive amounts of data from sources such as Landsat have become open access, users face obstacles, says Daniel Schaffer.

Innovative, smart approaches to farming that could save time and labour have piqued the interest of farmers from across the globe.

Kenyan meteorologists are joining forces with traditional rainmakers to deliver communities weather forecasts as climate change takes hold.

Developing nations are building their own satellites despite freely available Western data. Do the gains outweigh the costs, asks Tatum Anderson.

As the largest optical telescope in the Southern hemisphere opens for business, Michael Cherry asks whether South Africa is ready to reap the rewards.

Plans to collate data from the planet's Earth-monitoring instruments could run out of funding, and not every country is keen to participate, reports Naomi Lubick.

Ding Yimin describes plans for a Chinese contribution to the search for theoretical ripples in space-time.

Last week China sent its first man into space. The Economist asks why, and what it will do next.