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Agricultural intensification has delivered great gains in terms of food production but has come at great environmental cost. Consequently, there is growing societal demand for more sustainable farming systems, i.e., sustainable intensification. Within this, there is increasing recognition of the ecosystem services provided by soil organisms that contribute both to agricultural production and environmental sustainability. Conventional tillage-based farming systems experience frequent and significant soil disturbance, which negatively impacts many key soil organism groups, e.g., fungi and earthworms. Loss of these soil organisms results in loss of critical soil ecosystem services, including those related to soil nutrient cycling, crop nutrient uptake, and soil water management. Conversion of farming systems from conventional tillage to no-till can allow recovery of soil biology and restoration of soil ecosystem services. Thus, no-till farming systems can contribute positively towards sustainable intensification. However, important knowledge gaps and challenges remain. Greater knowledge of what soil organisms are present in soil and what services they provide is urgently needed. The ultimate goal is to understand how soil biology can be manipulated through management to provide desirable ecosystem services in space and time.

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) college degree programs permit students to pursue careers in commercial space business. National competitiveness is also at stake for countries to have the highest levels of technically skilled workers. Demand for these professions will grow during the 2010s and 2020s in the aerospace industry.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, commercial space business began an impressive expansion across existing markets and developed new and unforeseen ones. Commercial telecommunications and weather satellites were the first products of this sector.

Companies have now entered the launch services market for smaller satellite payloads. Orbital Sciences offers the Pegasus, Stratolaunch has an air-launched rocket, Arianespace is Europe’s primary launch services provider, and Russia’s International Launch Services is also a competitor.

The establishment of Space Exploration Technologies—SpaceX—brought new and lower cost launch vehicles and services to the commercial market. SpaceX has developed the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket and Dragon cargo and crew capsules.

NASA began to expand its commercial partnerships in the 1980s; with the retirement of the space shuttle, the space agency relies almost entirely on the commercial sector for the design of launch vehicles, capsules and support services to achieve the agency mandate. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences provide commercial cargo services. Commercial crew requirements are handled by SpaceX and United Launch Alliance with Boeing.

Technology has permitted drastic reduction in satellite mass with impressive improvement in capability in the form of cubesats and smallsats. Such satellites have lowered the cost of getting commercial payloads to orbit. Remote sensing and telecommunications are the bulk of the services provided.

Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne in 2004 proved the feasibility of private human spacecraft operation in suborbit. This was followed by the creation of Virgin Galactic and XCOR for the commercial suborbital personal spaceflight market. Wealthy individuals now have the ability to travel into orbital space and spend time aboard the International Space Station through the company Space Adventures.