Satellites: a glimpse inside a secret world

Forget missions to Mars, satellite technology is the real space race, with the number in orbit set to double in the next decade. So what goes on behind the scenes?

• Satellites as you've never seen them before - in pictures

Back in 1945, when science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke conjured up the idea of an Earth-orbiting broadcast satellite, he neglected to patent it: he couldn't imagine one being built in his lifetime. He wasn't the only one caught off guard when the Soviet Union sprung a satellite on the world just 12 years later - sleek, silvery Sputnik 1, begetter of a million fancy light fittings and a slew of teen dances.

Since then, thousands more have been flung at the heavens, of which roughly 1,200 remain active. Over the next decade, however, that number is set to double for the simple reason that no technology is more tied to our connected, accelerated third millennium world than this. Yet satellites remain remote and mysterious, drivers of a second space race very few people see.

In space, no one can whack a sticky valve with a wrench

The 12-man Ukrainian crew fly from secret mission to secret mission, lost in a nomadic netherworld