Space has not been this exciting since the 1960s.

Nasa recently launched Orion, its first new spacecraft to carry astronauts since the Space Shuttle, and is developing a massive new rocket to rival the Saturn V. Europe has landed a space probe on a comet 510 million kilometres (317 million miles) away and China is developing its next space station.

Meanwhile private companies are changing the economics of space by forging ahead with plans for human spaceflight, space tourism and even missions to Mars.

The next few years will also see the final construction of the James Webb Space Telescope – a space observatory the size of a tennis court.

So in the decade from 2020, can we look forward to a glorious new space age of Moon bases, Mars colonies and more remarkable cosmic discoveries? To try to find out, we canvassed the opinions of an expert panel for their predictions beyond 2020.

Our experts are:

SP: Scott Pace, Director of the Space Policy Institute in Washington DC

DB: David Baker, ex-Nasa engineer, author and editor of Spaceflight magazine

MG: Monica Grady, professor of planetary and space sciences at the UK’s Open University

As you would expect, there are plenty of uncertainties in the coming years in space – not least the impact of domestic and international politics. Nor do our panellists always agree. However, here are the six predictions they came up with:

1. Humans will go back to the Moon