The first man-made object was sent into space in 1957, kicking off a space race that changed our world. In the decades since, we’ve sent humans hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from our planet. We’ve kept satellites in orbit for dozens of years. We’ve even sent probes billions of kilometers into deep and interstellar space. But one region of near-space remains underutilized and under-explored, presenting our teeming world with a rare green field for innovation: the stratosphere. Meet the entrepreneurs, technologists, and companies behind the next space race – the one happening 20km above us in near-space.