"Yes!"⏤That's a partial quote from a US Senator who was asked recently if America is in a new space race with China.

Neither of those countries was the first to reach space with a satellite.

That feat was accomplished by the Soviet Union in 1957.

4 years later, that same country also launched the first person into space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

But in the years that followed, the United States eventually outpaced the USSR and historians say America effectively won the first space race by putting two men on the moon in 1969.

Since then, the US has been the global leader in space exploration and development.

But China, as you'll see in just a minute, is taking steps to catch up.

General David Thompson, who heads up the US Space Force, says China is moving twice as fast to develop its capabilities in space.

And he says the Asian country could surpass America there by the end of the decade.

Is all this space exploration worthwhile?

There's been a debate going on about that for years.

Supporters say investigating other planets and galaxies teaches us more about our own and encourages the development of new technologies to solve problems.

Opponents say deep space missions carry too much risk and bring too little benefit to people on Earth to justify the amount of money and time spent on them.

In the past, that money came through government investment using taxpayer funds.

More recently, privately-funded space efforts have gotten off the ground, and regardless of how people may feel about space exploration, the efforts to push it onward and upward are expanding in several parts of the world.

[Chinese] Two, one, ignition!

Lifting off from their satellite launch center in the Gobi desert, China rocketed three astronauts towards the country's new space station.

The crew will now live and work there for 183 days.

It's China's longest mission yet, and a major step in the country's young space program, quickly becoming one of the world's most advanced.

Though China arrived late to space exploration, the government has been investing billions of dollars in its advancement.

In the past three years, Chinese missions have brought rock samples from the moon back to Earth for the first time in 40 years, successfully landed an exploratory rover on the far side of the moon, and then, one on mars.

There were only the second country to do so.

The United States, unsurprisingly, came first, but America's cosmological dominance could soon be challenged by China as well as other space-ambitious nations.

As its space program expands, the United Arab Emirates also reach Mars earlier this year, though their mission didn't touch the surface.

The UAE scientific satellite began orbiting the Red Planet in February.

The country also plans to send an uncrewed spacecraft to the moon in 2024.

India hopes to do the same later this year or in 2022.

After a failed attempt in 2019, the country has been inching towards a new date for the unmanned lunar landing.

India's prime minister is also encouraging the private sector to help the country's space ambitions, following the US in a pivot towards commercializing space.

Another with lunar ambitions is the European Space Agency, which is working to develop a moon lander.

The ESA also has probes currently exploring the Solar System.

Still a player in space, Russia is planning a collaborative asteroid mission, joining forces with China for a robotic probe set for 2024.

They are also hoping to launch an automatic lunar station in July of next year.

Touchdown confirmed.

And in a first, both for space and cinema, a Russian film crew returned to Earth after shooting scenes on the International Space Station for the first-ever movie partly filmed in space.

As a whole, however, Russia's space program has dwindled from decades ago when the Soviet Wnion launched the first satellite into space.

In the meantime, Russia's former space rival has grown more ambitious.

NASA has sent five rovers to explore the surface of Mars, just launched a 12-year mission to explore asteroids, and says it will soon land the first woman ⏤ and first person of color ⏤ on the moon.

As advancements unfold, the space race is much changed from its former standoff era, now mixing contest with collaboration.

Take a look at the crew on the International Space Station.

Astronauts from the United States, Japan, Belarus, France, and Russia high above geopolitics, a truly international cooperation at the helm of humanity's next frontier.

Isa Soares, CNN.

10-second trivia: Which of these grocery store chains is oldest?

Albertsons, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, or Kroger.

In 1883, Barney Kroger opened his first store in Ohio, and it's the oldest chain on this list.

His motto: Never sell anything you would not want yourself.

But one challenge facing every grocery store is how to sell the meats, fruits, and veggies that are close to their expiration or sell-by dates.

No one benefits when these foods are thrown out.

But grocery stores' efforts to discount them haven't always worked, and some attempts to sell so-called ugly produce, which may have bruises or blemishes but is still good to eat, haven't worked, either.

There are several companies working to fix this, but they have their limits.

For the application you're about to see, you can't find everything you need at a discount, only what the store has available and listed, and some users have reported getting moldy or soft produce through the app.

But it could be one step in reducing food waste.

Not all the food that's grown, harvested, and sold in markets or restaurants winds up on someone's plate.

In the US, up to 40% of the food supply is thrown out.

Most of it will make its way to landfills, where it eventually rots, emitting methane, a gas more than 25 times as potent as CO2 when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere.

If the international food waste were a country, it'd be the third leading cause of greenhouse gas emission, behind the US and China.

Some of that waste comes from grocery stores, where unsold food often ends up in the dumpster.

Around the world, grocery stores throw out an estimated 133 million tons of food every year.

The average store throws out anywhere from, like, 5 to 10,000 dollars worth of food everyday.

Canadian based startup Flashfood wants to change that.

Working with supermarkets, the company sells groceries that are approaching their sell-by date, before they're thrown out.

To attract customers, Flashfood marks items down by as much as 50%, savings that could really add up.

Some of our top shoppers have saved tens of thousands of dollars.

Shoppers use an app to see what items are available to them at nearby stores.

The most commonly found products, according to the company, are fruit, vegetables, meat, and seafood, typically 1 to 2 days from their sell-by dates, but still fresh and perfectly good to eat.

We're actually dictating what people are gonna have for dinner based on what's available through the Flashfood app.

It almost becomes this treasure hunt, where they're clicking stores and seeing what's available and seeing what deal they can get.

The groceries can be picked up from a Flashfood locker like this one, located at a giant supermarket in central Pennsylvania, one of the 1,200 locations the company is in across Canada and the US.

Groceries, forever, have always marked product down whenever it's getting close to the expiration date.

But what you aren't able to do is, really, catalog it and put it out in a way where customers can see what's fresh today.

Flashfood was quite innovative in putting all of that in one app, where customers are able to see the different variety.

The Giant company has deployed Flashfood in all of its 187 grocery stores in the US.

(A) year today, we have diverted 700,000 pounds from food recycling or landfills.

Overall, Flashfood says it's diverted more than 30 million pounds of food that would have ended up in landfills, saving customers 90 million dollars at the same time, and has plans to continue its expansion.

We're willing to work with any partners in any capacity as we continue scaling.

This is a big problem, and it takes a village to solve, and we're open and excited to continue to do that across America

For 10 out of 10, there is no place like a new home for the holidays.

Ebony Johnson and Suzanne Burke had a common bond, doughnuts.

Johnson worked at the Dunkin' Donuts where Burke regularly saw her at the drive-thru; they got to become friends.

But when Johnson lost her home because of financial problems, Burke contacted local organizations of furniture bank and a designer, who all worked together to provide a fully-furnished home for Johnson and her family.

Sounds like a good seasonal story, "donut"?

An old-fashioned friendship can make anyone "jelly".

You can "glaze" on it as the "cream of the cream" and "chocolate" of good outcomes up to it, because "berry" few things are sweeter.

With hazelnuts roastin' over an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at our noses, there's nothing like a warm doughnut, whether you like to dunk 'em or prefer the cream crispy, to bring people together.

Our YouTube channel has brought a lot of us together; we are looking at you, Winfield High School in Winfield, Kansas.

Thank you for your request.

For CNN 10, I'm Carl Azuz.