Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 18, 2025
Maxar Intelligence has announced three new long-term contracts valued at $204.7 million to enhance sovereign defense, intelligence, and space leadership initiatives across the Middle East and Africa (MEA). The agreements extend Maxar's legacy in the region, leveraging its Direct Access Program (DAP) to deliver cutting-edge geospatial capabilities. The DAP contracts will provide MEA partner

Castel Gandolfo, Italy (AFP) July 20, 2025
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday called astronaut Buzz Aldrin and visited the Vatican's astronomical observatory in Castel Gandolfo to mark the 56th anniversary of man's first moon landing. "This evening, 56 years after the Apollo 11 moon landing, I spoke with the astronaut Buzz Aldrin," the American pope wrote on X. "Together we shared the memory of a historic feat, a testimony to human ingenuity

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jul 20, 2025
What happens when artificial intelligence leaves Earth? AI now guides spacecraft, steers satellites, and helps scientists study planets billions of kilometers away. Space agencies and private companies already rely on AI to plan missions, analyze data, and make fast decisions without human help. The future of AI in space expands the way we explore and opens access to places we couldn't reach bef

 

The most complex parachute system to ever deploy on Mars has successfully slowed down an ExoMars mock-up landing platform for a safe touchdown on Earth.

The Meteosat Third Generation sounder satellite, hosting the Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission, has reached its orbit and has been placed under the control of Eumetsat. It is now ready to start commissioning before beginning operations to monitor Earth’s atmosphere from a distance of 36 000 km.

Geneva (AFP) July 10, 2025
When successful artist Ai-Da unveiled a new portrait of King Charles this week, the humanoid robot described what inspired the layered and complex piece, and insisted it had no plans to "replace" humans. The ultra-realistic robot, one of the most advanced in the world, is designed to resemble a human woman with an expressive, life-like face, large hazel eyes and brown hair cut in a bob.

Paris (AFP) July 16, 2025
Astronomers said Wednesday they had observed the moment when planets start forming around a distant star for the first time, revealing a process that sheds light on the birth of our own solar system. The new planetary system is forming around the baby star HOPS-315 - which resembles our own Sun in its youth - 1,300 light years from Earth in the Orion Nebula. Young stars are surrounded

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 17, 2025
A meteorite from Mars, the largest piece ever found on Earth, sold for $5.3 million to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby's auction in New York on Wednesday. Bidding for the 54-pound, reddish-brown object began at $2 million, according to ABC News, and it went to $4.3 million plus $1 million in fees and taxes. The original owner wasn't disclosed. The rock, known as NWA 16788, is 70

Washington DC (UPI) Jul 16, 2025
Dreaming of designing part of a rocket for NASA? The space organization is offering a challenge for those who think they can solve a capability gap in its Stratospheric Projectile Entry Experiment on Dynamics (SPEED), a two-stage stratospheric drop test architecture. SPEED is under development to bridge the state-of-the-art gap that many NASA flagship missions need to reduce syst

Vienna (AFP) July 17, 2025
Austrian daredevil "fearless Felix" Baumgartner, who died on Thursday aged 56, stunned fans around the world by breaking the sound barrier in a hair-raising dive from the fringe of space more than a decade ago. Baumgartner's dramatic 2012 jump from a capsule more than 39 kilometres (24 miles) above the Earth propelled the extreme adventure-seeker into the record books. Sporting a "born t