ESA’s Directorate of Navigation was pledged a total of €351 million by the Agency’s Member States during this week’s ESA Council at Ministerial Level on November 22 and 23. With this funding boost ESA sees its leading role in satellite navigation strengthened with a new programme FutureNAV, the continuation of its innovation programme NAVISP, and the kick-off of the Moonlight initiative for lunar telecommunications and navigation coverage.

23 Member and Associate States of the Agency pledged a total 117.6 million euros to ESA’s ScaleUp programme at ESA’s Ministerial Council CM22 to encourage entrepreneurship and commercialisation in the European space sector. This amount exceeds the target funding request by more than 17%, thus confirming the strong support that ESA Member States intend to provide to the development of a strong and sustainable commercial space ecosystem.

The province of Zaragoza, in northeast Spain, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Beijing (XNA) Nov 25, 2022
China has made an ambitious road map for its future lunar exploration programs, including an international scientific outpost, according to the programs' chief planner. Wu Weiren, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the next step in the country's lunar adventure - the Chang'e 6 robotic mission - has been set to land on the moon's far side and will collect and bring sa

Washington DC (UPI) Nov 25, 2022
John McFall, a British athlete who has competed in the Paralympic Games, has become the first disabled astronaut candidate with the European Space Agency. McFall, 41, is among 17 new astronaut candidates selected by the ESA from a pool of more than 22,500 applicants from across Europe, the space agency said in a statement. He was selected to take part in the ESA's Parastronaut Feasibility

Nanjing (XNA) Nov 25, 2022
China's solar exploration satellite has transmitted its first solar image since being sent to space in October, according to the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) based in east China's Jiangsu Province. The Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) - nicknamed Kuafu-1 in Chinese - sent hard X-ray imaging of solar flares that broke out at 1:00 a.m. (Universal Time) on Nov. 11, 2022, sa

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies. While Webb and other space telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this heated planet’s atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds. The latest data also give a hint of how these clouds might look up close: broken up rather than as a single, uniform blanket over the planet.

The European Space Agency has chosen 17 new astronaut candidates from more than 22 500 applicants from across its Member States. In this new 2022 class of ESA astronauts are five career astronauts, 11 members of an astronaut reserve and one astronaut with a disability.