COVID-19 has revolutionised security practices along with other parts of everyday life: screening people via personal ‘patdowns’ is no longer safe. ESA-developed passive terahertz technology – enabling the detection of items hidden under clothing from a distance – is helping to fill the gap. The US Customs and Border Protection agency is among the latest of more than 200 users of the technology, deploying it to secure the US border.

OPS-SAT is the world’s first open, in-orbit testbed for new spacecraft software and applications. By conducting low-cost, low-risk experiments with OPS-SAT, teams from across Europe are ushering in a new era for European spaceflight innovation and commercial opportunity.

In this week's edition of the Earth from Space programme, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over Lapland, the largest and northernmost region of Finland, just in time for Christmas.

See also Rovaniemi, Lapland to download the image.

Today marks the start of final assembly of the UK’s new National Space Propulsion Facility. ESA is providing technical oversight and financial backing for the facility, which is being equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure to test the most powerful engines used to shift the orbits of space missions.

WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket will be ready to launch its first mission in late 2021, CEO Tory Bruno said Dec. 17.

Bruno told reporters in a conference call that ULA is confident that both the launch vehicle and its first customer — Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander —  will be on the launch pad “by the end of next year.

WASHINGTON — China’s leapfrogging advances in space are cause for national security concern, the head of the U.S. Space Force said Dec. 17.

“China has gone from zero to 60 really quick,” Gen.

WASHINGTON — The next leader of the European Space Agency says his top priorities are to improve the agency’s relationship with the European Union and support commercial space activities in Europe.

ESA announced Dec. 17 that the ESA Council selected Josef Aschbacher to be the next director general, effective at the end of June 2021 for a four-year term.

Press Release N° 33–2020

On Tuesday, November 17, Arianespace announced the loss of the Vega VV17 mission, which was carrying two payloads, SEOSAT-Ingenio, an Earth-science observation satellite for the European Space Agency (ESA), on behalf of Spain's Center for Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), and TARANIS for France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES). The first three stages functioned nominally until the ignition of the AVUM upper stage, eight minutes after liftoff. At that time, a degraded trajectory was detected, followed by a loss of control of the vehicle and the subsequent loss of the mission.

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives passed legislation Dec. 16 to protect Apollo-era artifacts on the moon and to rename another NASA facility after the first man to walk on the moon.

The House passed on a voice vote S.