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.

HELSINKI — India successfully sent the CMS-01 extended C-band communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit Thursday with the country’s second launch of 2020.

Climate data taken from Earth orbiting satellites, combined with machine learning techniques, are helping to better predict outbreaks of cholera and potentially save lives.