ESA is challenging companies in its Member States to design a compact plant to demonstrate the manufacture of oxygen on the Moon. Industrial teams are competing this summer to propose and prove designs through testing, with the winner set to be declared in September. This small piece of technology will evaluate the prospect of building larger plants to produce propellant for spacecraft, air for astronauts and metallic raw materials for equipment.

ESA is challenging companies in its Member States to design a compact plant to demonstrate the manufacture of oxygen on the Moon. Industrial teams are competing this summer to propose and prove designs through testing, with the winner set to be declared in September. This small piece of technology will evaluate the prospect of building larger plants to produce propellant for spacecraft, air for astronauts and metallic raw materials for equipment.

ESA's Jupiter Icy moons Explorer, Juice, has successfully completed rigorous thermal tests simulating the extreme coldness of space and the warmth of the Sun at ESA’s test centre ESTEC, in The Netherlands.

The spacecraft underwent a month of round-the-clock testing and monitoring in the Large Space Simulator, which recreates the vacuum of space and is able to simulate both hot and cold space environments. The spacecraft was subjected to temperatures ranging from 250 degrees to minus 180 degrees Celsius, showing that it can survive its journey in space.

Juice will launch in 2022 to our Solar System’s largest planet.

WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab returned its Electron rocket to flight July 29 with the successful launch of an experimental satellite for the U.S. Space Force.

The Electron lifted off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 2 a.m.

TAMPA, Fla. — Intelsat is seeking regulatory permission to hand the JCSAT-RA satellite back to Japan’s Sky Perfect JSAT as a commercial deal between the satellite operators ends. 

The Federal Communications Commission must give its approval before the satellite can return to Japanese control, which an Intelsat spokesperson said is likely to happen later this year.

WASHINGTON — Space vehicles powered by small nuclear reactors — a technology that NASA believes could help get humans to Mars faster — also could be used for military missions in deep space, the vice chief of the U.S.

For the first time, astronomers have seen light coming from behind a black hole.

Using ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescopes, an international team of scientists led by Dan Wilkins of Stanford University in the USA observed extremely bright flares of X-ray light coming from around a black hole.

The X-ray flares echoed off of the gas falling into the black hole, and as the flares were subsiding, the telescopes picked up fainter flashes, which were the echoes of the flares bouncing off the gas behind the black hole.

This supermassive black hole is 10 million times as massive as our

We are on the verge of a new era in space security: the age of diverse and highly capable dual-use space systems that can serve both peaceful and anti-satellite (ASAT) purposes. These new systems, such as spacecraft capable of undertaking rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs), ground-based lasers capable of interacting with space objects, and actions in cyberspace, cannot feasibly be banned; nor should they be, as they promise immense civil and commercial benefits.