Globally, more than 70% of the freshwater withdrawn from Earth’s surface or from underground is used to irrigate crops. The need to produce more food for a growing population against the backdrop of climate change is challenging enough, but satellites reveal that extracting water doesn’t just affect the local environment – there are knock-on consequences for many aspects of the Earth system.

Teams preparing Ariane 6 for its inaugural flight successfully completed for the first time a launcher preparation and countdown sequence, on 18 July at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

In-space transportation services startup Impulse Space announced July 24 it has closed a $45 million iSeries A funding led by RTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of Raytheon Technologies.

Maxar Technologies announced July 24 that its new satellite bus designed for low Earth orbit constellations passed a critical design review.

Chinese space and defense contractor CASIC says it will begin building a constellation of 300 satellites in very-low Earth orbit late this year.

A robotic arm – entirely developed and built in Europe – that enables a satellite to change and control its orbit fuel efficiently has passed its qualification review for launch into space on the OneSat range of satellites.

Launching soon on one of the next cargo missions to the International Space Station is the Multi-Needle Langmuir Probe that will measure the “weather” in the upper atmosphere. The experiment is part of ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen’s Huginn mission climate science.