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The start of a more sustainable production facility to create hydrogen fuel for Ariane 6 – Europe’s new heavy-lift rocket – is underway.  

Project HYGUANE – a portmanteau of the French words for hydrogen, French Guiana and the local Iguanas – is a €40.5M investment in a solar farm, distribution systems and is being designed to be allowed to easily expand in the future. 

After three years of studies, the project started on 21 December 2023 with the signing of the consortium agreement between the parties involved: four companies – Air Liquide, SARA, MT-Aerospace and BEBLUE; three universities – Université de Guyane, Université de Liège, Université Libre

Image:

The start of a more sustainable production facility to create hydrogen fuel for Ariane 6 – Europe’s new heavy-lift rocket – is underway.

Project HYGUANE – a portmanteau of the French words for hydrogen, French Guiana and the local Iguanas – is a €40.5M investment in a solar farm and distribution systems, being designed to be allowed to easily expand in the future. 

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
Helicity Space, a name that's beginning to resonate in the commercial space industry, recently heralded a significant advance in its quest to redefine space propulsion. The company has successfully secured a $5 million seed funding round, a move that not only underscores the industry's confidence in fusion technology but also marks a pivotal moment in space travel innovation. This round of

Pasadena CA (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
At nearly 14,000 feet, Maunakea is the tallest mountain in Hawai'i, and the second tallest on any island on Earth. Clouds often settle below the mountain's barren, dark-brown summit, making the site one of the best for astronomy in the world. At the summit, one can find several of the world's finest telescopes, including the W. M. Keck Observatory, a partnership between Caltech and the Uni

Image: Ariane 6 main stage final test firing

Image: Ariane 6 during combined test loading 3

Huntsville AL (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
NASA has achieved a new benchmark in developing an innovative propulsion system called the Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE). Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, successfully tested a novel, 3D-printed RDRE for 251 seconds (or longer than four minutes), producing more than 5,800 pounds of thrust. That kind of sustained burn emulates typical requi

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
In a recent development marking a significant shift in space research dynamics, NASA is actively developing a strategy for establishing the next generation of microgravity national labs in a commercial space station environment. This move comes in response to a directive from the National Space Council in September 2022, tasking NASA with crafting a plan for this new era in space research.

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Dec 21, 2023
A team of researchers from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) has made a significant discovery using the Zhurong rover's ground-penetrating radar on Mars. Their study, conducted in the expansive Utopia Planitia region, reveals buried palaeo-polygonal terrain, suggesting that this area experienced considerable climatic variability in ancient Martia

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 22, 2023
Earth planning date: Monday, December 18, 2023: On the 4040 sol of Marsmas my downlink gave to me, a faulted drive and a wheelie! That's right, folks, we're popping Christmas-sized wheelies this year, bigger than we've ever seen before! It's a little hard to tell from the Navcam perspective, but the cover photo above shows our right-middle wheel (bottom in image) completely off the ground in sus