WASHINGTON — An 18-year-old Dutch man will fly on Blue Origin’s first crewed New Shepard suborbital flight, taking the place of the unidentified winner of an auction last month for the seat.

Blue Origin announced July 15 that Oliver Daemen will be the fourth and final member of the crew of the New Shepard flight launching July 20 from the company’s West Texas spaceport.

TAMPA, Fla. — Facebook said it remains committed to using space-based technology for improving global connectivity, after agreeing to transfer a group of satellite experts to work on Amazon’s low-Earth-orbit megaconstellation Project Kuiper.

HELSINKI — China’s Zhurong rover has approached and imaged the parachute and backshell which helped the vehicle land safely on Mars.

WASHINGTON — With less than a week before its first crewed suborbital spaceflight, Blue Origin is distributing some of the proceeds from an auction for one of the seats on that flight to a group of space-related nonprofit organizations.

The European Space Agency is currently looking for a new Director of Navigation to join its Executive Board and support the Director General, with responsibility for relevant ESA activities and overall objectives.

ESA’s first Earth observation mission dedicated to understanding our planet, the European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-1), was launched into orbit on 17 July 1991. At the time, it was the most sophisticated Earth observation spacecraft developed and launched by Europe.

Thirty years ago, as the team went through the launch and early-orbit phase, the first synthetic aperture radar images were awaited in Kiruna and Fucino. Featuring video footage taken in 1991, the team involved tells the story of the anxious moments and important breakthroughs they made as the first images arrived.

Features interviews with:

Stephen Coulson, Former Earth Observation