ESA Agenda 2025 media briefing
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ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher spoke to journalists on 7 April 2021 to introduce ESA Agenda 2025, setting out ESA's strategic priorities and goals.
Probing for life in the icy crusts of ocean worlds
Long before NASA's Perseverance rover touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, one of its highest-level mission goals was already established: to seek out signs of ancient life on the Martian surface.
NASA's Webb Telescope packs its sunshield for a million mile trip
Engineers working on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have successfully folded and packed its sunshield for its upcoming million-mile (roughly 1.5 million kilometer) journey, which begins later this year.
The sunshield—a five-layer, diamond-shaped structure the size of a tennis court—was specially engineered to fold up around the two sides of the telescope and fit within the confines of its launch vehicle, the Ariane 5 rocket. Now that folding has been completed at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, the sunshield will remain in this compact form through launch and the first few days the observatory will spend in space.
Designed to protect the telescope's optics from any heat sources that could interfere with its sight, the sunshield is one of Webb's most critical and complex components.
Bruno: The next big thing for ULA is a long-endurance upper stage
WASHINGTON — When United Launch Alliance started to develop its new Vulcan rocket, it envisioned using a new upper stage called ACES, short for advanced cryogenic evolved stage. ULA’s president and CEO Tory Bruno described it in 2018 as a transportation system that would operate in space for weeks or months performing missions in different orbits.
SpaceX launches another set of Starlink satellites as it nears global coverage
WASHINGTON — SpaceX continued the rollout of its Starlink broadband constellation with another launch of 60 satellites April 7, edging closer to providing continuous global service.
A Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 12:34 p.m.
Perseverance's take selfie with Ingenuity
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover took a selfie with the Ingenuity helicopter, seen here about 13 feet (4 meters) away in this image from April 6, 2021, the 46th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Perseverance captured the image using a camera called WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering), part of the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminesce Odyssey marks 20 years of mapping Mars
NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft launched 20 years ago on April 7, making it the oldest spacecraft still working at the Red Planet. The orbiter, which takes its name from Arthur C. Clarke's classic sci-fi novel "2001: A Space Odyssey" (Clarke blessed its use before launch), was sent to map the composition of the Martian surface, providing a window to the past so scientists could piece togethe NASA's OSIRIS-REx completes final tour of Asteroid Bennu
NASA's OSIRIS-REx completed its last flyover of Bennu around 6 a.m. EDT (4 a.m. MDT) April 7 and is now slowly drifting away from the asteroid; however, the mission team will have to wait a few more days to find out how the spacecraft changed the surface of Bennu when it grabbed a sample of the asteroid.
The OSIRIS-REx team added this flyby to document surface changes resulting from the To Webb Telescope packs its sunshield for a million mile trip
Engineers working on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have successfully folded and packed its sunshield for its upcoming million-mile (roughly 1.5 million kilometer) journey, which begins later this year. The sunshield - a five-layer, diamond-shaped structure the size of a tennis court - was specially engineered to fold up around the two sides of the telescope and fit within the confines of its Ningbo to build $3.05b rocket launchpad site
The port city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province is building a 20 billion yuan ($3.05 billion) rocket launch site to meet surging demand for putting satellites into orbit and further develop the industrial cluster of the commercial aerospace sector, according to the local authorities.
Highlighted in the recently revealed draft for mega projects in Zhejiang during the 14th Five-Year Plan period 
