Beijing (AFP) June 23, 2021
President Xi Jinping on Wednesday lauded the work of three astronauts building China's first space station as opening "new horizons" in humanity's bid to explore the cosmos. The trio blasted off on a Long March-2F rocket from northwest China's Gobi desert last Thursday, docking around seven hours later at the Tiangong space station, where they will spend the next three months. The launch

Aspiring astronauts from across Europe are awaiting the next step in ESA’s astronaut selection, following the 18 June closure of the Agency’s first application period in 11 years.  

ESA’s Space Safety Digital Festival is the first of its kind, giving you the unique opportunity to chat, mingle with and quiz Europe’s top experts working behind the scenes to keep us safe.

College Station TX (SPX) Jun 23, 2021
Texas A and M University astronomer Nick Suntzeff has been involved with space research for 30 years and spent 20 years in Chile, where he helped co-discover dark matter. Below, he offers his thoughts about UFOs and whether or not we are alone in the universe. b>What can we expect from the government's official UFO report? br> /b> I have no idea what the report will say, but I doubt

Washington DC (SPX) Jun 22, 2021
DARPA's Operational Fires (OpFires) program, which is developing and demonstrating new technologies for ground-launched medium-range hypersonic weapons, successfully completed full-scale static test firing of a unique second stage propulsion system. This high-performance, solid-fuel "throttleable" rocket motor can be turned off before burning through all of its fuel, potentially allowing a

London, UK (SPX) Jun 23, 2021
A new analysis of known exoplanets has revealed that Earth-like conditions on potentially habitable planets may be much rarer than previously thought. The work focuses on the conditions required for oxygen-based photosynthesis to develop on a planet, which would enable complex biospheres of the type found on Earth. The study is published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency and European Union said the signing of a long-delayed partnership agreement heralded the start of a new and more cooperative relationship.

In a ceremony June 22 in Brussels, officials with the European Commission and ESA signed the Financial Framework Partnership Agreement (FFPA), a document that governs how the two organizations will work together in programs such as the Copernicus series of Earth observation satellites and Galileo navigation satellites.

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Want to learn more about applications to ESA’s astronaut selection? Watch the replay of this media briefing to get an insight into the total number and spread of applications across all ESA Member and Associate Member states. Vacancies for the positions of astronaut and astronaut (with a physical disability) have closed on 18 June 2021, after a two-and-a-half-month-long application period.

SAN FRANCISCO – The Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) welcomed its newest member, Microsoft, June 23 with an announcement highlighting the tech giant’s cybersecurity expertise.

“Space cybersecurity is relatively unknown territory because we’re approaching and doing some things for the first time, fortunately through Space ISAC we have the opportunity to build a foundation for protection from a knowledge pool with deep security expertise,” Frank Backes, chair of the Space ISAC board of directors and Kratos Space Federal senior vice president, said in a statement.

Microsoft is staking its claim on the space sector.

In the last year alone, the tech giant unveiled Azure Orbital, a service to move data from satellites into the cloud, and mobile cloud computing data centers for SpaceX’s Starlink constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) and SES’ O3b medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellations.