Copernical Team
European Space Agency to vote on record budget, name new astronauts
The European Space Agency will vote on Wednesday on whether to spend billions more euros to keep up with rising competition in space, as well as unveiling its much-anticipated new crop of astronauts.
The ESA's 22 member states, whose ministers charged with space duties have been meeting in Paris since Tuesday, will decide on meeting the agency's request for a record 18.7 billion euros for new programs over the next three years.
The figure is more than 25 percent higher than the 14.5 billion euros agreed at the ESA's last ministerial council in 2019.
ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher told AFP that Europe risks "falling out of the race" in space if it does not expand the budget.
Satellite broadband firms join forces
A French and British firm joined forces in the fast-growing satellite broadband market on Tuesday.
French operator Eutelsat said it had signed a merger with British group OneWeb to seal its plan to create a new "champion" in the market.
The pair first announced plans to merge in July when they signed a memorandum of understanding to unite and become "a leading global player in connectivi 'Sail' to de-orbit would-be space junk
As the number of rocket launches, planetary missions and satellite activities continues to grow, so does junk in space, and many have been pondering the question of how to reduce the amount of debris orbiting Earth. Now, China may have found a solution with its newly deployed "sail" technology.
Hundreds of millions of items of human-made debris are continually circling Earth, including bro An early start to a long weekend - Sols 3660-3664
On a usual week of Curiosity operations, Friday plans take the longest since they span the whole weekend. This rare Monday morning, however, we're planning five sols to start covering Tuesday - Monday of operations so the team can spend Thanksgiving on Earth. When we plan a large chunk of sols like this, the first couple sols are lightweight with minimal risk activities from environmental sensor Marines Must Fight for Space
Marines must contribute to the fight for space. No, this is not some far-flung future of Colonial or UN Space Command Marines fighting alien hordes. And despite its ongoing force transformation, the Marine Corps is not going to add a space-shuttle door-gunner military occupational specialty any time soon. The most recent "Force Design 2030 Update" argued that "the enduring function for [Stand-In Xi: China open to space exchanges, cooperation
President Xi Jinping reiterated on Monday China's wish to work with other nations to carry out space exploration and development. Xi wrote in a congratulatory letter to the United Nations/China 2nd Global Partnership Workshop on Space Exploration and Innovation that the country is willing to deepen its cooperation and exchanges with other nations to advance space exploration and the peaceful use SpaceX Dragon supply ship launch scrubbed by bad weather
The launch of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station was scrubbed Tuesday afternoon because of bad weather, NASA officials said.
The CRS-26 mission had been set to launch on a new Falcon 9 rocket at 3:54 p.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The attempt was reset to Saturday at 2:20 p.m.
NASA engineers called a halt to the countdown at T-m Advanced Space leads first ever commercial mission to operate at the moon
Advanced Space LLC., a leading space tech solutions company, is the first commercial entity to own an operational satellite at the Moon. CAPSTONE, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, has finalized its insertion into a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO).
Now that history has been made, the small spacecraft is ready to begin operations An exoplanet atmosphere as never seen before
The JWST just scored another first: a detailed molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world's skies.
The telescope's array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of a "hot Saturn"-a planet about as massive as Saturn orbiting a star some 700 light-years away-known as WASP-39 b. While JWST and other space telescopes, including Hubble and Spitzer, previously have Family portrait
Image:
The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module (left), Earth (middle) and the Moon (right) are captured in this ‘family portrait’ by Orion’s solar array camera during the spacecraft’s closet approach to the lunar surface.
Six days into the 25-day Artemis I mission, the Orion spacecraft performed a key manoeuvre: just a little more than 130 km from the lunar surface, the main engine on the European Service Module – a repurposed Space Shuttle engine that is now on its 20th spaceflight – fired for just under 150 seconds to push the spacecraft and head towards a lunar orbit using
