ESA has awarded a contract worth €160 million to Airbus in the UK to build the Earth Explorer FORUM satellite. This exciting new mission will yield unique insight into the planet’s radiation budget and how it is controlled – thereby filling in a critical missing piece of the climate jigsaw.

Short for Far-infrared Outgoing Radiation Understanding and Monitoring, FORUM is ESA’s ninth Earth Explorer mission.

The central core of a test model of ESA’s new Ariane 6 heavy lift rocket has been assembled for the first time in the purpose-built Launcher Assembly Building at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

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A beautiful sequence of 56 images taken by the monitoring cameras on board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission as the spacecraft made its second close flyby of its destination planet Mercury on 23 June 2022.

The compilation includes images from two monitoring cameras (MCAM) onboard the Mercury Transfer Module, which provides black-and-white snapshots at 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The MCAMs also capture parts of the spacecraft: MCAM-2 sees the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s medium-gain antenna and magnetometer boom, while the high-gain antenna is in the MCAM-3 field-of-view.

The image sequences lasted about 15 minutes starting soon after closest approach

Virtual and augmented reality have increasingly been used for fun over the past few years. But in science fiction, these 'extended reality' (or XR) technologies are more than fun – they are actively used in character’s daily lives. Now with seven new projects boosting human-machine interfaces, ESA is aiming to bridge this gap and develop for space the XR applications we are familiar with from science fiction.

Arlington VA (SPX) Jun 24, 2022
The National Security Space Association (NSSA) has released a report entitled "United States Space Command: Progress and Opportunities". Produced by the Association's Moorman Center for Space Studies, the report notes the importance of the USSPACECOM mission to U.S. national security and economic well-being, describes recent progress of the Command in reaching an "initial operational capability"

Sydney (AFP) June 26, 2022
NASA's first-ever launch from a commercial site outside of the United States blasted off from Australia's Outback late Sunday, in a "historic" moment for the country's space industry. In the first of three planned launches from the Arnhem Space Centre, the rocket, carrying technology likened to a "mini Hubble" telescope, lifted off - blasted about 350 kilometres (218 miles) into the night s

Tucson AZ (SPX) Jun 24, 2022
The Missile Defense Agency has selected Raytheon Missiles and Defense, a Raytheon Technologies business (NYSE: RTX), to continue to develop a first-of-its-kind counter-hypersonic missile, the Glide Phase Interceptor. GPI is designed to intercept hypersonic weapons in the glide phase of flight, providing the U.S. and allies with an additional layer of defense against regional hypersonic missile t

Tehran (AFP) June 26, 2022
Iran's defence ministry said Sunday it has carried out a second test launch of a satellite carrier, ahead of the expected restart of nuclear talks. "The second launch of the Zoljanah satellite carrier has taken place in order to achieve the predetermined research objectives," said Ahmad Hosseini, spokesman for the ministry's space division, cited by state news agency IRNA. In February la

Image: The Po River, the longest river in Italy, is hitting record low water levels after months without heavy rainfall. This Copernicus Sentinel-2 animation reveals how the river has significantly shrunk between June 2020 and June 2022.