The High Altitude Drop Test - Balloon Flight Services Program (HADT-BFS) is a project setup to test the parachutes of the future ExoMars program. This project is performed by the Romanian company ARCAS. 

The ExoMars program, consisting of two missions, will be pursued as part of a broad cooperation with the Russian Space Agency ROSCOSMOS. Two missions are foreseen within the ExoMars program for the 2016 and 2018 launch opportunities to Mars.

In order to test the ExoMars concept, ESA will design and build a spacecraft composite named ESA EDL Demonstrator Module. The EDL demonstrator will test the technology of the European Space Agency for landing on the Mars planet surface and will carry out several scientific experiments.

ARCA's role and HADT-BFS objective is testing the atmospheric deceleration parachutes of the EDL module in conditions similar to the ones in the Martian atmosphere. The parameters to be analysed will be parachute deployment speed, parachute stability, the drag coefficient and the overall system stability.

Galactic Suite is a concept of space hotel designed for outer space.

The 'space resort' is designed to orbit the earth at a distance of 450 km, and at a speed of 30,000km, and will accommodate a maximum of four guests and two astronaut-pilots. The first Galactic Suite is due for completion in 2015. The project will establish an integrated space-based tourism concept. It will consist of three pillars; spaceport, spaceship and the space hotel. 

Galactic Suite Group is a Barcelona based company, Spain, which creates oportunities around technology and people to promote a private access to Space. Founded in 2007, the company creates and promotes cutting-edge concepts to foster alliances and help creating relationships among companies and research centres.

Galactic Suite Group is actively involved in the development of a change of paradigm in the space business, where public actors and traditional large contractors will share scenario with smaller private entrepreneurial initiatives, including

• (1) private suborbital flights with reusable spacecrafts able to fly up to 100km and reenter in controlled gliding flights, and staying some minutes in microgravity;
• (2) private spaceports developed by private owners as first stones for complex real state and commercial operations;
• (3) private manned orbital stations to be used as space hotels or scientific private platforms;
• (4) private communications, global positioning systems, remote sensing satellites, provided with reduced sized satellites;
• (5) private access to the Moon or other bodies for mining, responsible exploitation of planetary resources, etc.

Vietnam National Satellite Center (VNSC) is a research center under Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST).

VNSC has the functions of research and development, technology applications, and development of high quality human resource in satellite technology; receive, manage and implement Vietnam Space Center Project.

Tasks:

• Implement, receive, manage and run the project Vietnam Space Center by Japan's ODA;
• Perform national duties in research on development, application and education of satellite technology;
• Develop and implement international cooperation projects in space technology, especially satellite technology;
• Education, cooperation and transfer of satellite technology. Links with other universities with undergraduate and graduate studies in space technology, especially satellite technology;
• Science and technology services in satellite technology;
• International cooperation in satellite technology;
• Communications and awareness raising for population about the importance and benefit of space technology in social – economic development and national security.
• Among all of the above, the primary task of VNSC now is working with experts from Japan in the receiving, management and implementation of Vietnam Space Center Project in Hoa Lac Hi-Tech Park by Japan's ODA with the following specific tasks:
• Managing the Project;
• Developing high quality human resource in satellite technology;
• Doing research, designing, manufacturing, assembling and testing small satellites;
• Control, operation and management of small satellites of Vietnam;
• Data collection, storage and processing of satellite images for the launching of space technology application.

The EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS) is a European satellite system that offers remote sensing capabilities to both meteorologists and climatologists. It consists of a series of three polar orbiting Metop satellites, to be flown successively for more than 14 years, from 2006, together with the relevant ground facilities. 

The satellites form the space segment component of the overall EPS system, which in turn is the European half of the EUMETSAT/NOAA Initial Joint Polar System (IJPS).

Metop-A (launched on 19 October 2006) and Metop-B (launched on 17 September 2012) are in a lower polar orbit, at an altitude of 817 kilometres, to provide more detailed observations of the global atmosphere, oceans and continents. The two satellites will operate in parallel for as long as Metop-A's available capacities bring benefits to users. Metop-C is due to be launched in 2017.

EPS Programme Background

EUMETSAT is responsible for coordinating all elements of the development, launch and operation of EPS satellites. This includes developing and procuring the ground segment; procuring the launcher and launch site, and operating the systems. Under the IJPS and Joint Transition Activities (JTA) agreement, EUMETSAT and NOAA have agreed to provide instruments for each other's satellites; exchange all data in real time, and assist each other with backup services. Other partners are European Space Agency and CNES.

The European and American satellites carry a set of identical sensors:

AVHRR/3 and the ATOVS suite consisting of AMSU-A, HIRS/4 and MHS. NOAA provides most of the joint instruments on board the satellites and EUMETSAT has developed and provides NOAA with the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS).

In addition, the Metop satellites carry a set of European sensors, IASI, ASCAT, GOME-2 and GRAS, aimed at improving atmospheric soundings, as well as measuring atmospheric ozone and near-surface wind vectors over the ocean. They also carry the Argos Advanced Data Collection System (A-DCS).

The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) was established in response to "The Global Exploration Strategy (GES): The Framework for Coordination" developed by fourteen space agencies and released in May 2007.

This GES Framework Document articulated a shared vision of coordinated human and robotic space exploration focused on Solar System destinations where humans may one day live and work. Among the many Framework Document findings was the need to establish a voluntary, non-binding international coordination mechanism through which individual agencies may exchange information regarding their interests, plans and activities in space exploration, and to work together on means of strengthening both individual exploration programs as well as the collective effort.

the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

As of January 1, 2007, Fermilab is operated by the Fermi Research Alliance, a joint venture of the University of Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology and the Universities Research Association (URA). Fermilab is a part of the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor. 

Fermilab's Tevatron was a landmark particle accelerator; at 3.9 miles (6.3 km) in circumference, it was the world's second largest energy particle accelerator (CERN's Large Hadron Collider is 27 km in circumference), until being shut down on September 30, 2011. In 1995, both the CDF and DØ (detectors which utilize the Tevatron) experiments announced the discovery of the top quark. 

In addition to high energy collider physics, Fermilab is also host to a number of smaller fixed-target and neutrino experiments, such as MiniBooNE (Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment), SciBooNE (SciBar Booster Neutrino Experiment) and MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search). The MiniBooNE detector is a 40-foot (12 m) diameter sphere which contains 800 tons of mineral oil lined with 1520 individual phototube detectors. An estimated 1 million neutrino events are recorded each year. SciBooNE is the newest neutrino experiment at Fermilab; it sits in the same neutrino beam as MiniBooNE but has fine-grained tracking capabilities. The MINOS experiment uses Fermilab's NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) beam, which is an intense beam of neutrinos that travels 455 miles (732 km) through the Earth to the Soudan Mine in Minnesota.

The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator in the United States, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (also known as Fermilab), and holds the title of the second highest energy particle collider in the world after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland.

The Tevatron was a synchrotron that accelerated protons and antiprotons in a 6.86 km, or 4.26 mi, ring to energies of up to 1 TeV, hence its name. The main achievement the Tevatron was discovery in 1995 of the top quark—the last fundamental fermion predicted by the standard model of the particle physics. On July 2, 2012, near the end of Tevatron's operation, scientists of the CDF and DØ collider experiment teams at Fermilab announced the findings from the analysis of around 500 trillion collisions produced from the Tevatron collider since 2001, and found that the existence of the suspected Higgs boson was highly likely with only a 1-in-550 chance that the signs were due to a statistical fluctuation. The findings were confirmed two days later as being correct with a likelihood of error less than 1 in a million by data from the LHC experiments.

The Tevatron was completed in 1983 and significant upgrade investments were made in 1983–2011. The Tevatron ceased operations on 30 September, 2011,[3] due to budget cuts and because of the completion of the LHC, which began operations in early 2010 and was far more powerful (planned energies were two 7 TeV beams at the LHC compared to 1 TeV at the Tevatron). The main ring of the Tevatron will probably be reused in future experiments, and its components may be transferred to other particle accelerators.

NEXT, the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster project at Glenn Research Center aims to build an ion thruster about three times as powerful as the NSTAR used on Dawn and Deep Space 1.

By 2008, flight qualification models of the thruster were available. NEXT has 6.9 kW thruster power and 236 mN thrust, can be throttled down to 0.5 kW power, and has an ISP of 4190 seconds (compared to 3120 for NSTAR). The thrusters are manufactured at Aerojet and the power-management units at the ETI division of L3 Communications.

BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing.

It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics.

The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.