News

Europe cannot afford to stay out of human spaceflight if it wants to rank as a global political and economic power, the head of the European Space Agency (ESA) said. “It’s not possible that a political and economic power like Europe cannot fly its own astronauts to space,” Josef Aschbacher, Director General of ESA, said at the Paris Air Forum at Le Bourget yesterday.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) finances SpaceX and Hispasat with more than $80 million, the bank announced. The bank’s board unanimously approved $80.7 million in EXIM financing to support launch services by SpaceX and U.S.-brokered launch and initial in-orbit insurances for Hispasat Canarias,

Isar Aerospace: the Bavarian SpaceX? In this edition of Space Café Germany, we talk to Daniel Metzler, one of the founders and managing directors of Isar Aerospace. Isar Aerospace is considered the German NewSpace startup of the moment. The young company from Munich is building the two-stage Spectrum, a launch vehicle capable of carrying up to one ton of payload into low-Earth orbit.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a new Space Sustainable Rating (SSR). The Swiss EPFL Space Center (eSpace) has been chosen to lead and operationalize the SSR, WEF said, it will begin issuing sustainability certifications to mission operators in early 2022.

South Korea wants to develop a fleet of over 100 nanosatellites, the South Korean press reported. The country will develop the constellation over the next decade, with the aim of establishing a national security monitoring system and testing next generation network communications in its latest push to strengthen its space industry, the Korea Times reported.

Paris, 21 June 2021. – The laser communication startup Mynaric has opened a new facility for the serial production of laser communication equipment for the aerospace sector, the company said. The new production facility is located in the immediate vicinity of Mynaric’s headquarters at the special research airport Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, Germany.

Three Chinese astronauts entered the Tiangong space station, Chinese state and international media reported. After a seven-hour flight in the Shenzhou capsule, the crew entered the space stations Tianhe core module as the first people to board China’s new outpost in space, the reports said.

Rocket Lab has been awarded by the University of California Berkeley to design two Photon spacecraft named Blue and Gold for a scientific ESCAPADE mission to Mars, the launch company said. ESCAPADE is a mission that will orbit two spacecraft around Mars to understand the structure, composition, variability, and dynamics of Mars' unique hybrid magnetosphere, Rocket Lab said.

The future of the exploration of Moon and Mars took center stage at the IAF Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021) in St. Petersburg, the federation said. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, announced their plans to send a rover to the Moon by 2024/2025.

The Russian state space corporation Roscosmos is in talks with the European Space Agency (ESA) to join the project for a Russian-Chinese lunar station, Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin told reporters according to the news agency Interfax. "We are actively in talks with many players.