Europe

By Raphael Roettgen With approximately US$56 million of space-related funding rounds, July was slightly stronger than June 2020, but still on the weak side, and lacking any large rounds (except as noted below). On the positive side, the monthly rounds represent a good cross-section of geographies and subsectors. SpaceX is …

GomSpace Luxembourg SARL and the European Space Agency (ESA), signed a contract to continue development and implementation of the Juventas CubeSat in support of the Hera mission.

Access to space matters. The race to space that commenced in the 1950’s has accelerated at an unprecedented pace. Dozens of countries invest in space missions, launch capabilities, and sophisticated systems.

Over the next decade, Earth Observation (EO) satellites will stop streaming image data to the earth. Instead, the instruments onboard EO satellites will tell us what is happening below. And, these satellites will be able to take control of their operations to allow for the execution of complex tasks.

by Kiran Mohan Vazhapully Artist’s impression of the Gateway and Orion. The Gateway is the next structure to be launched by the partners of the International Space Station. Image courtesy of NASA.Last month, based on a Reuters report, Chris Borgen wrote in Opinio Juris about the White House chalking out details of a United States (US) sponsored international framework dubbed “Artemis Accords”,  to facilitate commercial mining on the Moon. They are conceived as inter-agency bilateral agreements similar to the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement (ISS-IGA).

Lunar services company, ispace, revealed the final design of its lunar lander that will be used in the first mission of the company’s “HAKUTO-R” program, a multinational commercial lunar exploration program.

This Association Agreement between ESA and the Government of the Republic of Latvia, builds on the successful results achieved under the previous frameworks of cooperation and enters into force for a duration of seven years. Comprising 18 Articles and two Annexes, it orchestrates the strengthening of Latvia’s relations with ESA.

The first ever launch into space from British soil is one step closer today (29 July 2020) as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announces a public consultation on the regulations for the UK’s spaceflight programme.

Serbian Case for Space Foundation organized its third webinar, together with Spacewatch.Global, on the 23rd July 2020. On this occasion, SCS wanted to tackle an important topic that often takes a backseat to popular engineering and technological feats when it comes to public perception of space industry: cyber security in outer space. SCS invited Andrej Petrovski, the Director of Tech at Share Foundation and Daniel Porras, the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Communications at the Secure World Foundation.

Acting as launch service provider for DEWC Systems, Southern Launch has selected the T-Minus Engineering DART rocket to launch DEWC’s prototype payload on a parabolic trajectory into space at the Koonibba Rocket Test Range later this year.