Europe

Global space industry networking and marketplace platform, Space Impulse, and global deep-dive industry database provider, NewSpace Hub, announced on 13 May 2020 that they have signed a partnership to dramatically strengthen their respective value propositions to their users.

This week’s Space Café WebTalk took place on 12 May 2020, featuring  Prof. Dr. René Laufer, Associate Research Professor at Baylor University, University of Cape Town, and IAA Small Satellite Committee, in conversation with Torsten Kriening, co-publisher of SpaceWatch.Global and COO of ThorGroup GmbH.

Airbus has won the new satellite communications framework contract for military and civil missions of the European Union and its member states. This four-year framework contract was awarded by the European Defence Agency (EDA) and is estimated to be worth tens of millions of euros.

A new study, based on data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatories, sheds new light on a three million light-year long bridge of hot gas linking two galaxy clusters, whose shape is being bent by the mighty activity of a nearby supermassive black hole.

The Luxembourg Space Agency and the European Space Agency (ESA) have signed a specific agreement with the purpose of developing professional skills in the space industry.

The Field Campaign of IGLUNA 2020, initially planned to take place in Lucerne from 10-19 July 2020, has been replaced by an online version due to the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Finnish New Space leader ICEYE is the first in the world to demonstrate interferometric capabilities from synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellites under 100kg (220 pounds) in mass.

The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and Dutch space company Hyperion Technologies have successfully commercialised a key optical component to receive satellite laser links on Earth. The jointly developed Gigabit Detector will benefit operators of optical ground stations worldwide.

Using the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument NASA has ever flown in space, scientists have made precise, detailed measurements of how the elevation of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over 16 years.

More than fifty years after the first Apollo Moon landings, we are witnessing the rise of Lunapolitics, where the Moon’s topography - or ‘Lunography’ - from below its surface through to Cislunar space intersects with Earthly political and economic interests.