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The late 2030s are the most probable time for a crewed spacecraft’s flight to Mars, Executive Director of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos for Manned Space Programs Sergei Krikalyov said on Friday.

Telespazio UK, a subsidiary of Telespazio – a joint venture between Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%) – has been awarded a European Space Agency (ESA) contract to further develop a tool to automate quality assurance analysis of Satellite-based Earth Observation (EO) data products.

TNO has signed a contract with ESA to demonstrate cutting-edge optical communication technologies for future terabit-per-second telecom satellites. The TOmCAT project (Terabit Optical Communication Adaptive Terminal) will enable high-throughput laser communication between ground stations and satellites.

NASA has awarded the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, a contract to support all phases of current and future planetary protection missions to ensure compliance with planetary protection standards.

NASA has released two NASA Interim Directives (NIDs) updating the agency’s requirements for robotic and human missions traveling to the Earth’s Moon, and human missions traveling to Mars. The first, NID 8715.128, addresses the control of forward terrestrial biological contamination associated with all NASA and NASA-affiliated missions intended to land, orbit, or otherwise encounter the Moon.

Psyche, the NASA mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid of the same name, recently passed a crucial milestone that brings it closer to its August 2022 launch date. Now the mission is moving from planning and designing to high-gear manufacturing of the spacecraft hardware that will fly to its target in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

exactEarth Ltd. , a leading provider of Satellite-AIS data services announces an expanded alliance agreement with one of its existing channel partners. All financial figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated.

Viasat Inc.  a global communications company, announced today the availability of reliable, high-speed, high-quality internet service for residential customers in Brazil. 

Work has just begun on building the first satellite that can capture and deorbit space debris. Making the space activities more sustainable is a huge responsibility – one that the European Space Agency has entrusted to EPFL startup ClearSpace.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and the European Space Policy Institute, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and briefs. This is the conclusion of ESPI Special Report: ‘COVID-19 and the European Space Sector’, originally published in July 2020.