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PLD Space, a Spanish company that designs, develops, and manufactures micro launchers, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Arianespace, a European space transportation operator. 

The ERC 2023 has announced that they will feature 88 university teams from Canada, Japan, Great Britain, Switzerland, India, Poland, Italy, Turkey, and Mexico. Teams across five continents have joined the competition, 54 will participate in person for the world’s largest track mapping the surface of the Red Planet, and 34 will participate online in a remote formula.

Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), a German launch service provider, has signed a binding term sheet with the French space agency CNES to offer its launch services from the Kourou Space Centre (CGS) in French Guiana. RFA will launch from the ELM-Diamant launch complex in 2025.

Finnish Earth observation Company Kuva Space has received a five-year commercial contract worth €5M from the European Space Agency (ESA) to be the world’s sole provider of hyperspectral data services for the European Commission’s Copernicus Contributing Missions (CCM) program. As a result, Kuva Space will demonstrate its technological capabilities to monitor farming and aquaculture crops, forests, methane release, and harmful algae blooms in seas and coastal areas.

SpaceWatch.Global is pleased to present: The Space Café Podcast #83: Kim Arcand - Unraveling the Universe, Data Storyteller @ NASA. In this episode, Markus Mooslechner engages with Kim Arcand, a premier data storyteller at NASA. They delve into the fascinating realm of data, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and the less explored domain of space sound.

In this second episode of Space Economy Insights, Kevin O'Connell and Emma Gatti interviewed Prof. Matthew Gilliham, the Director of the Wait Research Institute at the University of Adelaide and the Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space (P4S).

OroraTech has signed a multi-million contract with the European Space Agency to deliver data to the European Union as part of the Copernicus Contributing Mission (CCM). Leveraging its recently launched in-orbit thermal sensor network, OroraTech will contribute vital data to critical sectors such as emergency services, climate change analysis, marine management, and land management.

Astroscale Holdings Inc. has announced the opening of Astroscale France SAS (“Astroscale France”) and a contract with the French national space agency, Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The contract, which both parties will sign on June 20 at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, formalizes a partnership between Astroscale France and CNES. Furthermore, it includes a funded study for active debris removal of French space debris. In addition, both parties will determine the specific debris in early 2024.

EnduroSat`s Balkan Constellation will join the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Copernicus Contributing missions after its selection. The selection happened in the presence of Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union, and Dr. Joseph Aschbacher, ESA DG. 

In this Space Café Radio - SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Dr Graham Turnock, Special Advisor at the European Space Agency ESA and ESA Accelerator Lead at GLOC - the Global Space Conference on Climate Change in Oslo in May 2023 ab the status of the accelerators and the way forward.