Space Exploration

We haven’t looked after our planet, and, in the grand scheme of things, it’s all happened very quickly. The Industrial Revolution may have made life easier for us, but it’s had a devastating impacting on our home

The head of the French national space agency, the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), Jean-Yves Le Gall, spoke at the French-Russian seminar organized by GIFAS, the French aerospace industries association, at the Espace Hamelin in Paris on 30 January 2019.

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 ESPI Briefs No. 17: ‘Next Steps to the Moon: What Role for Europe? ’, originally published in November 2017.

OHB System and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) have signed an agreement that will see the companies collaborate on a commercial Lunar Surface Access Service (LSAS). The agreement, signed during the Ilon Ramon Space Conference on Tuesday, will provide a lunar lander that can allow payloads up to 150kg to the European Space Agency (ESA).

Russia is preparing a national concept for Moon exploration by March 2019, according to the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. This news comes after the U.S. national space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), put forward its Lunar Gateway project which will see the agency construct a gateway to act as a "single stepping off point in architecture for human cislunar operations, lunar surface operations and missions to Mars."

Didier Reynders, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence of the Kingdom of Belgium, and Etienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, signed a joint declaration at the Palais d'Egmont in Brussels on 23 January 2019 in which the two countries commit to collaborate on the development of an international framework for the exploration and utilisation of space resources.

Thailand's mu Space is heading for the Final Frontier as it announced plans to participate in projects with the U.S. space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and space exploration initiatives. The announcement, that came during the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s (PTC) conference earlier this week, saw mu Space CEO and Founder James Yenbamroong set out his stall in terms of his future vision for the company.

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 ESPI Briefs No. 21: ‘On the importance of narratives in outer space ’, originally published in March 2018.

As far as we know, Mars is the only planet populated entirely by robots! Due to the time taken for commands to travel to Mars (eight minutes each way), hand guided robots are limited to travelling only a few dozen metres a day.

India's second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, will be attempted in mid-April 2019, a senior Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) official said on 11 January 2019. Chandrayaan-2 will comprise a lander and a lunar rover.