Space Resources

The European Space Agency (ESA) is building a deep space dish in Australia and an asteroid telescope in South America. ESA cooperates with the Australian Space Agency to construct a second 35-metre, deep space dish antenna at its existing ground station in New Norcia, Western Australia

Luxembourg, 28 April 2021. – JUICE is on its way: the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) left Airbus’ satellite integration centre in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and is now on its way to the Large Space Simulator (LSS) chamber of ESA in Noordwijk, Netherlands, Airbus said.

Luxembourg, 27 April 2021. – “Faster and farther”: NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity flew a third time, rising five meters high and 50 meters far at a top speed of 2 meters per second, the U.S. space agency said. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California received a first bunch of data and images that the Perseverance rover, serving as a communications base station, captured.

Luxemburg, 26 April 2021. – Welcome to the ISS: the “first human spaceflight mission to fly astronauts on a flight-proven Falcon 9 and Dragon” docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday. The four Crew-2 astronauts had spent around 23 hours orbiting Earth before catching up with the ISS.

Paris, 22 April 2021. – Another breakthrough: NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance was able to extract oxygen from the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, the U.S. space agency said. “While the technology demonstration is just getting started, it could pave the way for science fiction to become science fact – isolating and storing oxygen on Mars”, NASA said.

Paris, 21 April 2021. – European space experts call for a better control of space debris and regulation of space traffic, the Financial Times (FT) reports. The launch of thousands of new satellites in ‘mega-constellations’ to improve global internet access will exacerbate the growing problem of space debris, the FT quoted experts from a conference of the European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday.

Paris, 21 April 2021. – The Austrian new space investor Findus Venture works with the startup Spire Global to “tackle the growing problem of space debris”, the companies announced. They signed a second partnership agreement to launch the ADLER-2 satellite that aims to “further enhance orbital debris monitoring in low earth orbit, and expand novel atmospheric sensing capabilities".

Paris, 20 April 2021. – 39.1 historic seconds: NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity succeeded to become the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover last night.

Can regulation match innovation in a space race? 3 experts discuss  The space race never ended. In fact, it just got a whole lot faster  Space engineering has always been a fundamentally future thinking activity, but in recent years mass investment in the industry coupled with technological development has been like a shot in the arm. The stakes couldn’t be higher and, as a result, discussions around the industry’s future success, safety and viability are now more important than ever. 

Paris, 14 April 2021. – Northrop Grumman and Intelsat succeeded with an in-orbit docking of a life extension module to one of Intelsat’s commercial satellites, the companies said. Northrop Grumman’s wholly-owned subsidiary, SpaceLogistics, successfully completed the docking of the Mission Extension Vehicle-2 to the Intelsat 10-02 commercial communications satellite.