KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — An international crew of astronauts is en route to the International Space Station following a successful launch on the first NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system in history. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission lifted off at 7:27 p.m. EST Sunday from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

By Jim Cawley
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

It was a picture perfect launch during a beautiful evening on Florida’s Space Coast, as NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) blasted off from Kennedy Space Center on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying three Americans and a Japanese astronaut is now in orbit headed for a rendezvous with the International Space Station after launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Sunday.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (NASA PR) — The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on their way to the International Space Station has safely reached orbit, and the nosecone has been opened. At 9 p.m., NASA will host a postlaunch news conference from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Participants in the briefing will be: NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Kathy Lueders, associate […]

MILANO (OHB PR) — OHB Italia, a subsidiary of the space and technology group OHB SE, signed a contract appointing OHB Italia as one of the two prime contractors performing a study of the Comet Interceptor mission, a new fast-class, deep space mission led by the European Space Agency.

PARIS, November 13, 2020 (ESA PR) — Today, ESA signed contracts with Thales Alenia Space in France and in Italy, and Airbus in Spain to build three of the new high-priority Copernicus satellite missions: CHIME, CIMR and LSTM, respectively.

Each mission is set to help address different major environmental challenges such as sustainable agriculture management, food security, the monitoring of polar ice supporting the EU Integrated Policy for the Arctic, and all will be used to understand climate change.

• In 2024, the Japanese-German space mission DESTINY⁺ will launch on a journey to asteroid 3200 Phaethon.
• The mission’s key instrument is the German DESTINY⁺ Dust Analyzer (DDA), which will collect and analyse cosmic dust samples during the entire flight of the spacecraft.
• The cooperation agreement for the bilateral mission was signed by DLR and JAXA on 11 November 2020 as part of a joint strategy dialogue meeting.

COLOGNE (DLR PR) — How did life arrive on Earth? To investigate this and to address fundamental questions about the evolution of celestial bodies in our Solar System, the Japanese-German space mission DESTINY⁺  (Demonstration and Experiment of Space Technology for  INterplanetary voYage with Phaethon fLyby and dUst Science), will launch in 2024 on a journey to asteroid 3200 Phaethon.

LUXEMBOURG (LSA PR) — The Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA) and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) appointed Mathias Link as the Director ad interim of the European Space Resources Innovation Centre (ESRIC).

In August 2020, the LSA and LIST jointly set up this new innovation centre as a department within LIST during the first phase. The European Space Agency (ESA) will join as a strategic partner by the end of 2020. The creation of ESRIC follows a Memorandum of Cooperation signed between ESA and the Luxembourg Government in 2019.

New lab experiments re-create the environment of Europa and find that the icy moon shines, even on its nightside. The effect is more than just a cool visual.

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — As the icy, ocean-filled moon Europa  orbits Jupiter, it withstands a relentless pummeling of radiation. Jupiter zaps Europa’s surface night and day with electrons and other particles, bathing it in high-energy radiation. But as these particles pound the moon’s surface, they may also be doing something otherworldly: making Europa glow in the dark.

LUXEMBOURG (Luxembourg Space Agency PR) — On 20 October GomSpace’s subsidiary in Luxembourg and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed a development contract valued at EUR 1.350.000 for the continued development of GomSpace’s satellite operations platform called HOOP by GomSpace Luxembourg SARL.

The development of the Hands-Off Operations Platform (HOOP) to enable autonomous satellite operations for single satellites and constellations was initiated in 2018 (https://gomspace.com/news/gomspace-luxembourg-receives-development-cont.aspx) under a first development contract resulting in the development of the minimum viable product. HOOP is today fully flight proven and operationally deployed in customer projects.

BEIJING (China Aerospace Science and Technology Group PR) — At 23:59 on November 12th, China successfully launched the Tiantong-1 02 satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center using the Long March 3B carrier rocket. The satellite entered the scheduled orbit and the launch mission was a complete success.

The launch of the Tiantong-1 02 satellite was developed by the Fifth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, and is an important part of the Tiantong-1 satellite mobile communication system.

by Nicole Quenelle
NASA’s Flight Opportunities program

MOJAVE, Calif. (NASA PR) — Think your home could use a bit of a sweep? Fret not – your hardwoods are nothing compared to the Moon. Its surface is so notoriously dusty that the desert here on Earth is the environment of choice for testing dust-related technologies bound for lunar missions.