HOUSTON (NASA PR) — The Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft was bolted into place on the International Space Station’s Earth-facing port of the Unity module at 9:42 a.m. EDT. Cygnus will remain at the space station for about three months until the spacecraft departs in November.

The spacecraft’s arrival brings more than 8,200 pounds of research and supplies to space station. Highlights of cargo aboard Cygnus include:

PARIS (CNES PR) — The Council of Ministers of Wednesday April 14, 2021 appointed Philippe Baptiste, President of the National Center for Space Studies (CNES). Born in 1972, Philippe Baptiste holds a doctorate from the University of Technology of Compiègne and a civil engineer from Mines de Nancy. He also holds an MSc from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, a DEA from Sorbonne University and accreditation to supervise research.

A digital scientist, Philippe Baptiste is a specialist in algorithms, combinatorial optimization, operations research and artificial intelligence. He pursued an academic career as a researcher at the CNRS (1999), at IBM’s Watson Research Center (2000-2001), and as a lecturer at the École Polytechnique (2002-2012). 

He is the author of several books and about 150 scientific publications and communications. He headed the computer science laboratory of École Polytechnique, created the Institute of Information Sciences and their interactions before becoming in 2014 Deputy Managing Director of CNRS, one of the first partners of CNES. Member of the High Scientific Council of ONERA, he also sat on the Board of INRIA.

PARIS (Exotrail PR) — Exotrail has signed a contract with the French Space Agency, CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), for a development project concerning the clusterisation of several Hall Effect Thrusters.

This Research & Technology (R&T) contract will allow Exotrail to demonstrate its capability to use several thrusters together in order to reach higher thrust and power for larger satellites’ needs.