esa

ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission is getting ready for lift-off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, California, with a target launch date of no earlier than 28 May 2024. Save the date and watch the launch live on ESA WebTV or ESA YouTube.

I’m not sure how much astronaut training usually costs, so I don’t know if this is a good deal or not. Seems a bit strange that there is no flight plan at this point, though.

Can I ask how everyone personally feels about using nuclear material for space exploration? For the rovers heating elements it will be just a couple of grams but for generating electricity via a RTG a spacecraft would require several kilograms of radioactive material.

Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope may have detected atmospheric gases surrounding 55 Cancri e, a hot rocky exoplanet 41 light-years from Earth. This is the best evidence to date for the existence of a rocky planet atmosphere outside our Solar System.

Fingers crossed that it’s not affecting the mission objectives

The article doesn’t provide much background on this company, but this website I found has some more details: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exploration_Company

Falcon 9 is awesome, but I really wish it had some more vibrant competition.