esa

German space agency DLR has awarded an €18 million launch contract to Berlin-based Exolaunch. DLR awarded the contract on behalf of and with funds from the German Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, and it will see the mission management startup oversee the launch of payloads from winners of the country’s Small...

Today, ESA’s Science Programme Committee approved the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, the first scientific endeavour to detect and study gravitational waves from space....

In a ceremony during the European Space Conference in Brussels Jan. 23, ESA and European Commission officials announced the launch companies that will participate in the European Flight Ticket Initiative. The effort, announced last fall, is intended to stimulate demand for European launch services by allowing them to compete for...

The UK Space Agency, in partnership with its Canadian counterpart, has launched the £1.2-million Aqualunar Challenge, which aims to support the development of technology that would enable the extraction of purified water from ice buried beneath the lunar surface....

Latitude announced on 22 January that it had closed a $30 million (€27.5 million) Series B funding round to support the development of its Zephyr launch vehicle....

According to a 17 January ESA press call, journalists will be given one last look at the upper stage in Bremen, Germany, on 26 January and the core stage in Les Mureaux, France, on 30 January. Once the pomp and circumstance have been completed, the two Ariane 6 stages will be loaded onto the transport vessel Canopée for its...

While the launch was routine, the “project astronaut” designation given to Wandt for his mission to the ISS is a new one....

A space debris removal mission being developed by Swiss startup ClearSpace has passed a pair of milestones as part of its environmental test campaign....

With the EMSi suit, REA hopes to reproduce the same muscular stimulation the human body receives on Earth during periods in low gravity. The company developed the suit in collaboration with the Italian space agency (ASI) with technical support from the Politecnico di Bari’s Department of Electrical and Information Engineering....

The European Space Agency has announced that it is targeting 15 November for the return to flight of the grounded Avio-built Vega C launch vehicle....

MaiaSpace was founded in late 2021 with the aim of developing a partially reusable microlauncher. The standard two-stage configuration of the Maia vehicle will be capable of deploying 1,500 kilograms into low Earth orbit when the first stage is expended and 500 kilograms when it is being recovered. However, with the addition of...

Another company pursuing a high-thrust methalox engine… seems to be pretty popular design choice these days.

Seems like a good initiative. Rockets are one of the few forms of transport which are currently impossible to electrify. Though hydrogen is not the perfect rocket propellant, it has the advantage that it produces no carbon dioxide when combusted. Current hydrogen production still produces carbon dioxide though, so it is nice to...