Lifting-off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a ULA Atlas V 541 rocket has carried the Mars 2020 mission into orbit. The launch occurred at 1150 GMT, 30 July 2020. The payload was placed into a “parking” low Earth orbit before the rocket’s Centaur...
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) joined the space race in spectacular style. With the help of a Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Launch Services operated H2A-202 (SRB-A3) rocket. Its Hope space probe (Misabar Al’amal) was launched to Mars at 2158 GMT on...
NASA has awarded the Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor-2 (TSIS-2) spacecraft construction contract to General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems Group of San Diego, California. According to NASA, the award is a hybrid firm-fixed price, time and materials...
On 3 July 2020, the European Space Agency (ESA), on-behalf of the European Commission, issued development contracts for six missions that will compliment and enhance the Copernicus Earth observation programme. These initial contracts, valued at EUR€2.55 billion...
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded Ball Aerospace a contract worth US$96.9 million to build and operate the SWFO (Space Weather Follow-On) spacecraft to study the solar wind and provide early warning of Coronal Mass Ejection events on the...
On 24 March, the European Space Agency (ESA) put its long range space missions: the Cluster quartet, ExoMars TGO, Mars Express and Solar Orbiter, into Safe Mode “Hibernation” on 24 March to limit the number of personnel it would need at its operations centre. This was...
