Paris (AFP) Oct 10, 2025
Europe must quickly get its own reusable rocket launcher to catch up to billionaire Elon Musk's dominant SpaceX, European Space Agency director Josef Aschbacher told AFP in an interview. While the US company has an overwhelming lead in the booming space launch industry, a series of setbacks, including Russia's withdrawal of its rockets, left Europe without an independent way to blast its mis

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 09, 2025
New analyses of the South Pole-Aitken basin recast the formation of the Moon's largest impact crater and what it reveals about lunar origins. Led by University of Arizona planetary scientist Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, the study in Nature outlines how the basin's geometry and chemistry point to a northward-moving impactor and a radioactive-rich ejecta deposit. Spanning more than 1,200 miles nor

Paris, France (SPX) Oct 01, 2025
ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has captured the most detailed view yet of Mars's atmosphere, showing a fine layering of dust and ice particles that resembles a cosmic mille-feuille. The images reveal a delicate stratification extending from the surface up to 55 km in altitude, shedding light on processes shaping the Red Planet's restless skies. The data were obtained on January 21, 2024,

Brisbane, Australia (SPX) Oct 01, 2025
QUT's Centre for Robotics will play a central role in keeping Australia's first lunar rover, known as Roo-ver, safely on course during its mission to the Moon. Professor Michael Milford, Director of the Centre, said the team was thrilled to contribute to the ambitious project. "Obviously, the Moon presents an environment unlike anywhere on Earth," he said. "QUT's world-class robotics exper

Paris, France (SPX) Oct 09, 2025
Combing 20 years of Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter imagery, ESA-led researchers cataloged 1,039 dust devils to show how surface winds loft and transport dust across Mars. Published in Science Advances, the work indicates peak near-surface winds are much faster than previously thought and refines models of Martian weather and climate. The open catalogue, available is online, agg

The recommendation comes in a new report by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

In this week’s episode of Space Minds, host Mike Gruss speaks with Robert Lightfoot, president, space at Lockheed Martin and former NASA associate administrator.

The European Space Agency’s upcoming FORUM mission is set to provide unique insights into Earth’s radiation budget, filling in a missing piece in the climate puzzle. The mission’s spectrometer will be the first space-based instrument to measure Earth’s outgoing radiation in the far-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. New technologies were needed to make this possible – among these an on-ground calibration device developed by the National Metrology Institute of Germany PTB within a recent activity funded by ESA’s General Support Technology Programme. This device is used