Mission control at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre has completed the critical Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) for ESA’s Biomass, after nine days of intense work.

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Inside a spherical cagelike structure, a small platform slowly spins as if floating. A single, bright lamp illuminates the scene, simulating the Sun. This setup constitutes the European Space Agency’s brand new facility for the testing of CubeSats – small satellites, usually no larger than a shoebox and weighing only a few kilograms.

This space-simulating facility, built for ESA by University of Bologna and Nautilus - Navigation in Space, is part of the Attitude and Control System (AOCS) & Pointing Systems laboratory at ESTEC, the Agency’s technical centre.

Just like any piece of machinery destined for space, CubeSats undergo

Greenbelt MD (SPX) May 12, 2025
One year ago today, representatives from NASA and about 30 other U.S. government agencies gathered for a special meeting to simulate and address a threat looming in space. The threat was not an asteroid or aliens, but our very own life-giving Sun. The inaugural Space Weather Tabletop Exercise was supposed to be a training event, where experts could work through the real-time ramifications

Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 12, 2025
Math has long been the engine behind countless technological advancements, but the path to groundbreaking mathematical insights has traditionally been slow and labor-intensive, often taking years or even centuries to unfold. This delay limits the ability of mathematics to tackle urgent challenges in fields like national security, medicine, and advanced computing. To overcome this bottlenec

The European Space Agency will be present at the 55th edition of International Paris Air Show, taking place on 16-22 June at Le Bourget airport.

As the night closed in on Spain and Portugal on 28 April, polar satellites followed the blackout that lasted well into the early hours of the morning in several regions.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our Solar System’s largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. With Webb’s advanced sensitivity, astronomers have studied the phenomena to better understand Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

Washington DC (UPI) May 10, 2025
SpaceX launched two batches of Starlink satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in a little more than six hours late Friday and early Saturday from California and Florida. First, the private agency launched 26 satellites to low Earth orbit at 5:19 p.m. PDT from Vandenberg Space Force Base pad 4E East in California. It was the 14th launch of this booster, including six previous Starlink miss

Madrid, Spain (SPX) May 12, 2025
Operational collision avoidance (CA) traditionally covers a short window, typically up to two weeks into the future. However, this limited timeframe can leave satellite operators unprepared for sudden increases in collision risks outside this range, potentially leading to rapid escalations in operational workload. With the rapid growth in low Earth orbit (LEO) traffic, driven by the rise of larg

Washington DC (UPI) May 10, 2025
A Soviet-area spacecraft that orbited Earth for more than 50 years crashed into the Indian Ocean on Saturday, Russian officials confirmed. "The Kosmos-482 spacecraft, launched in 1972, ceased to exist, deorbiting and falling into the Indian Ocean," the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos said on the cloud-based social media platform Telegram. The spacecraft hit the ocean ar