News

A Chinese space company is setting its sights on crewed orbital spaceflight, marking a new step in the expansion of China’s commercial space sector. Zhang Xiaomin, chairman of AZSpace, told the Chinese outlet Securities Daily last week that, “we plan to officially conduct orbital manned flight tests in 2027 or 2028.”

The European Space Agency, in partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), has inaugurated its state-of-the-art high-performance computing (Space HPC) environment at ESRIN, Italy. The opening, on Wednesday 12 March, marks an important milestone in ESA’s mission to push the boundaries of innovation for European space activities.

The Starlab commercial space station project is moving toward the production phase, having passed a key development milestone with NASA. Starlab, a joint project between the U.S. space technology firm Voyager Space and European aerospace conglomerate Airbus, will consist of a service module and a habitat large enough to host four space tourists. Currently, the station is expected to launch in 2028 aboard SpaceX's Starship megarocket.

A group of European companies has secured government funds to test an inflatable drag sail in space by 2028, designed to swiftly deorbit its host satellite after mission completion. Two-year-old Portuguese startup Spaceo is leading the consortium, which announced a 3 million euro ($3.3 million) contract from the European Space Agency March 18 for the demonstration in low Earth orbit.

The European Commission is considering expanding its satellite capacities to improve geospatial intelligence support for security,” EU defense chief tells the FT.

NASA’s newest astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx, is on its way to study the origins of our universe and the history of galaxies, and to search for the ingredients of life in our galaxy. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx lifted off at 8:10 p.m. PDT on March 11 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Merging satellite operators SES and Intelsat independently invested in direct-to-device venture Lynk Global without knowing about the other’s decision.

Marking another step towards new insights into Earth’s forests and their role in the carbon cycle, ESA’s groundbreaking Biomass satellite has arrived at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, to be prepared for liftoff on a Vega-C rocket at the end of April.

The European Union is under pressure to step up its tech game and wean itself off a heavy reliance on United States digital infrastructure and services as transatlantic ties hit a new low.

Three European aerospace companies (Airbus, Leonardo and Thales Alenia Space) want to join up to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, setting up an early test of whether Europe is serious about creating global industrial giants or if national interests and the EU’s own competition rulebook will win out.

The U.S. military’s ambitious program to create a constellation of satellites for global communications and missile tracking is poised to begin launching hardware into orbit later this year, the Space Development Agency said March 7.

With a new Memorandum of Intent (MoI) signed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA), seamless mobile connectivity that extends everywhere from rural areas to bustling cities has just become closer to reality. The collaboration aims to overcome current coverage limitations by seamlessly combining space and terrestrial systems, helping to close the digital divide across Europe.