News ESA's Future: The News and Updates Thread

cannon_gray

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In November 2005, ESA opened a new stage in the exploration of our neighbor in the solar system, launching the Venera-Express spacecraft to Venus, intended for remote exploration of the planet. The main task of the new expedition to the "morning star" is a detailed study of the atmosphere, cloud layer and surface, as well as outer space near the planet. Since ancient times, the planet Venus, the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, has attracted the attention of both ordinary people and astronomers.
 

Urwumpe

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The German aerospace center did some high-speed wind tunnel tests for the RETALT project, doing 170 test runs of a Falcon 9 like configuration:


Also a few days ago, the new reference configurations of the project had been presented:

 

N_Molson

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I came across the OP by chance and was quite amazed :

Currently the Ministerial Council press conference is running, with some great news so far, despite the hard start of the council.

Ariane 5 will be improved with the "Ariane 5 Midlife Evolution" AND Ariane 6 will be build. Ariane 6 is planned to launch from 2021-2022 on. But the future launcher program of ESA will still have its budget cut.

The ISS will be supported by ESA even after 2017.

We were optimistic people by then :) Well Ariane 6 in 2022 isn't completely out of scope AFAIK.
 

Notebook

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The European Space Agency is proposing a precise navigation system at the Moon, much like the sat-nav technology we have here on Earth.
It would enable spacecraft and astronauts to know exactly where they are when moving around the lunar body and to land with precision.
The initiative, known as Moonlight, would also incorporate a telecommunications function.
 

N_Molson

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Interesting, since no "lunarstationary" stable orbit for GPS satellites is possible, they'll have to find another way to do it.
 

Arvil

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Earth GPS sats are at an orbital radius of about 26600 km, not at geostationary. Lunar could be at any altitude as long as 4 are in line of sight for the receivers, and they are out of the way for other traffic.
 

Owenmck

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I always imagined some sort of satellite constellation, e.g. starlink launched on a falcon heavy. (Don’t know if falcon heavy can take payload to lunar orbit.)
You could have a larger relay at Lagrange point 1, to forward the signals to Earth if the starlink communications degrade too much over 250,000

?
 

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Guiana Space Center Offers Launch Complex Upgrades to Manned Level for Soyuz-MS spacecraft
 
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