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ESA's €22B Commitment, Isar's Orbital Debut & Mars Life Signal
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Europe locked in a record €22.3 billion ESA budget, Isar Aerospace made history with the first commercial orbital launch from European soil, and NASA's Perseverance found its strongest-ever biosignature candidate on Mars. Everything that shifted in space this week — in under 15 minutes.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Europe just had the week that changes how it thinks about itself in space. The Paris International Space Summit wrapped with a record twenty-two point three billion euro ESA budget for twenty twenty-six through twenty twenty-eight, twenty billion euros in commercial deal announcements, and a German startup that put satellites into orbit from European soil for the first time.
The launch that may matter most happened five days before the summit even opened. On September fifth, German startup Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket reached low Earth orbit from Norway, making it the first commercial orbital launch from continental European soil.
One of the cleaner stories out of Paris is Greece. ESA and commercial partner Vast finalized an agreement for Greek flight surgeon Adrianos Golemis to launch to the International Space Station in twenty twenty-seven on the Vast private astronaut mission.
Amazon's satellite constellation committed to twenty-four total Ariane six launches through twenty thirty-one with Arianespace. That's a major US operator securing European launch capacity at scale.
Two NASA developments deserve attention. Perseverance collected a rock called Cheyava Falls that contains organic compounds and chemical signatures consistent with ancient microbial activity roughly four billion years ago.
A joint Hubble and Webb survey found twenty-seven new faint Trans-Neptunian Objects beyond Neptune but turned up fewer very small bodies than some planet formation models predicted. That shortfall constrains how we think solar system assembly worked four and a half billion years ago.
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