Giorgio Parisi, grantee of the European Research Council (ERC), has been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics. The other half of this year’s award is shared by Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann. The three laureates received the prize “for ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.” For almost a decade, Professor Parisi…
African nations’ capacity to significantly improve weather and climate forecasting through access to data from Europe’s next-generation meteorological satellites will be the key focus of a two-week online forum this week. Covid travel restrictions have forced Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, EUMETSAT, to move its two-yearly Africa User Forum online, but also have made it possible…
In two reports on draft EU legislation on artificial intelligence, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) calls for an all-out ban on social scoring in the EU and for a complaint and redress mechanism for people who have suffered harm from an AI system. At its September plenary, the EESC welcomed the proposed Artificial…
The European Commission says it has taken an important step against e-waste and consumer inconvenience, caused by the prevalence of different, incompatible chargers for electronic devices. Years of working with industry on a voluntary approach already brought down the number of mobile phone chargers from 30 to 3 within the last decade, but could not…
The world’s leading satellite launch company has called for new rules to combat dangers posed by an “ever congested” space.” The Ariane Group says a “rules book” is needed to tackle the issue to stop space becoming “dangerously congested.” It is estimated that the average individual uses 47 satellites every day and that, by 2025, the…
The European Commission has approved a €108 million Danish aid measure to support coronavirus-related research and development (R&D) activities of Bavarian Nordic, a company active in the vaccine development and manufacturing industry. The scheme was approved under the State aid framework. Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: “This €108 million Danish aid measure…
Late on Friday night, the first Ariane 5 flight of 2021 operated by Arianespace successfully placed two satellites in orbit after launching from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou with the support of teams from the French space agency CNES: Star One D2, built by Maxar Technologies for Brazilian operator Embratel, and EUTELSAT QUANTUM for…
The next Ariane 5 launch is scheduled to take place at GMT plus 1 (23.00-00.30) on Friday 30 July from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. This will be the first Ariane launch in 2021. The rocket will carry a payload of two geostationary telecommunications satellites, Star One D2 and EUTELSAT QUANTUM which…
At their plant in Vernon in Normandy, within a stone’s throw from Claude Monet’s inspiring garden in Giverny, ArianeGroup is working on the design and construction of the latest generation of rocket engines. They are at an important turning point in their development, completing the construction of the last of the family of Ariane V…
Who is in charge of space traffic control and potential space traffic jams? Objects in space include launch vehicles, orbiting objects such as satellites of all sizes and international space stations. There is also an increasing amount of space debris; more than 900 000 items have been identified, of which some 30 000 are larger…
