The ESA mission PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) has the goal to detect terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars and characterizing their bulk properties from 2024 onwards. Even though many exoplanets have been detected over the last 20 years, non of them could be characterized as a habitable earth like planet. PLATO aims to do better and will answer the profound and captivating question: “How common are worlds like ours and are they suitable for the development of live?”.

ESA’s miniature satellite PROBA-V may only be as large as your average dishwasher, its potential in Earth Observation is inversely proportional. Providing images on a daily basis in a spatial resolution of 100 m, 300 m and 1 km, PROBA-V serves a niche market. Combine its valuable data sets, revisit time, complementarity with satellite data such as SPOT-VEGETATION and the Sentinel missions, and the new improved Mission Exploitation Platform (MEP), you have a series of invaluable tools at your disposal to explore our planet to infinity and beyond.

The 52nd show will take place at the Le Bourget Parc des Expositions from 19 to 25 June 2017.

Dear researchers,
Space Applications Services NV/SA with the support of BELSPO are delighted to invite you to the first ICE Cubes Belgian science day on 09-Jun-2017.

The objective of the European project QB50 is to design and to deploy in space a network of
miniaturized satellites to study the lower layers of the thermosphere. Funded by the European Union, the project implements an international Consortium led by the von Karman Institute (VKI). The first of the two rockets that will take the QB50 constellation in space lifted off with success early on Tuesday (11.11 a.m. Cape Canaveral, 5.11 p.m. Brussels).

Innovative communications satellite launched with DARE-enabled chips inside