News
Welcome to the UK Space Agency's News and Events pages.
Please select a news release from our latest news section or visit our events calendar relating to space activities in the UK and overseas.
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6 Nov 2012
After careful consideration, John Alty, Director General of Knowledge and Innovation group at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has decided to appoint Dr David Parker as the acting Chief Executive of the Agency.
5 Nov 2012
The star CW Leonis is showing signs of old age, much as our own Sun will do in around five billion years. It has entered the giant phase of its life, now thousands of times larger than the Sun, and is throwing off its outer layers.
5 Nov 2012
UK Space Agency and Science & Technology Facilities Council invite you to The ESA Technology Transfer Network SpaceTech2012 event, the premier UK event linking the unique world of space research with successful commercial business development.
29 Oct 2012
This image indicates the direction for our exploration of space over the next 50 years. It shows the final stages of the Gaia payload module integration.
29 Oct 2012
The UK Satellite Navigation Competition, sponsored by the UK Space Agency, has crowned “Travel Time” as the best new use of satellite data from this year’s competition.
29 Oct 2012
The International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC), Satellite Applications Catapult, MetOffice and UK Space Agency are organising simultaneous Space Solutions ‘Hackathons’ at the Electron Building, on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, near Oxford and at the MetOffice, Exeter.
26 Oct 2012
The UK Space Agency is making £1.1M available in support of projects to further explore our neighbouring planet Mars and keep the UK at the forefront of ESA’s Aurora Programme – a European long-term plan for the robotic and human exploration of the solar system.
26 Oct 2012
The winners of the prestigious Sir Arthur Clarke Awards were announced today (26th October 2012) at an awards ceremony at the House of Lords. Each award was presented to its winner by UK impressionist Jon Culshaw, an avid amateur astronomer and a contributor to Sky at Night and Stargazing Live. The awards recognize notable contributions to the UK space sector.
22 Oct 2012
This Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) image shows an area with extensive agricultural use in western Russia. Roads and rivers can be seen cutting through the cropland.
17 Oct 2012
Galileo is the satellite navigation system currently being built by the European Union and the European Space Agency.
16 Oct 2012
The UK Space Agency will be sending out an electronic holiday card this December and that card could be carrying your design.
12 Oct 2012
Europe's second pair of fully operational Galileo satellites was successfully launched today (12 October 2012) from the European spaceport in French Guiana, South America.
12 Oct 2012
The Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, today announced the release of the UK Space Agency’s latest report on the progress of the UK space industry. The announcement was made at the OECD Space Symposium in Paris where the Minister delivered the keynote speech on the role of space in monitoring global threats.
11 Oct 2012
Europe's second pair of fully operational Galileo satellites has now joined the Soyuz rocket on the launch pad at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana.
10 Oct 2012
Europe’s Herschel space observatory has discovered enough water vapour to fill Earth’s oceans more than 2000 times over, in a gas and dust cloud that is on the verge of collapsing into a new Sun-like star.
10 Oct 2012
With the Olympics just behind us and the next generation inspired to follow a fit and healthy lifestyle, astronauts will be picking up where Olympians left off, inspiring UK students to get off the sofa and start training.
10 Oct 2012
The UK Space Agency seeks to appoint a new Chief Executive to build the profile and presence of the Agency as it pursues an ambitious growth target for the industry.
9 Oct 2012
It's World Space Week and this year's theme is Space for Human Safety and Security.
8 Oct 2012
The 2000s saw the launch of the Earth observation satellite Envisat, Mars and Venus Express and deep space mappers Herschel and Planck all of which have all sent back stunning images and a wealth of data. This image of the experimental navigation satellite GIOVE-A may therefore seem an odd choice.
8 Oct 2012
Images from the Cassini Huygens mission to Saturn make some of the most spectacular Images of the Week. To celebrate the data Cassini continues to send back we have selected an image of the spacecraft itself which was launched in 1997.
5 Oct 2012
This sparkling cylinder is Meteosat 1, launched in 1977 to provide weather data from its geostationary orbit over most of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the eastern half of South America.
4 Oct 2012
This World Space Week the UK Space Agency is continuing its celebrations of 50 years of the UK in space. To acknowledge this achievement we will be bringing you a set of historical space images. Each day of World Space Week we will bring you an image of one spacecraft for each of the UK’s decades in space.
2 Oct 2012
The UK Space Agency is hosting the biggest EU space event this year. European Space Solutions is a major 3-day conference, exhibition and business support event that will bring together business and the public-sector with users and developers of space-based solutions to explore how space can make a real difference to the lives, and livelihoods, of people across Europe.
27 Sep 2012
World Space Week - the largest public space event on Earth - ‘blasted off’ on Thursday 04 October 2012.
27 Sep 2012
If you have ever wanted to chat to an astronaut, find out about stars and galaxies or ask how a Mars rover is built then tune in to the UK Space Agency twitter feed (@spacegovuk) for World Space Week 4th-10th October.
27 Sep 2012
The Royal Observatory Greenwich has announced the winning images of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2012 competition.
20 Sep 2012
Building on a decade of success in making satellite data available to users for disaster response, the International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’ has opened its doors even wider and is now providing universal access to the Charter during natural emergencies – a move that was initiated when the UK was leading the Charter in 2011. Any country, regardless of whether they are a Charter member, is now able to draw upon the data provided by this international network of satellites.
20 Sep 2012
UKube-1 – the UK’s first Cubesat mission – has ‘booked’ its journey into space on a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket. The launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrone in Kazakhstan is expected to take place in March 2013.
19 Sep 2012
By looking beyond visible light at infrared light, the James Webb Space Telescope is going to open up another world in the way we look at the cosmos. This is the focus of a new light-hearted, educational video by STScl.
18 Sep 2012
MetOp-B, the European polar orbiting weather satellite, was successfully launched on 17th September 2012 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
18 Sep 2012
This stunning image of the island paradise Bora-Bora is the first captured from the new Earth observation satellite SPOT 6.
13 Sep 2012
Winners of the YouTube Spacelab competition will get to see their experiments performed live in space today at 15:50 BST.
11 Sep 2012
Europe’s Gaia mission to survey a billion stars has passed a gruelling test to prove it can withstand the extreme temperatures it will experience in space when it is launched next year.
10 Sep 2012
The next UK Space Conference will be held on 16-17 July 2013 at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow.
10 Sep 2012
This image shows a rare glimpse of a spacecraft after launch. The European Space Agency's Rosetta comet-chaser photographed itself in space at a distance of 35 million km from Earth. Rosetta is currently in hibernation until 2014 when it will be woken to complete the first long term study of a comet at close quarters.
7 Sep 2012
Students aged 10-18 years old are invited to share their visions of the future of space exploration. NASA, The Universities Space Research Association and the German Aerospace Centre are inviting visual, literary, musical, dance and video artwork to be sent to the 2012 Humans in Space Youth Art Competition by 15th November, 2012. Artwork should consider “How will humans use science and technology to explore space, and what mysteries will they uncover?”
6 Sep 2012
Recently engaged in providing support to the successful landing of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity”, ESA’s Mars Express has now returned to its primary mission of studying the diverse geology and atmosphere of the Red Planet from orbit.
6 Sep 2012
Metop-B, the European polar orbiting weather satellite, designed and manufactured by Astrium, is now ready to launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
4 Sep 2012
Would you like to win a trip to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas? The UK Space Design Competition gives you and your friends the opportunity to do just that!
3 Sep 2012
With the Agency’s ‘Space for All’ scheme now in its fourth year, and going strong, space isn’t just the business of astronauts and scientists; it’s now up for grabs in many different guises all across the nation.
3 Sep 2012
Image of the week: Colourful Colossuses and Changing Hues
29 Aug 2012
This image is directed roughly towards the centre of our galaxy, and shows cold dust laced between the stars. The colder material looks redder in this image, which is created by combining Planck data with shorter wavelength data from NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) satellite.
29 Aug 2012
Ahead of its science mission to investigate the geology and biology of Mars’s past and present, Curiosity has been returning images from inside the planet’s Gale Crater.
29 Aug 2012
The UK Space Agency Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation (CEOI) invites proposals for small studies to prepare new mission concepts, Earth Observation (EO) instruments or critical EO technology for future national, European or international missions.
27 Aug 2012
NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, has died at the age of 82 from complications following heart surgery.
22 Aug 2012
The next two Galileo satellites are now in place at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, being prepared for their shared launch this autumn.
22 Aug 2012
The space sector impacts upon our everyday lives as it contributes to efforts to address major societal challenges, e.g. in climate change, resource efficiency, transport, citizen's security, natural and man-made disasters, and health care.
21 Aug 2012
A UK Space Agency-funded instrument, designed to investigate the interior structure and processes of Mars, has been selected to travel to the Red Planet on NASA’s newly announced InSight mission.
20 Aug 2012
This image is a composite of several images taken during two separate flybys of Titan on 9 October (T19) and 25 October (T20) 2006. It demonstrates the work planetary scientists do to piece together information from exploration satellites to interrogate the past processes and current conditions on a planet or moon.
17 Aug 2012
The programme “REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation)” aims to
tackle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from deforestation and forest degradation in
Indonesia, One of the key expected results under that programme is the acquisition of high resolution
satellite imagery.
