$4,000 to ride weightless on Europe’s “Darebus”
Reuters
“Europe plans to enter the fledgling space tourism market by offering a chance to experience weightlessness to help pay for scientific research.
With Europe’s space ambitions facing a budget squeeze due to the weak economy, the plan to mix science with adventure was unveiled during a ‘zero G’ flight for European officials on a converted Airbus jet…
“Novespace, a unit of France’s CNES space agency and the 17-nation European Space Agency, claims to be leading the field in scientific deployment with a converted Airbus A300 jetliner.”
ESA PRESS RELEASE
2 July 2008
ESA and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) will be co-hosting, in cooperation with NASA and the International Mars Exploration Working Group (IMEWG), an International Conference on 9 and 10 July in the Auditorium of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris* to discuss the next step in the exploration of Mars.
We are still collecting data under NASA’s Phoenix, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Odyssey missions, as well as under ESA’s Mars Express mission, as we prepare for even more exciting missions to come, notably NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and ESA’s ExoMars. Mars exploration is continuing at a steady pace and future missions will integrate scientific payloads and technologies that will eventually serve the ultimate goal of carrying out a manned mission to Mars.
The international community has for a long time agreed that the next imperative step, one which will exponentially increase our knowledge and understanding of the Red Planet and its environment, is a Sample Return Mission.
International cooperation is increasingly being regarded as an enabling element of space exploration, especially when it comes to challenging endeavours. These two factors – the compelling next step in the exploration of Mars and international cooperation – prompted the IMEWG to decide to set up an ad hoc international committee to study an international architecture for a Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission concept.
Continue reading ‘Paris Confab to Explore International Mars Sample Return Mission’
