Thales Alenia Space announced that it has signed a new geosynchronous (GEO) communications satellite contract with OverHorizon with offices in the USA, Sweden and Cyprus.

Houston / Moscow — NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer, Russian cosmonaut
Oleg Kotov and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut
Soichi Noguchi, launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the
International Space Station on Sunday, are onboard of the ISS.

On December 24, 1979, the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA), for the first time,  launched their own rocket into space – the foundation stone of the extraordinary success story of the Ariane launcher system.

Paris –  At the Paris headquarters of the French space agency (CNES), Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight, and Thierry Duquesne, CNES Director for Strategy, Programmes and International Relations, signed an agreement that paves the way for the launch of a high-accuracy atomic clock to be attached to the outside of the European Columbus laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Bejing – China launched last week a remote-sensing satellite, “Yaogan VII,” from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern Gansu Province.

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – NASA’s Wide-field Infrared
Survey Explorer, or WISE, lifted off over the Pacific Ocean this
morning on its way to map the entire sky in infrared frequency.

Government representatives from around the world gathered at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, 7–18 December, to negotiate a deal to restrict emissions of heat-trapping gases that drive climate change.
Also ESA is attending the conference – also known as COP15 as it will be the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – to present how satellites are playing an important role in observing the many aspects of our ever-changing planet.

Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson and SpaceshipOne (SS1) designer, Burt Rutan, revealed last monday SpaceShipTwo, SS2, to the public for the first time since construction of the world’s first manned commercial spaceship began in 2007. SS2 has been designed to take many thousands of private astronauts into space after test programming and all required U.S. government licensing has been completed.