Five stories that surprised the space world: 2025 review
'Unsettled' is a polite word for 2025 in the space domain.
ESA leaders greenlight $1.6 billion for new ‘non-aggressive’ space security initiative
ESA's ruling Council of Ministers approved a whopping $25.7B in funds over the next three years — a 32 percent increase over the previous three-year budget.
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Data overload threatens decisionmakers as autonomy expands
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
US slams ‘discriminatory’ draft EU space law as imperiling NATO cooperation
The State Department's damning critique argues that, if enacted, the draft law would imperil cooperation on "space weather, remote sensing, space exploration, spaceflight safety, space debris mitigation and remediation, [and] communications."
In historic shift, ESA poised to take on defense role
Since its founding 50 years ago, the European Space Agency has shunned involvement in military space activities.
Europe’s strategic autonomy push fuels space mega-merger
"Project Bromo is a sovereignty play," Caleb Henry, research director at Quilty Space, told Breaking Defense.
Germany inks Artemis Accords, citing ‘security impact’ in space
Germany is not the first European country to join, but as a political and economic center of the continent, Berlin's move could convince several others to follow suit.
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Turning R&D into reality to meet the challenges of the modern battlefield
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
Spurred by Ukraine war, 18 Western countries plan to share remote sensing data
"Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the importance of a persistent space surveillance capability," said the United Kingdom, as European nations (and Canada) band together.
The next energy frontier: A race for solar power from space?
The concept of solar power satellites, first posited in 1968, seems to be back in fashion — not just in the US with initiatives at DoD and NASA, but around the globe, including in Beijing.