spacetoday.net: space news from around the webin association with SpaceNews


CNES drops Mars, ISS projects
Posted: Thu, May 1, 2003, 8:56 AM ET (1256 GMT)
CNES logo The French space agency CNES announced Wednesday that it will cancel plans to mount a series of Mars landers as well as experiments planned for the International Space Station in a bid to deal with a budget shortfall. CNES plans to end its participation in Netlander, a European-American effort to land several small spacecraft on the surface of Mars; that mission was scheduled for launch in 2007. CNES also plans to drop out of the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), a proposed space telescope largely backed by the US. CNES will suspend plans to send several experiments to the ISS, as well as a joint microsatellite project with Brazil. The cancellations will allow CNES to cover most of a 90-million-euro (US$100-million) deficit the agency ran in 2002; the cuts will reduce the deficit to 35 million euros (US$39 million). The remainder of the deficit will be covered by a loan from other government ministries that will be paid off over three years. CNES also plans to fix its contribution to ESA's launch vehicle programs, primarily the Ariane 5, to a fixed level of 685 million euros (US$765 million) a year through 2009.
<<previous article   next article>>
news in brief
Space Force adds Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to NSSL contract
Posted: Sun, Mar 30 9:19 AM ET (1319 GMT)

Cygnus departs from ISS
Posted: Sun, Mar 30 9:14 AM ET (1314 GMT)

Vulcan Centaur certified for national security launches
Posted: Sun, Mar 30 9:10 AM ET (1310 GMT)

news links
Wednesday, April 2
Europe’s Launcher Revival Faces Challenging Start
Aviation Week — 5:18 am ET (0918 GMT)
Gwynne Shotwell Rides SpaceX To Billion-Dollar Fortune
Forbes.com — 5:15 am ET (0915 GMT)
FAA closes investigation of January SpaceX Starship explosion
KTBC-TV Austin, TX — 5:11 am ET (0911 GMT)


about spacetoday.net   ·   info@spacetoday.net   ·   mailing list