News

On 12 October 2020, Dr. Phys. Marius-Ioan Piso, President of the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA), was elected chair of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN-COPUOS), for the 2020-2021 period. The decision was taken by consensus by the 95 member states.

A crucial part of rocket reusability is a smooth return and landing. ESA has helped „Elie Carafoli” National Institute for Aerospace Research Romania, INCAS , to demonstrate vertical takeoff, short hovering and landing manoeuvres using a small-scale flight demonstrator.

This year, the Nobel Prize in Physics, announced in October, was shared between Roger Penrose from University of Oxford, "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity" and Reinhard Genzel, of Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, together with Andrea Ghez, from the University of California, " for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy."

With its two releases of data in September 2016 and April 2018, Gaia has truly revolutionised the study of the Milky Way. It ushered in the golden age of galactic archaeology, a discipline that searches for evidence of past galactic events in the characteristics and behaviour of stars and stellar populations that we see today. Gaia does not only reveal details of the Galaxy’s structure. The mission creates an awe-inspiring astronomical movie reconstructing the Milky Way’s evolution to the past and future over billions of years.

The space agency logos for the next spacecraft to head to the Moon have been added to Orion as part of the Artemis programme.