24 | Flight International | 14-20 February 2017 flightglobal.com

SPACEFLIGHT

DAN THISDELL PARIS

European nations did not grant ESA all its wishes for the

next few years, but member states have put their money

down to back strategic priorities in access and navigation

Space gets

euro boost

Super-selfie: before France’s Thomas Pesquet went outside in January, Europe had committed to staying inside the ISS programme

O

n 30 September last year, the

European Space Agency’s (ESA)

comet-chasing “Rosetta” mis-

sion executed what director gen-

eral Jan Woerner describes as a “planned

suicide”, spewing out one last blast of data as

it crashed into the comet it had been tracking

since May 2014.

Quite apart from its effect on 67P/

Churyumov–Gerasimenko, Rosetta – named

after the hieroglyphics-translating stone – was

a real ground-breaker and no mean technical

feat. It took 10 years from launch for the car-

FIN_140217_024-029.indd 24 08/02/2017 14:06