Mission to Mercury

The BBC writes that ESA (European Space Agency) has approved a large mission to Mercury. The total cost will be 970m €, up from 665m and should reach Mercury in 2020 along with a Japanese probe. The European part will be an orbiter to that will study the planet for about a year studying a range of scientific areas. The Japanese part will look at Mercury's magnetic field. The probe will be the most extensive mission to Mercury yet.

China in Space

CNN has an article on China's space programme. It's kind of interesting how massive "space programmes" were seen as relics of the cold war. Now they're back. The USA, Russia, China, ESA (European Space Agency), India and Brazil (which has the luxury of launching almost directly from the equator, which gives their rockets a huge sling-shot effect) all have serious space programmes producing results. Meanwhile smaller countries are also getting in on the act, South Korea now has its own working rockets. And that doesn't even begin to mention the private companies involved, most publicly Virgin Galactic, but also a series of other companies many of them working with the security of government contracts (i.e NASA will buy private rides to space from 2011 until it has new rockets in 2015-2017ish), plus there are first section of a space hotel already in orbit. Then of course there is the international space station which will be complete next year. I will definitely right more about all of this because I'm fascinated that decades after everyone thought space would become another regular "human space", and then nothing happened, everything is starting to happen now.