The European Space Agency said on Friday it had awarded a 300-million-euro ($400 million) contract to a British technology firm to build a satellite to examine the Sun from closer up than any before it. The Solar Orbiter, to be built by Astrium UK, is due to launch in January 2017 — coming to within 45 million…
So-called dark energy, believed to play a role in the accelerated expansion of the Universe, will be studied in a major science mission to be launched later this decade, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday. A space telescope known as Euclid will be launched in 2019 with the…