Free Republic

The liftoff of a European satellite to measure global wind fields has been delayed 24 hours to Wednesday in hopes of a better weather forecast at the Vega rocket’s launch base in French Guiana, officials announced Monday. The European Space Agency’s Aeolus satellite is ready for launch aboard a solid-fueled Vega rocket, the smallest booster in Arianespace’s fleet, to begin a three-year science mission to monitor wind speeds in Earth’s atmosphere. Officials from Arianespace, ESA and CNES — the French space agency — convened Monday for a launch readiness review. Managers confirmed the readiness of the four-stage Vega launcher and...

After the holidays, when Congress prepares to reauthorize Title VI of the Higher Education Act, legislators should take a cold, hard look at the case of UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies (CNES), a recipient of millions of dollars of federal funding under Title VI, and ask if such programs truly serve our national security interests. Or, are they rather serving the selfish interests of politically motivated faculty and enabling them to promote their anti-Israel activism at the taxpayer’s expense? UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies has a long history of presenting biased, unambiguously anti-Israel positions that go far beyond...

A place in space A substantial national budget and a leading position in ESA makes France Europe’s strongest space nation. But can it withstand increasing international competition? The future of France’s space industry, largest among the European Union nations, is beholden to European policy, say its leaders, They warn that the region’s stagnant space budgets will leave the industry in a diminished competitive position if the situation does not change. The warning comes two months before the industry’s largest customer, the Euro­pean Space Agency, decides its next multi-billion euro budget. “The trend has been flat budgets. It’s a stagnation of...