Aeronautical engineer and former head of INTA's Department of Payloads and Space Sciences
Two decades of work with numerous setbacks, a budget of more than 10 billion dollars and a journey of 1.5 million kilometres to provide us with images of the universe in unprecedented detail have led Science magazine to choose the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as the science breakthrough of 2022.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has just announced who will form part of its new generation of astronauts and there are two Spaniards among those selected: Pablo Álvarez and Sara García (the latter, in reserve). They thus become the third and fourth Spanish astronauts in history, after NASA's Michael López-Alegría (with Spanish and US nationality) and Pedro Duque, the first Spanish astronaut to be selected by ESA in 1992. No Spanish candidate was selected in the European agency's 1998 and 2008 calls for applications.
Early this morning, the Spanish air navigation manager restricted a strip of airspace due to the possible passage of the Chinese space object CZ-5B, which had detached from the Long-March 5B rocket. The fragment finally fell over the Pacific Ocean and Spanish airspace is no longer restricted.