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Space Chronicle Volume 5-2 April 2025

Contents

ESA@50: THE FORMATIVE YEARS
The story of how the European Space Agency was formed amidst a backdrop of political and budgetary uncertainty.
Brian Harvey

ENDING OF AN ERA
Remembering the BIS Soviet Technical Forum (later the Sino-Russian Forum), which ran for 45 years.
David J. Shayler

THE GARDEN SHED ASTRONOMER
The story of BIS member and amateur astronomer Hugh Percival Williams and his detailed map of the lunar surface.
Griffith Ingram

Space Chronicle Volume 5-1 January 2025

Contents

A STEP TOO FAR?
A former NASA historian traces the agency's stop-start approach to retrieving rock samples from Mars.
David S.F. Portree

A TITANIC ACHIEVEMENT
An insider's personal perspective of ESA's hugely successful Huygens probe and its 2005 landing on Saturn's moon, Titan.
Paolo Ferri

SPICING UP THE DATA
The story of how systems had to be put in place to ensure the safe storage, retrieval and utilisation of the ever-increasing amount of data being received from space, as told by the former manager of NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility.
Charles Acton

Space Chronicle Volume 5-3 July 2025

Contents

ASTP@50: THE EYEWITNESS
Personal recollections of the historic "handshake in space" from one of the astronauts who flew the mission.
Vance Brand

ASTP@50: EAST MEETS WEST IN SPACE
An examination of the contribution made by the ASTP mission to better East-West relations.
Ben Evans

ASTP@50: RECREATING THE MAGIC MOMENT
The large-scale models created for the BBC's coverage of the ASTP mission.
Mat Irvine

THE SEARCH FOR COSMONAUT X-2
An update in the story of Grigori Nelyubov, one of the forgotten cosmonauts selected with Yuri Gagarin.
Dominic Phelan