Congratulations to Professor Hassina Mouri, the first female and the first African geoscientist to be elected as President of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Prof. Mouri conducts research in Medical Geology at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and became the first African female to be appointed as the Vice President of IUGS in 2020.

Tidiane Ouattara, President of the African Space Council of the African Space Agency, recently announced that the African Space Agency (AfSA) will be officially inaugurated in April 2025 in Cairo, Egypt.

A privately-funded five-day mission has successfully carried out the first commercial spacewalk. The Polaris Dawn mission, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9, took four people to an altitude of 1,400 km. Most previous spacewalks, or Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA), were conducted from the International Space Station (ISS) and the Chinese Tiangong space station. As governments seek to cut spending in such ventures, commercial activity looks set to continue taking the lead.

Radian Aerospace has built and has successfully completed some of the initial tests of a reusable orbital spaceplane. The prototype, called PFV01, a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spaceplane, has been performing low-speed takeoff and landing exercises ona short runway. The next tests will take place on a longer runway.