France Archives

View Satellite Images of What’s Below While Flying–Wait a Minute…

Air France began a partnership with ESA in 2007 to show satellite images of the countries, cities, and terrain below the airplane to passengers. Air France plays CD-ROMs with synchronized images of the flight path below on routes between Paris and Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, and Singapore.

Find The Coveted Parisian Parking Spot

A service, launched in December 2006 in Paris, helps drivers locate the closest available parking spot with the help of GPS signals. Approximately 120 participating garages relay availability data to a centralized database. Drivers with GPS-enabled phones can download data and receive precise directions to the closest available space.

2006 – Space Industry Demographics – Snapshot

Although new hiring statistics are not uniformly available for other major civil space programs or international companies, steady growth in the global space industry over the past five years suggests that demand for skilled S&E workers with space-relevant skills exists around the world.

2005 – ISS

The largest in-space platform ever constructed is the International Space Station (ISS). “Led by the United States, the ISS draws upon the scientific and technological resources of 16 nations: Canada, Japan, Russia, 11 nations of the European Space Agency [Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom], and Brazil,” according to NASA.

2005 – Government Space Budgets Overview

Non-U.S. military estimates, which are for 2004, include the following countries: United Kingdom, France, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Israel. China’s budget includes both military and civil expenditures. Note that the estimate of China’s space budget is controversial. At a NASA budget hearing in April 2006, much of the discussion was about the possible size of China’s space program and its ability to complete its plans to land astronauts on the Moon in 2017.