EURAMET-BIOSPHERE ran from 2022 until September 2025 and has successfully developed tools, methodologies and measurement infrastructures needed to evaluate the mutual impact of cosmic rays and biologically active ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Such results support EU policy makers with scientific assessments and information that have the potential to substantially improve policies on climate, health and anthropogenic emission activities.

The DUSTER project officially and successfully ended in June, but maybe not for long. This two-year project, led by a consortium of Belgian, French and Spanish labs and institutes managed to develop a breadboard instrument to study the behaviour and electrostatic charging of Lunar dust for future Lunar missions.

On 20 June, a delegation from South Korea came to the Institute to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between BIRA-IASB and the National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER), in the framework of the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) satellite mission:

End 2026, the Belgian ESA astronaut will embark on his first space mission, carrying a diamond-based quantum sensor for astrochemical research to the International Space Station.

NASA’s Curiosity rover, using its Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS), has repeatedly detected methane on Mars, giving rise to speculation about possible biological sources. But how reliable are these detections?

Thanks to the GRMB project, BIRA-IASB researchers have contributed to classifying 24 years of Cluster measurements by determining in which region of the magnetosphere the satellites are located at any given time...