News & articles

OU researchers have been awarded a one-year £307,000 contract by the European Space Agency to investigate the socioeconomic benefits of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) exploration programme.

For years, the eurozone has grown more slowly than the US and its growth has been unbalanced. Germany has enjoyed strong external trade and GDP growth while Italy and France stagnate, and some smaller members submerge.

The new year has not ushered in a fresh political start. The problems and divisions of 2018 have carried over to 2019. Brexit in the UK and the government shutdown in the US provide little optimism for either compromise or genuine change.

The first ever images taken from the surface of the far side of the moon have been released following the Chinese National Space Administration’s (CNSA) successful landing there.

The OU’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) is playing a lead role in a project which will use blockchain technology to allow learners to manage and verify their educational and employment qualifications.

Being vegan appears to be all the rage in Britain. The news that McDonald’s has launched a new plant-based “Happy Meal” for children based on a vegan “wrap” would seem to bear this idea out.

In a spectacular few days for solar system exploration – during which NASA whizzed the New Horizons spacecraft past the Kuiper Belt object 2009 MU69 (somewhat controversially nicknamed “Ultima Thule”) and eased OSIRIS-REx into orbit about the asteroid Bennu – the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) has set its Chang'e 4 lander and rover down on the far side of the moon.

At 84, Shoso Kawamoto is one of the few surviving hibakusha – the Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors – orphans, still telling his story.

The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, successfully completed a flyby of “Ultima Thule”, an object in the Kuiper belt of bodies beyond Neptune on January 1, 2019.

As 2019 begins, OU research looks back on its impact on 2018, which ranges from discovering a new planet, to tackling fake news, to understanding reading habits from the past to today.