European Space Agency
The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states dedicated to the exploration of space. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, ESA has a worldwide staff of about 2,200
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Video: 00:01:27 The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission has experienced its second close encounter with the Sun. It is delivering more stunning data, and at higher resolution than ever before. The moment of closest approach took place on 12 October at 19:12 UTC (21:12 CEST), when Solar Orbiter was just 29% of the Earth’s distance from the Sun. This movie comes from 13 October, when the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) returned the highest resolution movie of the quiet corona ever taken with any instrument. Each pixel on this movie spans 105 km on the surface of the Sun. This means that if EUI were to look at the Earth from this distance, our entire planet w…
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Video: 00:02:56 Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth. Suitable for kids and adults alike, this episode of ‘The Incredible Adventures of Hera’ details the miniaturised James-Bond-style technology that Hera and its CubeSats will carry aboard with them to explore their asteroid target. View the full article
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Satellite navigation is headed closer to users. ESA’s Navigation Directorate is planning an in-orbit demonstration with new navigation satellites that will orbit just a few hundred kilometres up in space, supplementing Europe’s 23 222-km-distant Galileo satellites. Operating added-value signals, these novel so-called ‘LEO-PNT’ satellites will investigate a new multi-layer satnav system-of-systems approach to deliver seamless Positioning, Navigation and Timing services that are much more accurate, robust and available everywhere. View the full article
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This complex region of craters and fractures in the Terra Sirenum region highlights the varied history of Mars. The image was taken by ESA’s Mars Express on 5 April 2022. View the full article
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Video: 00:00:23 ESA’s Proba-2 captured two partial solar eclipses on 25 October 2022. A solar eclipse is caused by the movement of the Moon around Earth. Despite their much different sizes, due to their separation, the Moon appears to be about the same size as the significantly larger Sun in the sky. Occasionally, the Moon passes in front of the Sun, blocking its light, so that part of the Earth’s surface is in the Moon’s shadow. The line-up is not always perfect, and so not every eclipse is a total solar eclipse. On 25 October only part of the Sun’s light was blocked by the Moon, creating what is known as a partial eclipse. It was visible from most of Europe, Nor…
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Image: Ten years: Warsaw at night View the full article
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Image: Webb explores a pair of merging galaxies View the full article
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The Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite is currently in Cannes undergoing a series of demanding tests in preparation for launch in 2023. The third member of the Sentinel-1 radar family, part of Europe’s Copernicus programme, will continue the critical task of delivering key radar imagery of Earth’s surface for a wide range of services and scientific applications. View the full article
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Despite being essential to life on Earth, the magnetic field isn’t something we can actually see in itself, or ever hear. But, remarkably, scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have taken magnetic signals measured by ESA’s Swarm satellite mission and converted them into sound – and for something that protects us, the result is pretty scary. View the full article
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Week in images: 17-21 October 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Inhambane Bay, in southeast Mozambique, is featured in this true-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article
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Image: Hubble follow-up of DART impact View the full article
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Astronomers looking into the early Universe have made a surprising discovery using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s spectroscopic capabilities, combined with its infrared sensitivity, have uncovered a cluster of massive galaxies in the process of formation around an extremely red quasar. The result will expand our understanding of how galaxies in the early Universe coalesced into the cosmic web we see today. View the full article
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After months of effort, astronomers have succeeded in capturing the momentary shadow cast by the Didymos asteroid, from tens of million km away as it passed in front of far-distant stars – a feat of observation only made possible when both the trajectory of the asteroid and the precise location of the stars are known. Even in that case, to have a chance of success, several observers had to be placed in meticulously predicted locations across the path of the shadow, to glimpse the fleeting fading of the star within just a fraction of a second. View the full article
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Video: 00:31:00 Watch the replay of our Q&A with the media to learn about the outcomes of the 310th session of the ESA Council. Updates are provided on the ambitious package presented by ESA for the 22/23 November ESA Ministerial Meeting in Paris, but also on the further expansion of ESA memberships, the future of ExoMars, Space Transportation and the overall, delicate economic situation. View the full article
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ESA’s Navigation Directorate is planning a new satellite whose results will enable the generation of an updated global model of Earth – the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, employed for everything from land surveying to measuring sea level rise – with an accuracy down to 1 mm, while tracking ground motion of just 0.1 mm per year. This improvement, at a stroke, will have a major impact in multiple navigation and Earth science applications, including enhancing the precision of the Galileo navigation system. This mission, called GENESIS, is being proposed to ESA’s Council Meeting at Ministerial Level next month. View the full article
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Ariane 6, the new heavy-lift launch system being developed by the European Space Agency, will make its inaugural flight as soon as the fourth quarter of 2023. Briefing media gathered at ESA’s Paris Bertrand headquarters on 19 October, Director General Joseph Aschbacher said sufficient progress had been made over the past several months to anticipate a Q4 2023 first flight, pending the realization of three key milestones before April next year. View the full article
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Video: 00:56:31 Press briefing on Ariane 6 progress at ESA Bertrand HQ, 19 October 2022: (l-r at front) Stéphane Israël (Arianespace Chief Executive), André-Hubert Roussel (ArianeGroup Chief Executive), Philippe Baptiste (CNES Chairman and Chief Executive), Joseph Aschbacher (ESA Director General), Daniel Neuenschwander (ESA Director of Space Transportation Systems) View the full article
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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape – the iconic Pillars of Creation – where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear – at times – semi-transparent in near-infrared light. View the full article
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The October Council edition of ESA Impact is online This edition includes Samantha Cristoforetti’s first spacewalk, the inaugural launch of Vega-C, Webb’s first images and ESA’s presence at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Paris View the full article
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Video: 00:53:23 Watch the replay of Samantha’s first news conference in Europe after almost six months of living and working on board the International Space Station. Samantha talks from ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. Her Minerva mission came to an end last week and she and her colleagues from Crew-4 splashed down off the coast of Florida on 14 October at 22:55 CEST. View the full article
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After a two-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the ship transporting the first Meteosat Third Generation satellite docked at Pariacabo in French Guiana and the precious cargo unloaded. Now safe and sound in one of the spaceport’s cleanrooms, satellite engineers will ready it for liftoff on an Ariane 5 rocket in December. Once in geostationary orbit, this new satellite, which carries two new extremely sensitive instruments, promises to further bolster Europe's leadership in weather forecasting. View the full article
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The Ariane 6 launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana now hosts for the first time a fully assembled example of ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket, following the addition of an upper composite to the core stage and four boosters already in place. The upper composite – consisting of two half-fairings and a payload mock-up with the structural adapter needed to join it to the core stage – made the 10 km trip from the encapsulation building to launch pad on 12 October. View the full article
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