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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Image: This image of the young volcanic region of Elysium Planitia on Mars [10.3°N, 159.5°E] was taken on 14 April 2021 by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). The two blue parallel trenches in this image, called Cerberus Fossae, were thought to have formed by tectonic processes. They run for almost one thousand km over the volcanic region. In this image, CaSSIS is looking straight down into one of these 2 km-wide fissures. The floor here is a few hundred metres deep and is filled with coarse-grained sand, likely basaltic in composition, which appears blue in the CaSSIS false-colour composite image. The flat volcanic plains nearby are…
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The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Danube Delta – the second largest river delta in Europe. View the full article
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The dates have been set for ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s upcoming command of the International Space Station, as ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer prepares to join him on board. View the full article
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ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide are set to leave the International Space Station on a spacewalk on Sunday 12 September. View the full article
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Video: 01:23:15 Watch the full replay of ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer’s pre-launch news conference at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. Held in both English and German on 9 September 2021, the conference covers ESA’s vision for human and robotic exploration as well as the science and operations Matthias will support on the International Space Station during his six-month Cosmic Kiss mission. Cosmic Kiss is Matthias’s first space mission. He will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA as a member of US Commercial Crew-3 alongside @NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron. While in orbit, Matthias wil…
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Image: School is also back in session for ESA astronaut Andrea Mogensen (right) and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins. Together with European Astronaut Centre engineer Robin Eccleston (far left), the trio are taking part in this year’s Pangaea field training campaign to become better field scientists. With all eyes set on the Moon, the three-week campaign has increasingly focussed on lunar geology. Now in its fourth edition, the course kicked off this week with background lessons by top planetary scientists on identifying rock samples of interest for exploration. In this image Andreas and his fellow students use a microscope to analyse samples. Later, the class went on …
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ESA, NASA and Arianespace have jointly defined 18 December 2021 as the target launch date for Ariane 5 flight VA256. This third Ariane 5 launch of 2021 will fly the James Webb Space Telescope to space from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. View the full article
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ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer will soon be launched to the International Space Station for his first mission, ‘Cosmic Kiss’. Tune in to ESA Web TV from 9:00 CEST (8:00 BST) to 10:00 CEST (9:00 BST) Thursday 9 September to watch his pre-launch news conference and learn what awaits him in orbit. View the full article
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Image: EC Commissioner Breton visits ESTEC View the full article
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Video: 00:02:27 Space is changing fast. ESA wants to open up space to start-ups, new companies, new actors – basically to everyone. Our aim today is to help European businesses to use space technology to innovate and grow services and products that ultimately will change all our lives. And, instead of doing everything ourselves, it means we at ESA can be customers too. Commercialisation marks a fundamental change to the traditional rules of the space game, with the market providing more of what we need, and competition slashing costs and sharpening efficiency. It’s already happening in everything from micro-launchers to Earth-Moon communication, and orbital resear…
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Video: 00:18:05 Thomas Pesquet took part in a discussion with the EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, and the EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevicius. The inflight call took place during their visit to ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, where they were accompanied by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher. View the full article
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The tenth annual ESA Open Day is confirmed for the weekend of 2-3 October. A combination of in-person and virtual events, this is your chance to meet Europe’s astronauts and space experts and see spacecraft, hardware and test equipment in close-up. On Saturday people with disabilities will have a special chance to tour ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, while the following day’s virtual event will be open to all. View the full article
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Finding and collecting the best lunar samples will be a major task for the next astronauts on the Moon. ESA’s Pangaea training campaign launches today to equip astronauts with a geologist’s eye on the Moon – humanity’s next space destination to help us understand more about our Solar System. View the full article
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Week in images: 30 August - 3 September 2021 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Video: 00:06:16 The ExoMars team have performed important parachute drop tests as crucial preparation for a safe touchdown on Mars in 2023. The European Rosalind Franklin rover will search for signs of past life beneath the surface of Mars with its unique two metre drill and onboard laboratory. The Russian surface science platform Kazachok will study the environment at the landing site. Landing on Mars is always a challenging endeavour and all possible parameters are taken into account. More information on ExoMars: http://www.esa.int/exomars View the full article
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ESA Member States have agreed upon the boundary conditions for Europe’s upcoming exploitation of Ariane 6 and Vega-C and request ESA to propose a roadmap for new and innovative space transportation solutions for the next decade and a framework for associated short cycle demonstrations. View the full article
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After many technical and programmatic challenges, the first satellite of the next generation of the Meteosat family has taken a major step towards its first flight, currently scheduled for launch in autumn 2022. View the full article
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ESA and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs are opening the second round of their HyperGES fellowship, part of the Access to Space For All Initiative, offering student teams around the globe the chance to perform hypergravity experiments using the Large Diameter Centrifuge at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, with a particular focus on developing nations. View the full article
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Image: 3D-printed lunar floor View the full article
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Image: Quantum technology or stage at a music festival? Both would have one thing in common: students. Oscar-Qube, short for Optical Sensors based on CARbon materials: QUantum Belgium, is an experiment developed by a group of students from the University of Hasselt, Belgium. Part of ESA Education Office’s Orbit Your Thesis! programme, the experiment arrived at the International Space Station on Space X Dragon CR23 resupply mission yesterday. This week, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will install the experiment in the Ice Cubes Facility that offers commercial and educational access to the microgravity environment of the Space Station. Oscar-Qube’s mission is to create a d…
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Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest assessment report laying out the accumulating evidence of the climate crisis. The report identifies Earth observing satellites as a critical tool to monitor the causes and effects of climate change and directly acknowledges the contribution of ESA’s Climate Change Initiative – a research programme that draws on observations from multiple satellite missions. View the full article
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Video: 00:01:46 ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet takes you on a tour of the International Space Station like no other. Filmed with a 360 camera, the Space Station 360 series lets you explore for yourself alongside Thomas’s explanation – this is the Node 2 module. Node 2 is a European-built connecting module also known as Harmony that acts as an internal passageway and utility hub. Its exterior also serves as a work platform for the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, and has docking ports for spacecraft. In this video, Thomas shows the different modules that Node 2 connects: Europe’s Columbus Laboratory, the US lab Destiny and the Japanese Kibo Laboratory. He also shows…
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Countdown to Webb launch with new merchandise collection View the full article
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Week in images: 23 - 27 August 2021 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Image: First light from Sunstorm CubeSat View the full article
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