European Space Agency

Video: 00:00:20 In November 2023, the A23a mega iceberg set sail after being grounded on the ocean floor for well over 40 years. Now, driven by winds and currents, A23a is heading away from Antarctic waters as seen in this new animation. The iceberg calved from West Antarctica in 1986 but quickly grounded itself in the Weddell Sea where it remained for over four decades. At around 4000 sq km in area, more than four times the size of New York City, and just over 280 m thick, the berg currently holds the title for world’s largest iceberg. The animation uses sea-ice concentration data and shows the iceberg’s movements between 1 November 2023 to 23 January 2024. Similar to many icebergs originating from the Weddell sector, A23a is likely to be expelled into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current – propelling it towards the South Atlantic along a trajectory commonly referred to as ‘iceberg alley’. View the full article

ESA’s next mission to Venus was officially ‘adopted’ today by the Agency’s Science Programme Committee. EnVision will study Venus from its inner core to its outer atmosphere, giving important new insight into the planet's history, geological activity and climate. View the full article

Today, ESA’s Science Programme Committee approved the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, the first scientific endeavour to detect and study gravitational waves from space. View the full article

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ESA has teamed up with Xbox and the epic space game Starfield for a spacesuit design competition that is out of this world. View the full article

Image: Return to the labyrinth View the full article

A groundbreaking study that combines satellite data and Artificial Intelligence has thrown new light on the number of vessels at sea. Astonishingly, the study reveals that around 75% of the world's industrial fishing vessels have previously been ‘dark’ to public tracking systems. View the full article

Image: This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. This nebula, known as N79, is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionised, captured here by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). N79 is a massive star-forming complex spanning roughly 1630 light-years in the generally unexplored southwest region of the LMC. N79 is typically regarded as a younger version of 30 Doradus (also known as the Tarantula Nebula), another of Webb’s recent targets. Research suggests that N79 has a star formation efficiency exceeding that of 30 Doradus by a factor of two over the past 500 000 years. This particular image centres on one of the three giant molecular cloud complexes, dubbed N79 South (S1 for short). The distinct ‘starburst’ pattern surrounding this bright object is a series of diffraction spikes. All telescopes which use a mirror to collect light, as Webb does, have this form of artifact which arises from the design of the telescope. In Webb's case, the six largest starburst spikes appear because of the hexagonal symmetry of Webb's 18 primary mirror segments. Patterns like these are only noticeable around very bright, compact objects, where all the light comes from the same place. Most galaxies, even though they appear very small to our eyes, are darker and more spread out than a single star, and therefore do not show this pattern. At the longer wavelengths of light captured by MIRI, Webb’s view of N79 showcases the region’s glowing gas and dust. This is because mid-infrared light is able to reveal what is happening deeper inside the clouds (while shorter wavelengths of light would be absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula). Some still-embedded protostars also appear in this field. Star-forming regions such as this are of interest to astronomers because their chemical composition is similar to that of the gigantic star-forming regions observed when the Universe was only a few billion years old and star formation was at its peak. Star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same furious rate as N79, and have a different chemical composition. Webb is now providing astronomers the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in N79 with the telescope’s deep observations of distant galaxies in the early Universe. These observations of N79 are part of a Webb programme that is studying the evolution of the circumstellar discs and envelopes of forming stars over a wide range in mass and at different evolutionary stages. Webb’s sensitivity will enable scientists to detect for the first time the planet-forming dust discs around stars of similar mass to that of our Sun at the distance of the LMC. This image includes 7.7-micron light shown in blue, 10 microns in cyan, 15 microns in yellow, and 21 microns in red (770W, 1000W, 1500W, and 2100W filters, respectively). [Image description: A bright young star within a colourful nebula. The star is identifiable as the brightest spot in the image, surrounded by six large spokes of light that cross the image. A number of other bright spots can also be seen in the clouds, which are shown in great detail as layers of colourful wisps.] Release on esawebb.org View the full article

Video: 00:03:52 ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt took off on 18 January 2024 as part of the Axiom-3 crew for a 14-day mission to the International Space Station. After 36 hours catching up to the Space Station, the Dragon docked to the Space Station, the seal between the two tested and finally Marcus started his Muninn mission as he entered the International Space Station. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen along with the rest of the crew of Expedition 70 was waiting to welcome them to space! View the full article

Image: Marcus Wandt entered the International Space Station and started his Muninn mission, an up to 14-day mission. He is the first ESA project astronaut after being chosen for ESA's astronaut reserve in 2022. He launched as part of the Axiom-3 crew together with Michael López-Alegría, Walter Villadei and Alper Gezeravcı. Waiting for him on the Space Station was ESA astronaut and commander of expedition 70, Andreas Mogensen who is on his Huginn mission. View the full article

Week in images: 15-19 January 2024 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, one of the fastest changing glaciers in the world. View the full article

Video: 00:10:19 ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt launched together with the rest of the Axiom-3 crew at 22:49 CET on 18 January 2024, from launch pad 39A, NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. Marcus will start his Muninn mission when he enters the International Space Station on Friday 19 January, where he will spend up to 14 days conducting science and testing technology that can one day help people on Earth. You can follow Marcus mission on his social media: https://twitter.com/astro_marcus https://www.instagram.com/esaastro_marcus/ And learn more about his Muninn mission on ESA Muninn page: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/muninn View the full article

ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt from Sweden blasted into space tonight from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, at 21:49 GMT (22:49 CET, 16:49 local time). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) crew of four astronauts from launch pad 39A. View the full article

Windswept piles of dust, or layers of ice? ESA’s Mars Express has revisited one of Mars’s most mysterious features to clarify its composition. Its findings suggest layers of water ice stretching several kilometres below ground – the most water ever found in this part of the planet. View the full article

Image: Heart of ESA vacuum testing View the full article

Video: 00:02:22 From the International Space Station to Earth, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen talks about what kind of person his fellow Scandinavian and ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt is. The Axiom-3 mission with Marcus onboard is planned to launch in mid-January 2024 to the International Space Station for a 14-day mission, where Marcus will join Andreas, marking the first time two Scandinavians are in space together. View the full article

Week in images: 08-12 January 2024 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Tune in from Wednesday 17 January from 20:15 GMT/21:15 CET to see ESA project astronaut Marcus Wadnt take off to the International Space Station for his first mission, Muninn. Live coverage will run on ESA Web TV channel two. View the full article

ESA won the Best Merchandise award at Space Creator Day 2023, a significant recognition by a community of space enthusiasts. The award highlights ESA’s efforts to promote its activities through innovative and attractive designs that appeal to the public. View the full article

Video: 01:16:00 Watch the replay of ESA's start-of-the-year press briefing looking ahead to 2024. Director General Josef Aschbacher presents this year's key milestones from ESA HQ in Paris: in 2024, Europe will regain its autonomous access to space, with the inaugural flight of the heavy-lift launcher Ariane 6 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. Hear more about Hera, the planetary defence mission which will be launched at the end of 2024 and EarthCARE, ESA’s Earth observation mission studying the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting solar radiation. Updates are also provided on how commercial European space companies will compete to deliver supplies to the International Space Station by 2028. Access the presentation 'ESA Milestones in 2024' View the full article

Image: Micro-world within atomic clock View the full article

Join ESA's start-of-the-year press briefing with Director General Josef Aschbacher on 11 January from 10:00 CET. View the full article

Image: The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) spacecraft Einstein Probe lifted off on a Chang Zheng (Long March) 2C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in China at 15:03 CST / 07:03 GMT / 08:03 CET on 9 January 2024. With the successful launch, Einstein Probe began its mission to survey the sky and hunt for bursts of X-ray light from mysterious objects such as neutron stars and black holes. Einstein Probe is a collaboration led by CAS with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Germany. “I would like to congratulate our colleagues at CAS on the successful launch of an innovative mission that is set to make great strides in the field of X-ray astronomy”, says Professor Carole Mundell, ESA’s Director of Science. “At ESA, we value international collaboration to advance science and deepen our understanding of the cosmos. I wish the Einstein Probe team a very successful mission.” To efficiently monitor the entire sky and routinely discover new X-ray sources, Einstein Probe is equipped with two instruments that together deliver a wide and sensitive view of the celestial sphere: the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) and the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT). The design of WXT’s optics is inspired by the eyes of lobsters; in a modular layout, it employs hundreds of thousands square fibres that channel light onto the detectors. This gives Einstein Probe the unique capability to observe nearly one-tenth of the celestial sphere in a single glance. New X-ray sources spotted by WXT will be immediately targeted with FXT, which has a narrower view but is more sensitive and will capture more details. ESA supported testing and calibrating the X-ray detectors and the optics of WXT and developed the mirror assembly of one of FXT’s two telescopes in collaboration with MPE and Media Lario (Italy). MPE contributed the mirror assembly for the other telescope of FXT, as well as the detector modules for both FXT units. ESA also provided the system to deflect unwanted electrons away from the detectors (the electron diverter). Throughout the mission, ESA’s ground stations will be used to help download the data from the spacecraft. In return for these contributions ESA will get access to 10% of the data generated by Einstein Probe’s observations. The mission’s capability of spotting new X-ray sources and monitoring how they change over time is fundamental to improving our grasp of the most energetic processes in the Universe. Powerful blasts of X-rays occur when neutron stars collide, supernovas explode, and matter is swallowed by black holes or ejected from the crushing magnetic fields that envelop them. “I am looking forward to the discoveries that Einstein Probe will enable,” says Erik Kuulkers, ESA’s Einstein Probe Project Scientist. “Thanks to its uniquely wide gaze, we will be able to catch the X-ray light from collisions between neutron stars and find out what is causing some of the gravitational waves we detect on Earth. Often, when these elusive space-time ripples are registered, we cannot locate where they are coming from. By promptly spotting the burst of X-rays, we will pinpoint the origin of many gravitational wave events.” After launch, Einstein Probe reached its orbit at an altitude of approximately 600 km. The spacecraft circles the Earth every 96 minutes with an orbital inclination of 29 degrees and it is able to monitor almost the full night-sky in just three orbits. In the next six months, the operation team will be engaged in testing and calibrating the instruments. After this preparation phase, Einstein Probe will spend at least three years attentively watching the entire X-ray sky. View the full article

Visitors to ESA’s cutting-edge visitor centre are being captivated by virtual reality trips to the International Space Station, interactions with a globe showing Earth from space, and displays of astronaut suits, launchers and ESA memorabilia – before getting the chance to buy a souvenir from the ESA space shop. View the full article