European Space Agency

Image: The landscape around the city of Bentiu in South Sudan is featured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image. View the full article

New research, based largely on information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and ESA’s CryoSat satellite missions, has revealed alarming findings about the state of Antarctica's ice shelves: 40% of these floating shelves have significantly reduced in volume over the past quarter-century. While this underscores the accelerating impacts of climate change on the world's southernmost continent, the picture of ice deterioration is mixed. View the full article

When astronauts return to the lunar surface they are probably going to be doing more driving than walking – but to keep billowing moondust at bay they are going to need roads. An ESA project reported in today’s Nature Scientific Reports tested the creation of roadworthy surfaces by melting simulated moondust with a powerful laser. View the full article

Video: 00:03:42 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. Do Hera and her CubeSats have the right stuff to explore space? Before launch they need to prove it, with a round of testing at the ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands – Europe’s largest satellite test facility. Suitable for kids and adults alike, this episode of ‘The Incredible Adventures of Hera’ explains all the tests that Hera has to go through, using facilities that simulate every aspect of launch and spaceflight – from vibration to noise, temperature extremes and space-grade vacuum! Watch the other episodes of The Incredible Adventures of the Hera Mission View the full article

Governments and international disaster response teams have long relied on satellites to assess the impacts of disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Now ESA has partnered with ICEYE, a Finnish microsatellite manufacturer, to improve early warning systems for floods and wildfires and extend their geographical coverage globally. View the full article

Video: 00:03:44 Nestled between the colossal martian ‘Grand Canyon’ (Valles Marineris) and the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System (the Tharsis region) lies Noctis Labyrinthus – a vast system of deep and steep valleys that stretches out for around 1190 km (roughly the length of Italy here on Earth). This video visualises a flight over the eastern part of Noctis Labyrinthus as seen by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). It presents a perspective view down and across this fascinating landscape, showing distinctive ‘graben’ – parts of the crust that have subsided in relation to their surroundings. The intense volcanism in the nearby Tharsis region is to blame for the formation of these features; this volcanism caused large areas of martian crust to arch upwards and become stretched and tectonically stressed, leading to it thinning out, faulting and subsiding. The highest plateaus seen here represent the original surface level before chunks of surface fell away. The intersecting canyons and valleys are up to 30 km wide and six km deep. In many places, gigantic landslides can be seen covering the valley slopes and floors, while other valley slopes show large dune fields created by sands blown both down and upslope by martian winds. ESA has highlighted Mars Express images of Noctis Labyrinthus before, in 2006 and 2015. Mars Express has orbited the Red Planet since 2003, imaging Mars’s surface, mapping its minerals, studying its tenuous atmosphere, probing beneath its crust, and exploring how various phenomena interact in the martian environment. For more from the mission and HRSC, see ESA's Mars Express releases. Processing notes: The video was created using an image mosaic built over eight orbits (0442, 1085, 1944, 1977, 1988, 10497, 14632 and 16684) by ESA’s Mars Express and its HRSC. This mosaic is combined with topographic information from a digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape, with every second of the video comprising 50 separate frames rendered according to a pre-defined camera path. The opening credits (Mars globe, first 24 seconds) were created using the recent 20-year Mars global colour mosaic; this opening sequence has a three-fold vertical exaggeration, while the subsequent flight animation has a 1.5-fold exaggeration. Haze has been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model, and starts building up at distance of between 150 and 200 km. The video is centred at the martian coordinates of 7°S, 265°E. Alt-text: The video begins on a rotating full-globe of Mars, with white polar caps and mottled tan surface visible. It then zooms in on the westernmost part of the large Valles Marineris canyon system, a region highlighted by a white box, and swaps to a new Mars Express visualisation of Noctis Labyrinthus. The camera then flies slowly across a landscape that is broken apart by deep intersecting valleys and canyons. View the full article

With many people around the world suffering from various forms of malnutrition it’s important that the absolute basics such as rice, soya and wheat are as nourishing as possible. ESA-funded research shows that the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission and the Italian Prisma mission could be used to monitor the nutritional content of staple crops. This could, for example, help farmers take appropriate steps to boost the quality of their crops as they grow. View the full article

Today, ESA's Gaia mission releases a goldmine of knowledge about our galaxy and beyond. Among other findings, the star surveyor surpasses its planned potential to reveal half a million new and faint stars in a massive cluster, identify over 380 possible cosmic lenses, and pinpoint the positions of more than 150 000 asteroids within the Solar System. View the full article

Andreas Mogensen had a busy first month in space, with plenty of science from sleeping in orbit and capturing pictures of thunderstorms to making chocolate mousse. Here is an overview of Andreas’s first month of science on the Space Station. View the full article

ESA is calling for visionary ideas for how to use a constellation of communication and navigation satellites around the Moon to establish lunar businesses – and unlock opportunities on Earth. View the full article

If you are interested in applying for a job at ESA, curious to know what opportunities we have for you or would like to hear about the projects our teams are working on, then mark your calendar for 9 November 2023! For this fully online event, we will be streaming a programme packed full of sessions giving you an insider’s look at STEM careers at ESA. View the full article

View the full article

Week in images: 02-06 October 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

The European Space Agency ESA and Axiom Space signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 1 October in Paris to explore collaborative opportunities in human spaceflight, science, technology, and commercialisation. View the full article

Among the smallest passengers aboard Europe’s Vega launch tonight are also the most ambitious in nature: twin miniaturised laboratories, or CubeSats, for the in-orbit demonstration of disruptive state-of-the-art space technologies. View the full article

The smallest flowering plant on Earth might become a nutritious foodstuff for astronauts in the future, as well as a highly efficient source of oxygen. To help test their suitability for space, floating clumps of watermeal – individually the size of pinheads – were subjected to 20 times normal Earth gravity aboard ESA’s Large Diameter Centrifuge by a team from Mahidol University in Thailand. View the full article

ESA Impact 2023 – Quarter 3 Welcome to this edition of ESA Impact, an interactive publication covering stories and images from the third quarter of 2023. View the full article

Image: The heart of the Nueva Vizcaya Province on Luzon, the largest and most populated island of the Philippines, shows up brightly in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 false-colour image. View the full article

Video: 00:05:59 On Friday 29 September, the European Space Agency opened the doors of the ESA Centre for Earth Observation, ESRIN, to host the ESA Open Day in the framework of the European Researchers' Night. With a full program of presentations, interviews, interactive games, hands-on workshops and various activities, more than 1400 people, among adults and children, had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the activities and programs in which ESA is involved every day. View the full article

View the full article

Our planet is being continuously bathed in radio signals from satnav satellites – which are useful for much more than just navigation. Dedicated space missions acquire these signal reflections to amass valuable environmental information. The shoebox-sized PRETTY CubeSat, flying on Europe’s next Vega launcher, will investigate a new frequency and novel observation angle to better measure the rate of climate change – at the same time as gathering radiation data on its surrounding space environment. View the full article

Image: Image comparing views of Sun with two Solar Orbiter instruments View the full article

Thanks to their ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forests have long been recognised as a key tool in the fight against climate change – but not all forests are equal. New research based on data from ESA’s SMOS satellite mission has found that, surprisingly, young trees are champions at carbon capture. View the full article

Measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite show that this year’s ozone hole over Antarctica is one of the biggest on record. The hole, which is what scientists call an ‘ozone depleting area,’ reached a size of 26 million sq km on 16 September 2023. This is roughly three times the size of Brazil. View the full article

A briefcase-sized CubeSat being flown on Europe’s next Vega launcher this week will gather 340 km wide views of Earth’s vegetation growth, employing a spectral imager originally designed for ESA’s decade-in-flight Proba-V. View the full article