European Space Agency

Registration is now open for this year’s annual ESA Open Day in the Netherlands for people with a disability, which will take place on Saturday 7 October, at the Agency’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk. View the full article

Video: 00:02:01 In July 2023 local time, the last Ariane 5 blasted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Relive the moment from up close in this 360° video showing the liftoff and Ariane 5 soaring to orbit. The audio comes from the camera itself that was clamped to a steel cable on a northern ramp surrounding the Ariane 5 flame trench – about 50 m from the ZL3 launchpad. Despite being so close the camera was only protected against the humidity and rain in French Guiana. A solar panel provided extra power to the camera as it had to record for long time to capture the liftoff – no people are allowed so close to the launchpad during the countdown and blastoff. Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket completed its final flight, placing two payloads – the German aerospace agency DLR’s Heinrich Hertz experimental communications satellite and the French communications satellite Syracuse 4b – into their planned geostationary transfer orbits. Total payload mass at liftoff was about 7700 kg – 7000 kg for the two satellites, and the rest for payload adapters and carrying structures. The development of the Ariane series of launch vehicles is an expression of Europe’s position, dating to the 1960s, that participation in the new space age demanded an independent launch capability. Several European countries thus joined forces to develop a launch vehicle. This project, called Europa, was ultimately unsuccessful but in 1975 the European Launcher Development Organisation created to oversee it was merged with the European Space Research Organisation to create ESA, which initiated the Ariane programme. That spirit of co-operation ultimately delivered Ariane 5 and the smaller Vega series of launch vehicles. ESA continues this work with its Member States and industrial partners to meet new market realities with Ariane 6, the newest launch vehicle in the Ariane family. "Please accept the website cookies to see the YouTube version and experience the 360VR." View the full article

Video: 00:04:59 The 117th and final launch of Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket capped a series which began in 1996. Commercial, institutional and scientific payloads included such iconic missions as Rosetta, the James Webb Space Telescope and Juice. Seen here is the launch campaign for VA261 on 5 July 2023, to close the Ariane 5 book; onboard were German aerospace agency DLR’s Heinrich Hertz experimental communications satellite and French communications satellite Syracuse 4b. Access the related broadcast quality footage. View the full article

Week in images: 31 July - 04 August 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: Right on track: Aeolus reentry map View the full article

Image: Andreas Mogensen during a centrifuge training session View the full article

ESA art posters available! Download here! Iconic space posters: discover our stunning designs! View the full article

In recent weeks, devastating wildfires have spread in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Algeria, Tunisia and Canada, causing human casualties as well as massive environmental and economic damage. While wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems, scientists have warned that they are becoming more frequent and more widespread. In response, an upgraded version of ESA’s World Fire Atlas is now available providing a detailed analysis of wildfires across the globe. View the full article

Image: Recycling parts for life on the Moon View the full article

Video: 00:01:35 Aeolus’s mission is over, but weather forecasting is improved forever, and a new precedent has been set for safe satellite reentries. The trailblazing Earth Explorer returned through our atmosphere on 28 July, following the path it was guided on by ESA’s mission control over Earth’s most uninhabited regions, finally disintegrating over the Antarctic. A week-long series of manoeuvres led to this point. They had never been performed before and pushed the satellite to its limits. Aeolus was never designed to fly at such low altitudes – its thrusters and fuel reserves were not made to operate in the thick lower reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Despite choppy skies and one evening where it seemed the attempt could fail, the successful reentry lowered the already small risk of surviving fragments landing where they shouldn’t. The chance of satellite debris falling on your head is three times less than a meteorite doing the same. Despite this, as our orbital highways get busier and reentries become more common, ESA went above and beyond to lower this even further. By turning Aeolus’s original fate – an uncontrolled, ‘natural’ reentry – into an assisted one, they reduced that risk another 42 times. This animation shows how the final moments for Aeolus could have gone, set to a sonification of Aeolus data, composed by Jamie Perera. Find out more about Aeolus’s final moments in the Rocket Science blog. View the full article

A solar eruption detected simultaneously at Earth, the Moon and Mars emphasises the need to prepare human exploration missions for the dangers of space radiation. View the full article

Huginn Mission Brochure - English A brochure all about the Huginn mission View the full article

Video: 00:33:08 The summer fire season is well under way in Europe – countries all around the Mediterranean are experiencing record temperatures coupled with huge wildfires that have led to mass evacuations. In this enthralling new ESA documentary, explore how people on the frontline are using space to better monitor and fight the flames. Follow the incredible stories of the firefighters who dealt with unprecedented fires in Gironde, France, and the forest officers using satellite data to plan for the forests’ recovery. Journey into the heart of Earth's elemental might and discover how space is changing the game for monitoring volcanic eruptions too – including one of the world’s most studied volcano, Mount Etna. FIRE is the first episode of ESA’s new series centred around the elements and showcases how Earth observation has become crucial to those fighting climate change on the ground. View the full article

Euclid’s two instruments have captured their first test images. The mesmerising results indicate that the space telescope will achieve the scientific goals that it has been designed for – and possibly much more. View the full article

Image: This image shows the irregular galaxy NGC 6822, which was observed by the Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) mounted on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. As their names suggest, NIRCam and MIRI probe different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This allows the instruments to observe different components of the same galaxy, with MIRI especially sensitive to its gas-rich regions (the yellow swirls in this image) and NIRCam suitable for observing its densely packed field of stars. NGC 6822 lies about 1.5 million light-years away, and is the Milky Way’s nearest galactic neighbour that is not one of its satellites. It has a very low metallicity, meaning that it contains very low proportions of elements that are not hydrogen and helium. Metallicity is an absolutely key concept in astronomy, in part because elements other than hydrogen and helium are largely produced by stars over their lifetimes. Therefore, in the very early Universe (before the first generation of stars had been born, lived and died) everything had very low metallicity. This makes contemporary low-metallicity objects (like NGC 6822) objects of interest for understanding how processes such as the evolution of stars and the life cycle of interstellar dust likely occurred in the early Universe. This was the motivation for these observations of NGC 6822 with Webb: to better understand how stars form and how dust evolves in low-metallicity environments. The study of NGC 6822 has an interesting history that long predates modern investigations with Webb. It was first discovered by E. E. Barnard, who presented his discovery in a very brief paper in 1884 in The Sidereal Messenger: a short-lived but important American monthly astronomical journal that was published between 1882 and 1891. As with many astronomical objects that appeared diffuse with telescopes of the time, NGC 6822 was miscategorised as an "exceedingly faint nebula". Over the next few years, a series of confusions arose around NGC 6822 over its apparent size, brightness, and even what kind of object it was, because astronomers at the time did not properly account for how different the same object might look with different telescopes. Edwin Hubble, namesake of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space telescope, went on to study NGC 6822 in depth and published a far more detailed paper of his own in 1925. This work was exceptionally important for humanity’s evolving understanding of the Universe, because, in Hubble’s own words: "N.G.C. 6822, [was] the first object definitely assigned to a region outside the galactic system". This paper contributed to solving the debate that was raging amongst astronomers about the extent of the Universe at the time by demonstrating that there were astronomical objects that lay beyond the Milky Way. The study of this galaxy was notably continued by Susan Keyser, who was the first woman to receive a PhD in astronomy from Caltech. Her 1966 thesis remained the most thorough investigation of this galaxy until the 2000s. Now, the study of this key local galaxy is being continued by Webb. Find out more Slider comparison image [Image Description: A dense field of stars with clouds of gas and dust billowing across it. The clouds are patchy and wispy, dense and glowing parts obscuring the centre of the image. Bright galaxies with various shapes and sizes shine through the gas and stars. Some of the star images are a bit larger than the rest, with visible diffraction spikes; two foreground stars are bright in the lower-right corner.] View the full article

An advanced broadband satellite providing high-speed internet services that demonstrate next-generation 5G connectivity has passed its initial in-orbit tests. View the full article

Surpassing scientific expectations and exceeding its planned life in orbit, the Aeolus wind mission has been hailed as one of ESA’s most successful Earth observation missions. And now, its end will go down in history too, thanks to the ingenuity of the Agency’s mission control team who guided this remarkable satellite down to Earth’s atmosphere for a safe reentry. View the full article

Image: Aeolus control team wraps up successful reentry operations View the full article

Week in images: 24-28 July 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:01:47 In the month after its launch on 1 July, Euclid has travelled 1.5 million kilometres from Earth towards the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, meaning it has ‘arrived’ at its destination orbit. This animation showcases the orbits of Euclid (green), the James Webb Space Telescope (blue), and the Gaia mission (yellow) around this unique position in space. The positions of the spacecraft in this animation don’t correspond to their current positions in space. Located about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth in the opposite direction from the Sun, L2 is about four times further away than our Moon. Several other space missions like Webb and Gaia also orbit L2 as it offers the perfect vantage point to study the Universe. At L2, the spacecraft can keep the Sun, Earth and Moon behind them at all times, so they don’t interfere with observations, while at the same time getting a clear view of deep space and pointing an antenna back to Earth to remain in close communication. Euclid and Webb’s halo orbit around L2 is big. In terms of distance, the ‘radius’ of Euclid’s orbit varies from about 400 000 kilometres at its closest to the centre, and up to 800 000 kilometres at its furthest. By the time Euclid has completed one full revolution around L2, the Moon will have circled the Earth six times. Gaia orbits L2 in a Lissajous orbit, with a maximum distance of around 350 000 km from its centre. The region around L2 is big and even though the orbits of these spacecraft seem to cross in the animation, in reality there is plenty of space and a collision can be easily avoided. For example, Webb and Gaia are between 400 000 and 1 100 000 km apart, depending on where they are in their respective orbits. View the full article

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the Río de la Plata estuary between Argentina and Uruguay. View the full article

Image: Astronaut Andreas Mogensen undergoing VR training for EVA emergencies View the full article

When astronauts return to the Moon they will be bringing along a new generation of spacesuits, designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the lunar surface. But in keeping their human occupants safe and comfortable, these suits might also become a fertile environment for harmful microbial life – especially as astronauts will potentially be sharing suits with one another. View the full article

Aeolus reentry - LIVE Get rolling updates on the Aeolus reentry, on the Rocket Science blog View the full article

Video: 00:46:24 On Tuesday 25 July, the four crew members of Crew-7, Jasmin Moghbeli (NASA), Andreas Mogensen (ESA), Satoshi Furukawa (JAXA) and Konstantin Borisov (Roscosmos) hosted a news conference where they talk about their upcoming mission to the International Space Station. View the full article