European Space Agency

After almost five years, ESA’s Aeolus wind satellite has completed its mission. Now, you can listen to the Life of Aeolus – an incredible wind orchestral piece that has been composed using data spanning Aeolus’ entire life in orbit around Earth. View the full article

Image: Lunar solar power satellite View the full article

Image: Reminiscent of an artist’s pallet, this striking false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission features Lake Abbe in northeast Ethiopia. View the full article

Isn’t it strange that when satellites run out of fuel or a single component breaks down, we just discard them? ESA and European industry have joined forces to make sure that our satellites can live on. View the full article

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Image: Moon stance View the full article

Temperatures are sizzling across Europe this week amid an intense and prolonged period of heat. And it’s only just begun. Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Poland are all facing a major heatwave with temperatures expected to climb to 48°C on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia – potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe. View the full article

From our cosmic backyard in the Solar System to distant galaxies near the dawn of time, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered on its promise of revealing the Universe like never before in its first year of science operations. To celebrate the completion of a successful first year, a new Webb image has been released of a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. While the region is relatively quiet, its proximity at 390 light-years makes for a highly detailed close-up, with no foreground stars in the intervening space. View the full article

Video: 00:03:03 Webb is celebrating the completion of its first year of science operations. Let’s look back on the observatory’s first year in images! View the full article

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A state-of-the-art conference centre that will support the thriving UK space industry has opened at Harwell campus in Oxfordshire. View the full article

After exceeding its planned life in orbit, ESA’s Aeolus wind satellite is on its way back to Earth. The satellite is currently falling around 1 km a day, and its descent is accelerating. ESA’s spacecraft operators will soon intervene and attempt to guide Aeolus in a first-of-its-kind assisted reentry. Why is ESA doing this? View the full article

Two European astronauts are following the traces of a treasure trove of rare, Moon-like crystals in a Norwegian fjord as part of the PANGAEA geology training course. View the full article

As the 2023 summer holiday season gets under way, ESA and Amsterdam’s international airport are once again giving travellers a chance to discover some out-of-this-world destinations. View the full article

Space-based solar power could provide Earth with clean and reliable energy, 24 hours a day. As part of its SOLARIS initiative, ESA is inviting researchers to help advance our knowledge of key aspects of collecting solar power in space and wirelessly transmitting it to Earth. View the full article

Data from ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has led to the surprising revelation that an ultra-hot exoplanet that orbits its host star in less than a day is covered by reflective clouds of metal, making it the shiniest exoplanet ever found. View the full article

Week in images: 03-07 July 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will bring a different kind of chocolate to the International Space Station on his Huginn mission, created by the Danish chef Thorsten Schmidt. View the full article

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured this image of the powerful Cyclone Mocha on 13 May 2023 as it made its way across the Bay of Bengal heading northeast towards Bangladesh and Myanmar. View the full article

Last week, members of ESA’s astronaut support teams participated in a helicopter underwater escape training. This training is mandatory for people involved in astronaut landing operations, including flight surgeons and photographers, who capture the key moments of an astronaut mission. View the full article

When the RIME antenna on ESA’s Juice mission failed to deploy a few days after launch, the engineering teams faced the mighty challenge to understand the fault and rectify it. At stake was a chance to see inside Jupiter’s mysterious icy moons. View the full article

Commercial air passengers across Europe will soon experience fewer flight delays and greener travel thanks to pilots being able to use satellites to route their planes. View the full article

Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket has 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. View the full article

Video: 00:04:49 Discover the first results from Europe’s first Lightning Imager onboard the Meteosat Third Generation. The Lightning Imager can continuously detect rapid flashes of lighting in Earth’s atmosphere whether day or night from a distance of 36 000 km. This is the first time a geostationary weather satellite has the capability to detect lightning across Europe, Africa and the surrounding waters. Each camera can capture up to 1000 images per second and will continuously observe lightning activity from space. The data will give weather forecasters greater confidence in their predictions of severe storms. More information on the Lightning Imager first data. Access all the MTG Lighning Imager animations. View the full article