European Space Agency

Image: Juice testing – down to the wire View the full article

A key focus of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will be Ganymede: Jupiter’s largest moon, and an ideal natural laboratory for studying the icy worlds of the Solar System. View the full article

Over the past few days, Juice has been transferred to the final assembly building and mounted onto the Ariane 5 rocket that will carry it into space. These photos capture the key milestones in this process. View the full article

ESA welcomed its latest group of astronaut candidates yesterday at its European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, at the start of their one-year basic training to prepare for future space missions. View the full article

Video: 00:01:00 Discover the top five mysteries ESA’s mission Euclid will help solve. ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter. More about Euclid View the full article

Runoff and river discharge are important components in Earth’s water cycle, but as climate change tightens its grip, heatwaves and instances of drought are increasingly hitting the headlines. One would assume that this hotter weather leads to reduced water runoff, but an innovative way of using information from satellites suggests that this isn’t always the case. View the full article

Image: ESA's newly selected astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 arrived at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, on 3 April 2023 to begin their 12-month basic training. The group of five candidates, Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois, and Marco Sieber, are part of the 17-member astronaut class of 2022, selected from 22 500 applicants from across ESA Member States in November 2022. The astronaut candidates will be trained to the highest level of standards in preparation for future space missions. During basic training, this includes learning all about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalk and survival training. This image shows the candidates on their first day at the European Astronaut Centre, alongside ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, Australian Space Agency astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg and ESA’s Head of Basic and Mission Training Unit Kris Capelle. They are pictured inside the European Columbus module mock-up located in the training hall of the European Astronaut Centre. View the full article

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ESA is excited to announce a revolutionary new technology that could bring luck to people all over the world: four-leaf clover detection from space. View the full article

Week in images: 27-31 March 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:19:44 The Making of Juice series takes the viewer behind the scenes of the European space industry, space technology and planetary science communities around ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission. Juice has a state-of-the-art science payload comprising remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. This episode focuses on the geophysics instruments, which will explore the moons’ surface and subsurface, probe the atmospheres of Jupiter and its moons, and measure their gravity fields. The GAnymede Laser Altimeter (GALA) will study the tidal deformation of Ganymede and the topography of the surfaces of the icy moons. The Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME), is an ice-penetrating radar to study the subsurface structure of the icy moons down to a depth of around nine kilometres. The Gravity & Geophysics of Jupiter and Galilean Moons (3GM), is a radio package that will study the gravity field at Ganymede, the extent of the internal oceans on the icy moons, and the structure of the neutral atmosphere and ionosphere of Jupiter and its moons. The mission will also carry out a Planetary Radio Interferometer & Doppler Experiment (PRIDE), which will use the standard telecommunication system of the spacecraft, together with radio telescopes on Earth to perform precise measurements of the spacecraft position and velocity to investigate the gravity fields of Jupiter and the icy moons. The documentary includes interviews with (in order of appearance): Olivier Grasset, Juice interdisciplinary scientist, Luciano Iess, 3GM principal investigator, Hauke Hussmann, GALA principal investigator, Lorenzo Bruzzone, RIME principal investigator, Leonid Gurvits, PRIDE principal investigator. Access the other episodes of 'The Making of Juice’ Credits: Produced for ESA by Lightcurve Films. View the full article

The flag of Belgium flew proudly over ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands as ESTEC was honoured with a visit by Thomas Dermine, Belgium’s State Secretary for Science Policy, Recovery Program and Strategic Investments, accompanied by new Belgian astronaut Raphaël Liégeois. View the full article

Europe has just endured its second warmest winter on record. Much of southern and western Europe has been affected by substantial anomalies of soil moisture owing to this exceptionally dry and warm winter. Data from ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission have been used to monitor the low levels of soil moisture across Europe. View the full article

Image: Part of southern Italy is featured in this wintery image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article

ESA Impact 2023 – Quarter 1 Welcome to this edition of ESA Impact, an interactive publication covering stories and images from the first quarter of 2023. View the full article

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Video: 00:15:59 The Making of Juice series takes the viewer behind the scenes of the European space industry, space technology and planetary science communities around ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission. Juice has a state-of-the-art science payload comprising remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. This episode focuses on the remote sensing instruments, which will study the atmosphere of Jupiter and the surfaces and exospheres of the icy moons. Juice’s camera (JANUS) will image Jupiter’s clouds and geological features on the moons in high resolution. The Moons and Jupiter Imaging Spectrometer (MAJIS) will observe cloud features and atmospheric constituents on Jupiter, and will characterise ices and minerals on the icy moon surfaces. The Sub-millimeter Wave Instrument (SWI), will investigate the temperature structure, composition and dynamics of Jupiter's atmosphere, and the exospheres and surfaces of the icy moons. A UV imaging spectrograph (UVS) will characterise the composition and dynamics of the exospheres of the icy moons, study the Jovian aurorae, and investigate the composition and structure of the planet's upper atmosphere. The documentary includes interviews with (in order of appearance) Leigh Fletcher, Juice interdisciplinary scientist, Cecilia Tubiana, JANUS operation manager, Randy Gladstone, UVS principal investigator, Emma Bunce, J-MAG and UVS co-investigator, Francois Poulet, MAJIS principal investigator, Giuseppe Piccioni, MAJIS co-principal investigator, Paul Hartogh, SWI principal investigator, Miriam Rengel SWI co-investigator. Access the other episodes of 'The Making of Juice’ Credits: Produced for ESA by Lightcurve Films. View the full article

ESA space telescopes have observed the brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen. Data from this rare event could become instrumental in understanding the details of the colossal explosions that create gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). View the full article

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Video: 00:12:07 The Making of Juice series takes the viewer behind the scenes of the European space industry, space technology and planetary science communities around ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission. Juice has a state-of-the-art science payload comprising remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. This episode focuses on the in situ instruments, which will study the particle, magnetic, radio and plasma environment in the Jupiter system. A magnetometer (J-MAG) equipped with sensors will characterise the Jovian magnetic field and its interaction with that of Ganymede, and will study the subsurface oceans of the icy moon. The Particle Environment Package (PEP) comprises a suite of sensors to characterise the plasma environment of the Jupiter system and the icy moons. The Radio and Plasma Wave Investigation (RPWI) will characterise the radio emission and plasma environment of Jupiter and its icy moons. A radiation monitor (RADEM) will also track how much radiation the spacecraft is being exposed to, while also being used for science. The documentary includes interviews with (in order of appearance) Norbert Krupp, Juice interdisciplinary scientist and co-investigator of the PEP instrument, Michele Dougherty, principal investigator of J-MAG, Jan-Erik Wahlund, principal investigator of RPWI, Patrícia Gonçalves, team leader for RADEM, and Stas Barabash, principal investigator of PEP. Access the other episodes of 'The Making of Juice’ Credits: Produced for ESA by Lightcurve Films. Additional camera by Manuela Baroni. Original music by William Zeitler. View the full article

An international team of researchers has used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to measure the temperature of the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 b. The measurement is based on the planet’s thermal emission: heat energy given off in the form of infrared light detected by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The result indicates that the planet’s dayside has a temperature of about 500 kelvins (roughly 230°C), and suggests that it has no significant atmosphere. View the full article

The two spacecraft forming ESA’s Proba-3 mission for precise formation flying in orbit are now complete. All the instruments and sensors allowing them to manoeuvre to millimetre scale precision relative to one another have been integrated aboard, and the pair are fully wrapped in multi-layer insulation – ready to be tested in simulated space conditions. View the full article

At its 315th session on 22 and 23 March 2023, the ESA Council approved a series of nominations and extensions of contracts for ESA directors: View the full article

Week in images: 20-24 March 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: ESA in miniature View the full article