European Space Agency

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Tucked away in the Fucino Valley, in central Italy, lies the Fucino Space Centre, where Telespazio will manage the early orbit activities of the Meteosat Third Generation Imager, set to launch on 13 December from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. View the full article

Image: NASA’s Orion spacecraft, powered by ESA’s European Service Module, shares a stunning new take on ‘Earth rise’ following the return powered flyby of the Moon. This image was taken on 5 December, flight day 20, after the spacecraft completed a 3 minute 27 second burn to swing around the Moon and back to Earth. Just before the burn, Orion made its second and final close approach to the Moon at 17:43 CET (16:43 GMT), passing 130 km above the lunar surface.  The burn, which used the European Service Module’s main engine, changed the velocity of the spacecraft by about 1054 km/h. It was the final major engine burn of the Artemis I mission.  Orion is due to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on 11 December to complete the 25-day Artemis I mission. “Orion is heading home!” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “The lunar flyby enabled the spacecraft to harness the Moon’s gravity and slingshot it back toward Earth for splashdown. Next up, reentry!” Sadly, but necessarily, the European Service Module’s contribution to Artemis ends 40 minutes before splashdown. Together with the Crew Module Adapter these elements of the Orion spacecraft will detach from the Crew Module and burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere, leaving Orion on its own for the last crucial minutes to splashdown. Find Artemis I mission updates and flight day logs on ESA’s Orion blog. View the full article

As preparations to launch Europe’s first Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite continue, the team at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, has bid farewell to their precious satellite as it was sealed from view within the Ariane 5 rocket’s fairing. This all-new weather satellite is set to take to the skies on 13 December. View the full article

A contract signed today between ESA and Arianespace has ensured rides into orbit for five Copernicus Sentinels: Sentinel-1D, Sentinel-2C, Sentinel-3C, and the Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide-A and -B satellites. All the satellites will be launched on Vega-C rockets from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana and are scheduled to take place between 2024 and 2026. View the full article

Video: 00:00:48 One week today, the first of a new generation of weather satellites will take to the skies. The Meteosat Third Generation system is the most complex and innovative meteorological satellite systems ever built. It will bring new capabilities to monitor weather, climate and the environment from space like never before – promising to further bolster Europe’s leadership in weather forecasting. Join us for the live launch coverage of the Metetosat Third Generation Imager on 13 December on ESA Web TV. View the full article

Today at 17:43 CET (16:43 GMT) the European Service Module for Orion fired its main engine at less than 127 km from the Moon's surface to put the Artemis spacecraft on a collision course with Earth. View the full article

Video: 00:00:00 Watch the replay of the Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 pre-launch press briefing held on 5 December 2022. Speakers include Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes; Phil Evans, Director General of Eumetsat; Bertrand Denis, Vice President Observation and Science at Thales Alenia Space and Simon Keogh, Head of Space Applications and Nowcasting Research & Development at the UK Met Office. MTG-I1 is scheduled to be launched on 13 December on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. It is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical data for weather forecasting over the next 20 years. In full operations, the mission will comprise two MTG-I satellites and one MTG Sounding (MTG-S) satellites working in tandem. The MTG-I satellites carry two completely new instruments, a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager, to deliver high-quality data for better weather forecasting. View the full article

Watch now: MTG-I1 pre-launch press briefing View the full article

MTG-I interactive brochure View the full article

Week in images: 28 November - 02 December 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

The remarkable moraine patterns of Malaspina Glacier – the largest piedmont glacier in the world – are featured in this false-colour image acquired by Copernicus Sentinel-2. View the full article

Image: These are images of Saturn’s moon Titan, captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument on 4 November 2022. The image on the left uses a filter sensitive to Titan’s lower atmosphere. The bright spots are prominent clouds in the northern hemisphere. The image on the right is a color composite image. Click here for an annotated version of this image. Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere, and it is also the only planetary body other than Earth that currently has rivers, lakes, and seas. Unlike Earth, however, the liquid on Titan’s surface is composed of hydrocarbons including methane and ethane, not water. Its atmosphere is filled with thick haze that obscures visible light reflecting off the surface. Scientists have waited for years to use Webb’s infrared vision to study Titan’s atmosphere, including its fascinating weather patterns and gaseous composition, and also see through the haze to study albedo features (bright and dark patches) on the surface. Further Titan data are expected from NIRCam and NIRSpec as well as the first data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) in May or June of 2023. The MIRI data will reveal an even greater part of Titan’s spectrum, including some wavelengths that have never before been seen. This will give scientists information about the complex gases in Titan’s atmosphere, as well as crucial clues to deciphering why Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere. [Image Description: Side-by-side images of Saturn’s moon Titan, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera on 4 November 2022, with clouds and other features visible. Left image is various shades of red. Right image is shades of white, blue, and brown.] Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. View the full article

Image: Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI composite image) View the full article

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It’s no surprise that when a massive lump of ice drops off the edge of a glacier into the sea, the surface waters of the ocean get pretty churned up. However, in addition to causing tsunamis at the surface of the ocean, recent research has led to the discovery that glacier calving can excite vigorous internal tsunami waves – a process that has been neglected in driving ocean mixing in computer models. View the full article

With liftoff now scheduled for 13 December, Europe’s first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite has been fuelled – a critical and extremely hazardous milestone on the road to launch. Once in geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator, this all-new weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level. View the full article

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The province of Zaragoza, in northeast Spain, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article

23 Member and Associate States of the Agency pledged a total 117.6 million euros to ESA’s ScaleUp programme at ESA’s Ministerial Council CM22 to encourage entrepreneurship and commercialisation in the European space sector. This amount exceeds the target funding request by more than 17%, thus confirming the strong support that ESA Member States intend to provide to the development of a strong and sustainable commercial space ecosystem. View the full article

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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies. While Webb and other space telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this heated planet’s atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds. The latest data also give a hint of how these clouds might look up close: broken up rather than as a single, uniform blanket over the planet. View the full article

Video: 00:40:00 ESA’s new class of astronauts is announced on Wednesday, 23 November 2022 at the Grand Palais Éphémère (GPE) in Paris. The new class includes career astronauts, reserve astronauts as well as astronauts with a physical disability for a feasibility project. Last year and for the first time since 2008, ESA launched a call for applications and it received more than 22 500 valid applications. Today, ESA now reveals which of these were successful. Watch the other ESA Astronaut Class 2022 videos. Access the related broadcast quality footage. View the full article

Europe will strengthen its autonomy, leadership and sustainability in space, following today’s decision to increase ESA’s budget by 17% compared to the last Ministerial meeting in 2019. View the full article