European Space Agency

Image: ‘Twas the day before launch and all across the globe, people await liftoff for Artemis I with hope. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft with its European Service Module, is seen here on Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, on 12 November. After much anticipation, NASA launch authorities have given the GO for the first opportunity for launch: tomorrow, 16 November with a two-hour launch window starting at 07:04 CET (06:04 GMT, 1:04 local time). Artemis I is the first mission in a large programme to send astronauts around and on the Moon sustainably. This uncrewed first launch will see the Orion spacecraft travel to the Moon, enter an elongated orbit around our satellite and then return to Earth, powered by the European-built service module that supplies electricity, propulsion, fuel, water and air as well as keeping the spacecraft operating at the right temperature. The European Service Modules are made from components supplied by over 20 companies in ten ESA Member States and USA. As the first European Service Module sits atop the SLS rocket on the launchpad, the second is only 8 km away being integrated with the Orion crew capsule for the first crewed mission – Artemis II. The third and fourth European Service Modules – that will power astronauts to a Moon landing – are in production in Bremen, Germany. With a 16 November launch, the three-week Artemis I mission would end on 11 December with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The European Service Module detaches from the Orion Crew Module before splashdown and burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere, its job complete after taking Orion to the Moon and back safely. Backup Artemis I launch dates include 19 November. Check ESA’s Orion blog for updates and more details. Watch the launch live on ESA Web TV from 15 Nov, 20:30 GMT (21:30 CET) when the rocket fuelling starts, and from 16 November 00:00 GMT/01:00 CET for the launch coverage. View the full article

Europe’s bid to deliver a return-to-Earth service for in-orbit transportation and research projects is rapidly taking shape, with teams working on the Space Rider spacecraft gearing up for a series of drop tests in 2023. Drop tests with small-scale models will be followed by a full-scale test in anticipation of inaugural flight towards the end of 2024. View the full article

ESA’s Mars Express has revealed that Mars churns up surprisingly Earth-like cloud patterns that are reminiscent of those in our planet’s tropical regions. View the full article

ESA has created a space-inspired virtual environment to enable its workforce to experience the COP27 climate summit – which is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt – without the environmental cost of travelling. View the full article

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Europe should demonstrate responsibility, leadership and autonomy in space – and its highest priority should be to address climate change, according to a poll of European citizens. View the full article

Achieving net-zero by the second half of the century is considered vital if global temperatures are to remain well below the two degrees rise as set out by the Paris Agreement for climate. From their vantage point in space, satellites provide a unique means of tracking progress towards achieving this balance between greenhouse gas emissions from sources and removal by sinks. How space-based approaches can support the UN Global stocktake, starting in 2023, are the focus of technical discussions at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) currently taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, and feature results from ESA’s trailblazing REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes project. These results come at a critical time ahead of next week’s ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level. View the full article

Video: 00:04:05 Galileo is Europe’s largest satellite constellation – and the world’s most accurate satnav system. The work on Galileo began two decades ago with two test GIOVE satellites, followed by a series of operational launches. The two GIOVE satellites, the first Galileo In-Orbit Validation satellite and all 34 Galileo Full Operational Capability satellites were tested at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre, Europe’s largest satellite testing facility. On this day the very last satellite in the Galileo First Generation series leaves the site, and the people responsible for readying them for space have gathered to say goodbye. Next will come the Galileo Second Generation satellites, already in development. About Galileo Galileo is managed and funded by the European Union. The European Commission, ESA and EUSPA (the EU Agency for the Space Programme) have signed an agreement by which ESA acts as design authority and system development prime on behalf of the Commission and EUSPA as the exploitation and operation manager of Galileo/EGNOS. View the full article

Video: 00:00:11 Solar Orbiter has spotted a ‘tube’ of cooler atmospheric gases snaking its way through the Sun’s magnetic field. The observation provides an intriguing new addition to the zoo of features revealed by the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission, especially since the snake was a precursor to a much larger eruption. The snake was seen on 5 September 2022, as Solar Orbiter was approaching the Sun for a close pass that took place on 12 October. It is a tube of cool plasma suspended by magnetic fields in the hotter surrounding plasma of the Sun’s atmosphere. Plasma is a state of matter in which a gas is so hot that its atoms begin to lose some of their outer particles, called electrons. This loss makes the gas electrically charged and therefore susceptible to magnetic fields. All gas in the Sun’s atmosphere is a plasma because the temperature here is more than a million degrees centigrade. The plasma in the snake is following a particularly long filament of the Sun’s magnetic field that is reaching from one side of the Sun to another. “You're getting plasma flowing from one side to the other but the magnetic field is really twisted. So you're getting this change in direction because we're looking down on a twisted structure,” says David Long, Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL), UK, who is heading up the investigation into the phenomenon. The movie has been constructed as a time-lapse from images from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager onboard Solar Orbiter. In reality, the snake took around three hours to complete its journey but at the distances involved in crossing the solar surface that means the plasma must have been travelling at around 170 kilometres per second. What makes the snake so intriguing is that it began from a solar active region that later erupted, ejecting billions of tonnes of plasma into space. This raises the possibility that the snake was a sort of precursor to this event – and Solar Orbiter caught it all in numerous instruments. For the spacecraft’s Energetic Particle Detector (EPD), the eruption was one of the most intense solar energetic particles events detected so far by the instrument. “It's a really nice combination of datasets that we only get from Solar Orbiter,” says David. More intriguing still is that the plasma from this eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection, happened to sweep over NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, allowing its instruments to measure the contents of the eruption. Being able to see an eruption take place and then sample the ejected gasses, either with its own instruments or those of another spacecraft, is one of Solar Orbiter’s principal scientific aims. It will allow a better understanding to be developed of solar activity and the way it creates ‘space weather’, which can disrupt satellites and other technology on Earth. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. It launched on 10 February 2020, and earlier this month celebrated its 1000th day in space. View the full article

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Week in images: 07-11 November 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured this image of Santiago – the capital and largest city of Chile. View the full article

Video: 00:05:17 At the Thales Alenia Space test facility in Cannes, France, the massive door of the thermal vacuum chamber was opened after a month of rigorous testing of ESA’s Euclid mission to explore the dark Universe. In Cannes the fully integrated spacecraft was subjected to the conditions of space and its subsystems were fully tested for the first time. With the Euclid space telescope, scientists hope to learn more about dark matter and dark energy which could make up more than 95% of our Universe. The film includes soundbites from ESA Euclid Mission and Payload Manager: Alexander Short and ESA Euclid VIS-Instrument Engineer: Magdalena Szafraniec. View the full article

NASA has delivered a retroreflector array to ESA that will allow the Lunar Pathfinder mission to be pinpointed by laser ranging stations back on Earth as it orbits the Moon. Such centimetre level laser measurements will serve as an independent check on the spacecraft as it fixes its position using Galleo and GPS signals from an unprecedented 400 000 km away from Earth – proving the concept of lunar satnav while also relaying telecommunications ahead of ESA’s dedicated Moonlight initiative. View the full article

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Image: Gearing up for the Moon View the full article

Video: 00:03:21 Going to the Moon was the first step. Staying there is the next ambition. ESA is a key partner in NASA’s Artemis programme, which aims to return people to the Moon by the end of decade. Dozens of other international public and private missions are setting their sights on the lunar surface in the coming years. But to achieve a permanent and sustainable presence on the Moon, reliable and autonomous lunar communications and navigation services are required. This is why ESA is working with its industrial partners on the Moonlight initiative, to become the first off-planet commercial telecoms and satellite navigation provider. Following their launch, three or four satellites will be carried into lunar orbit by a space tug and deployed one by one, to form a constellation of lunar satellites. The number and specification of these satellites are currently being defined. The constellation's orbits are optimised to give coverage to the lunar south pole, whose sustained sunlight and polar ice make it the focus of upcoming missions. Moonlight will provide data capacities sufficient to serve these planned and future missions, with a navigation service that enables accurate real-time positioning for all lunar missions. View the full article

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An advanced broadband satellite that can offer high-speed internet connectivity anywhere on Earth is ready to enter its final assembly ahead of launch. View the full article

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is widely referred to as the successor to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In reality, it is the successor to a lot more than that. With the inclusion of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), Webb also became a successor to infrared space telescopes such as ESA’s Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. View the full article

Satellite operator Intelsat has placed an order for the first small geostationary “HummingSat” developed as part of ESA’s efforts to support fast, dynamic and agile private space firms in Europe. View the full article

Week in images: 31 October - 4 November 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

The complex and diverse landscape that surrounds Nushagak Bay in Alaska is featured in this true-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article

Video: 00:06:36 Galileo has grown to become Europe’s single largest satellite constellation, and the world’s most accurate satellite navigation system, delivering metre-level positioning to more than 3.5 billion users around the globe. It all began at ESTEC’s Test Centre, Europe’s largest satellite testing facility. This is where the very first positioning fix took place in March 2013, after the launch into orbit of the initial four IOV satellites. Following that, all 34 Galileo Full Operational Capability satellites also passed by ESTEC for their pre-flight testing. This 3000 sq. m environmentally-controlled complex, operated and managed by European Test Services for ESA, hosts an array of test equipment able to simulate all aspects of spaceflight, from the noise and vibration of launch to the vacuum and temperature extremes of Earth orbit. The production line at manufacturer OHB in Germany completed one new satellite every six weeks. After integration each satellite was then shipped to the ESTEC Test Centre for a three-month test campaign, after which it would be accepted by the Agency and declared ready for flight. Some facilities have had to be adapted specifically for Galileo, and the ESTEC Test Centre had to institute new security protocols because this was the first time that satellites with security restrictions were being tested at the site. Today there are 28 of these Galileo First Generation satellites in service, with 10 more due to be launched in the next years. Upgraded Galileo Second Generation satellites are under development and will follow them into orbit later this decade. Members of ESA’s Galileo team and ETS look back on this massive testing effort that established Galileo was ready for space. About Galileo Galileo is managed and funded by the European Union. The European Commission, ESA and EUSPA (the EU Agency for the Space Programme) have signed an agreement by which ESA acts as design authority and system development prime on behalf of the Commission and EUSPA as the exploitation and operation manager of Galileo/EGNOS. View the full article

The 2023 internship opportunities at ESA have been published! Opportunities are open for one month and positions are available in engineering, science, IT, natural/social sciences, business and administration services. This is your chance to kick-off your experience in space! View the full article