European Space Agency

A large data-driven telecommunications satellite that uses innovative technology to keep cool as well as other innovations – developed under an ESA Partnership Project – has started its commercial service. View the full article

ESA’s upcoming EarthCARE satellite mission has just taken a big stretch. Engineers have gently unfolded this new satellite’s huge five-panel solar wing to test that it will deploy correctly once it is in space. The solar wing is a critical part of the satellite, providing the energy for EarthCARE to do its job: to quantify the role that clouds and aerosols play in heating and cooling Earth’s atmosphere. View the full article

Image: Bound up with the Moon View the full article

Image: From Blu-Ray players to Earth orbit View the full article

With searing temperatures and a string of record highs being smashed across western Europe, the current heatwave is all too apparent. Extreme heat warnings have been issued in several countries including France, Spain and Portugal, and deadly wildfires have forced thousands to flee their homes. The satellite images here are an example of how the crisis is being viewed by satellites orbiting Earth. View the full article

On 21 July 2022, ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will head outside the International Space Station on a spacewalk alongside cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev. It will be Samantha’s first spacewalk, and the first conducted by a European woman. View the full article

The latest image release from ESA’s Mars Express takes us over two ruptures in the martian crust that form part of the mighty Valles Marineris canyon system. View the full article

The mission to return martian samples back to Earth will see a European 2.5 metre-long robotic arm pick up tubes filled with precious soil from Mars and transfer them to a rocket for an historic interplanetary delivery. View the full article

Video: 00:00:55 Discover the top five mysteries that ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission will solve. Jupiter, its magnetic environment, and its moons form one of the most intriguing systems in the Solar System. Juice, planned for launch in 2023 and arrival at Jupiter in 2031, will reveal more about this fascinating planet and its natural satellites. More about Juice View the full article

Week in images: 11-15 July 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: These Copernicus Sentinel-2 images, one year apart, show the area affected by wildfire around Las Batuecas - Sierra de Francia Nature Reserve near Salamanca in western Spain. View the full article

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Video: 00:02:35 ESA’s newest launch system has faced its first full validation test, carrying LARES-2, a scientific mission of the Italian space agency ASI, and a secondary payload package of French, Italian and Slovenian research CubeSats. View the full article

Video: 00:06:42 Flight VV21 clears the launch pad to begin the inaugural mission of ESA’s new Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. View the full article

ESA’s new Vega-C rocket has completed its inaugural flight, placing main payload LARES-2 – a scientific mission of the Italian Space Agency ASI – into its planned orbit. Six research CubeSats from France, Italy and Slovenia flew as secondary payloads. The launch caps a multi-year effort by ESA, prime contractor Avio and industrial partners in 13 ESA member states to build on the heritage of its predecessor, Vega. View the full article

An ESA-financed nanosatellite, due to lift off aboard the inaugural flight of Vega-C today, will operate an AI system in the harsh, radiation-wracked environment of the Van Allen Belts. The shoebox-sized Trisat-R – one of six ‘CubeSats’ on the flight, headed up to a rarely-trafficked close to 6000 km altitude orbit – is also carrying radiation-detection payloads from CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research, Slovenian firm SkyLabs and ESA itself. View the full article

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars in Carina Nebula that were previously obscured. The new images showcase how Webb’s cameras can peer through cosmic dust, shedding new light on how stars form. Objects in earliest, rapid phases of star formation difficult to capture, but Webb’s extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability can chronicle these elusive events. View the full article

Highly anticipated observations hint at treasure trove of discoveries to come The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope’s first full-colour images and spectroscopic data, which uncover a spectacular collection of cosmic features that have remained elusive until now, were released today. View the full article

In this enormous new image, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals never-before-seen details of the galaxy group “Stephan’s Quintet”. Close proximity of the system gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions. Webb’s new image also shows in rare detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other and how gas in galaxies is being disturbed and the outflows driven by a black hole in Stephan’s Quintet in a level of detail never seen before. Tight galaxy groups like this may have been more common in the early Universe when superheated, infalling material may have fueled very energetic black holes. View the full article

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed details of the Southern Ring planetary nebula that were previously hidden from astronomers. View the full article

Webb’s enormous mirror and precise instruments joined forces to capture the most detailed measurements of starlight filtering through the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System to date. The spectrum of light – which contains information about the makeup of a planetary atmosphere 1,150 light-years away – reveals the distinct signature of water. The strength of the signal that Webb detected hints at the significant role the telescope will play in the search for potentially habitable planets in the coming years. Webb’s powerful new view also shows evidence of haze and clouds that previous studies of this planet did not detect. View the full article

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the distant Universe so far. Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length – and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast Universe. This sharp near-infrared view has brought out faint structures in extremely distant galaxies, for an unprecedented look at galaxies billions of years in the past. For the first time, Webb has also detailed chemical makeup of galaxies in very early Universe. View the full article

The Ariane 6 launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana now hosts the first example of ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket. This Ariane 6 combined tests model will be used to validate the entire launch system during its ground phase in readiness for the inaugural launch of Ariane 6. View the full article

The international NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the distant Universe so far. U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled the image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, during a White House event on Monday 11 July. View the full article

Video: 00:01:48 ESA’s newest launcher stands nearly 35m tall when its four stages and payload are fully stacked. For its inaugural flight, VV21, the main payload is LARES-2, a scientific mission of the Italian space agency, ASI. Access the related broadcast quality video material. View the full article