European Space Agency

Hibernating astronauts could be the best way to save mission costs, reduce the size of spacecraft by a third and keep crew healthy on their way to Mars. An ESA-led investigation suggests that human hibernation goes beyond the realm of science-fiction and may become a game-changing technique for space travel. View the full article

Video: 00:02:58 Spaceflight participants Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin were welcomed to the International Space Station on 8 December 2021 for a 12 day stay in space. Experience their arrival and farewell in 360° as captured by ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer from within the Russian segment. Also seen in this video are Expedition 66 Commander Anton Shkaplerov, Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron. Matthias was launched to the International Space Station for his six-month ESA mission known as Cosmic Kiss on 11 November 2021. During his time on board, he will support around 35 European and many more international experiments in orbit. This is the German ESA astronaut’s first time in orbit. Follow his journey on social media and via the Cosmic Kiss section of ESA’s web portal. Access the other Cosmic Kiss 360º videos View the full article

Week in images: 24 - 28 January 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: Crater tree rings View the full article

The lower stage of ESA’s next-generation Ariane 6 launch vehicle has been installed on the assembly line at Europe’s Spaceport behind the upper stage. It is now time to join the two horizontally to create the central core of Ariane 6 in readiness for the first combined tests on the launch pad. View the full article

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over northwest Lesotho – a small, land-locked country surrounded entirely by South Africa. View the full article

One of the many serious consequences of the climate crisis is that precious permafrost is thawing, and this is unleashing even more carbon to the atmosphere and further exacerbating climate change. However, it’s complicated. For example, sometimes permafrost can thaw rapidly and scientists are unsure why and what these abrupt thaws mean in terms of feedback loops. This makes it difficult to predict the future impact on the climate. Thanks to an ESA–NASA initiative, new research digs deep into understanding the complexities of permafrost thaw and how carbon is released over time. View the full article

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Image: An unusual snowstorm has blanketed parts of Turkey and Greece, causing power cuts and chaos on the roads and flight cancellations. Two images from Copernicus Sentinel-2 show Athens:before and after the snowstorm. View the full article

Image: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station farewelled over 2000 kg of scientific experiments and hardware on Sunday 23 January as a cargo Dragon spacecraft began its return to Earth. ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer captured the resupply vehicle in all its glory as it departed the orbital outpost at 15:40 GMT/16:40 CET. It splashed down approximately 29 hours later off the coast of Florida, USA. The SpaceX spacecraft arrived at the Space Station just before Christmas, bringing new experiments alongside Christmas treats. It returned with a bellyful of science, including several European experiments that were quickly transported to NASA’s Space Station Processing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, and other items that flew with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet during his Alpha mission. Among the experiments were an investigation into the effect of microgravity on resting muscle tone known as Myotones, cell cultures for the Cytoskeleton experiment that looks at how human cells behave in weightlessness, and a new device called Thermo-Mini for continually monitoring core body temperature that you might have seen Matthias sporting on Station. It also transported cargo relating to Microage, which uses synthetic muscle cells to study muscle degradation aboard the International Space Station, the Blob educational experiment that saw students replicate space research in the classroom using a naturally occurring slime mould, and equipment for the Multiscale Boiling experiment Rubi. The next resupply vehicle to fly to the Station is a Northrop Grumman Cygnus, expected to be launched no earlier than 19 February 2022. In the meantime, the astronauts of Expedition 66 continue their busy schedule of science and operations in orbit. See Matthias Maurer’s Cosmic Kiss mission page for the latest news. View the full article

Volcanoes, impact craters, tectonic faults, river channels and a lava sea: a vast amount of information is captured in a relatively small area in this geologically rich new image from ESA’s Mars Express. View the full article

Image: On the pull View the full article

For the second time in its mission so far, the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft has flown through the tail of a comet. Predicted in advance by astronomers at University College London, UK, the spacecraft collected a wealth of science data that now awaits full analysis. View the full article

Today, at 20:00 CEST, the James Webb Space Telescope fired its onboard thrusters for nearly five minutes (297 seconds) to complete the final post launch course correction to Webb’s trajectory. This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1.5 million kilometres away from the Earth. View the full article

When Joe Biden was inaugurated as President one year ago, he fulfilled his promise to rejoin the Paris Agreement and set a course for the US to tackle the climate crisis by supporting global efforts to limit global warming. ESA recently joined the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by public video link to share European plans and expertise on measuring carbon dioxide and methane from space. View the full article

Video: 00:03:10 Timelapse of the James Webb Space Telescope from preparation to liftoff on Ariane 5 at Europe’s Spaceport on 25 December 2021. View the full article

European leaders will reaffirm plans to launch Europe on a world-leading trajectory during a high-level space summit to be held on 16 February in Toulouse, France. View the full article

Video: 00:01:36 You’ve heard of spacewalking astronauts but how do astronauts run? Join ESA’s Matthias Maurer for a workout on the International Space Station’s T2 treadmill and explore Node 3 in 360°. Astronauts living and working on the International Space Station exercise for around two hours a day six days a week to stay fit and healthy in orbit. This helps counteract muscle and bone loss caused by life in microgravity. The T2 treadmill is attached to the wall in Node 3 and astronauts secure themselves using a harness and bungies. This creates a feeling like running on a treadmill on Earth. This clip is just a snapshot of the exercise Matthias performs in space. A typical T2 session is around 30-40 minutes in length. Matthias was launched to the International Space Station for his current Cosmic Kiss mission on 11 November 2021. In his approximately six months on board, he will support over 35 European experiments and many more international experiments in orbit. For more on Matthias and his mission, visit the Cosmic Kiss mission page. Access the other Cosmic Kiss 360º videos View the full article

Week in images: 17 - 21 January 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: The first-of-its-kind complement of instruments dubbed the ‘space storm hunter’ hangs out in its new location outside the International Space Station in this image taken by on of the Station’s external cameras. The Atmosphere–Space Interactions Monitor, or ASIM for short, measures electric events in Earth’s upper atmosphere with cameras, photometers and X- and gamma-ray detectors. Last week ASIM was switched off and moved by robotic arm to another spot outside the Columbus module to make room for an American payload. Now in its new location, the instrument is being activated and so far things are going well. From its new vantage point, just next to its current one, ASIM is pointing in a different direction, slightly more towards the horizon instead of straight down. This will help researchers work out how much the atmosphere at different altitudes influences the processes of electrical discharges. It’s like viewing a firework display: one can enjoy the shapes more from the side than if one is just below the display! Though designed to look for electrical discharges born in stormy weather conditions in Earth’s upper atmosphere, ASIM recently detected a unique gamma-ray burst from outer space. The spurt turned out to be from an explosive giant flare from a magnetar located 10 million light-years away in a distant galaxy. Magnetars are a special type of neutron star – the collapsed core of what was once a supergiant star. This fortuitous observation was published in the December issue of Nature magazine. ASIM was built by Danish company Terma, the Danish Technical University, the University of Bergen in Norway and the University of Valencia in Spain for the European Space Agency. View the full article

The central core of ESA’s new generation Ariane 6 launch vehicle arrived at Europe’s Spaceport on 18 January and is now inside the launch vehicle assembly building. View the full article

Video: 01:00:30 Watch the replay of ‘Live from Space: The Next Frontier for Knowledge and Action’. ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, live from the from the International Space Station discussed with a panel of prominent experts and industry leaders, including ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher, about how space research can improve life on our planet. View the full article

Part of Mecklenburg–West Pomerania, also known as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a state in northeast Germany is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. A portion of the northwest coast of Poland can be seen in the right of the image. View the full article

Image: Sulphur dioxide from Tonga eruption spreads over Australia View the full article