European Space Agency

Video: 00:02:59 ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet takes you on a tour of the International Space Station like no other. Filmed with a 360 camera, the Space Station 360 series lets you explore for yourself alongside Thomas’s explanation – this is the Kibo module. Kibo is the Japanese module, also known as the Japanese Experiment Module or JEM. Thomas takes you through the hardware available for the astronauts and researchers on Earth and the unique airlock and storage space in Kibo. The video is part of a series with Thomas showing each module in full 360 surround video. Click and drag with your mouse or move your smartphone around to see different angles and feel like you are in space with Thomas. Follow Thomas: https://blogs.esa.int/exploration/it/category/astronauts/thomas-pesquet/ The video is in French, to activate the English subtitles, click on the CC icon at the bottom right of the YouTube player. Access the other Space Station 360 videos View the full article

Week in images: 6 - 10 September 2021 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:03:30 Work is underway to sort and assess applications from more than 22 500 ESA astronaut hopefuls. The rigorous selection process will take around 18 months. Initial screening to ensure that basic criteria are met will be followed by medical and psychological tests, exercises and interviews. ESA plans to recruit 4-6 new astronauts through this 2021-22 selection round to support the future of European space exploration. This is likely to include missions to the International Space Station as well as the Moon. As part of the selection process, ESA is also assessing the feasibility of flying an astronaut with a physical disability. More information about the ESA Astronaut Selection is available online at https://esa.int/YourWayToSpace View the full article

Image: This image of the young volcanic region of Elysium Planitia on Mars [10.3°N, 159.5°E] was taken on 14 April 2021 by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). The two blue parallel trenches in this image, called Cerberus Fossae, were thought to have formed by tectonic processes. They run for almost one thousand km over the volcanic region. In this image, CaSSIS is looking straight down into one of these 2 km-wide fissures. The floor here is a few hundred metres deep and is filled with coarse-grained sand, likely basaltic in composition, which appears blue in the CaSSIS false-colour composite image. The flat volcanic plains nearby are punctured by small impact craters, which expose possibly the same basaltic materials that we see within Cerberus Fossae. TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planet’s atmospheric gases, and mapping the planet’s surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023. View the full article

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Danube Delta – the second largest river delta in Europe. View the full article

The dates have been set for ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet’s upcoming command of the International Space Station, as ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer prepares to join him on board. View the full article

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide are set to leave the International Space Station on a spacewalk on Sunday 12 September. View the full article

Video: 01:23:15 Watch the full replay of ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer’s pre-launch news conference at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. Held in both English and German on 9 September 2021, the conference covers ESA’s vision for human and robotic exploration as well as the science and operations Matthias will support on the International Space Station during his six-month Cosmic Kiss mission. Cosmic Kiss is Matthias’s first space mission. He will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA as a member of US Commercial Crew-3 alongside @NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron. While in orbit, Matthias will support over 35 European experiments and many more international experiments. He will also be the first European to perform a Russian spacewalk since Thomas Reiter in the 1990s. Knowledge gained through the Cosmic Kiss mission will shape the future of space exploration and help enhance life on Earth. Conference panellists are: ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director of Human and Robotic Exploration David Parker, ESA International Space Station Programme Manager and Head of EAC Frank De Winne, Director General of @DLR and Member of the DLR Executive Board Walther Pelzer, and ESA Astronaut Matthias Maurer. This conference was moderated by ESA Communication Programme Officer for Human and Robotic Exploration Marco Trovatello. Follow Matthias View the full article

Image: School is also back in session for ESA astronaut Andrea Mogensen (right) and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins. Together with European Astronaut Centre engineer Robin Eccleston (far left), the trio are taking part in this year’s Pangaea field training campaign to become better field scientists. With all eyes set on the Moon, the three-week campaign has increasingly focussed on lunar geology. Now in its fourth edition, the course kicked off this week with background lessons by top planetary scientists on identifying rock samples of interest for exploration. In this image Andreas and his fellow students use a microscope to analyse samples. Later, the class went on a field trip to the Bletterbach canyon in the Italian Dolomites. The eight-km long and 400-m deep gorge contains around 10 billion tonnes of rock transported to the valley since the end of the glacial age, around 18 000 years ago. The gorge is the result of sedimentary processes quite similar to those found on Mars and is an ideal site to put classroom knowledge into practice. In later sessions, the trainees will also visit the Ries Crater in Germany and the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote, Spain, to unravel not only lunar but also martian features on Earth. They will use more sophisticated tools that will allow them to explore their geography from the microscopic to the macroscopic level. The participants will wear a virtual reality headset to immerse themselves in a real martian landscape. Together with images and dozens of 3D maps, the trainees will see a combination of ground truth information and satellite images with the PLANetary MAPping project (PLANMAP) running behind the scenes. Follow Pangaea on social media for live updates and on the blog for more in depth articles. View the full article

ESA, NASA and Arianespace have jointly defined 18 December 2021 as the target launch date for Ariane 5 flight VA256. This third Ariane 5 launch of 2021 will fly the James Webb Space Telescope to space from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. View the full article

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer will soon be launched to the International Space Station for his first mission, ‘Cosmic Kiss’. Tune in to ESA Web TV from 9:00 CEST (8:00 BST) to 10:00 CEST (9:00 BST) Thursday 9 September to watch his pre-launch news conference and learn what awaits him in orbit. View the full article

Image: EC Commissioner Breton visits ESTEC View the full article

Video: 00:02:27 Space is changing fast. ESA wants to open up space to start-ups, new companies, new actors – basically to everyone. Our aim today is to help European businesses to use space technology to innovate and grow services and products that ultimately will change all our lives. And, instead of doing everything ourselves, it means we at ESA can be customers too. Commercialisation marks a fundamental change to the traditional rules of the space game, with the market providing more of what we need, and competition slashing costs and sharpening efficiency. It’s already happening in everything from micro-launchers to Earth-Moon communication, and orbital research. By boosting the commecialisation of space, ESA is providing opportunities for new ventures, new markets and generating new jobs, while we focus on expanding horizons. Read the DG’s latest OpEd on the Commercialisation of Space View the full article

Video: 00:18:05 Thomas Pesquet took part in a discussion with the EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, and the EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries Virginijus Sinkevicius. The inflight call took place during their visit to ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, where they were accompanied by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher. View the full article

The tenth annual ESA Open Day is confirmed for the weekend of 2-3 October. A combination of in-person and virtual events, this is your chance to meet Europe’s astronauts and space experts and see spacecraft, hardware and test equipment in close-up. On Saturday people with disabilities will have a special chance to tour ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, while the following day’s virtual event will be open to all. View the full article

Finding and collecting the best lunar samples will be a major task for the next astronauts on the Moon. ESA’s Pangaea training campaign launches today to equip astronauts with a geologist’s eye on the Moon – humanity’s next space destination to help us understand more about our Solar System. View the full article

Week in images: 30 August - 3 September 2021 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:06:16 The ExoMars team have performed important parachute drop tests as crucial preparation for a safe touchdown on Mars in 2023. The European Rosalind Franklin rover will search for signs of past life beneath the surface of Mars with its unique two metre drill and onboard laboratory. The Russian surface science platform Kazachok will study the environment at the landing site. Landing on Mars is always a challenging endeavour and all possible parameters are taken into account. More information on ExoMars: http://www.esa.int/exomars View the full article

ESA Member States have agreed upon the boundary conditions for Europe’s upcoming exploitation of Ariane 6 and Vega-C and request ESA to propose a roadmap for new and innovative space transportation solutions for the next decade and a framework for associated short cycle demonstrations. View the full article

After many technical and programmatic challenges, the first satellite of the next generation of the Meteosat family has taken a major step towards its first flight, currently scheduled for launch in autumn 2022. View the full article

ESA and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs are opening the second round of their HyperGES fellowship, part of the Access to Space For All Initiative, offering student teams around the globe the chance to perform hypergravity experiments using the Large Diameter Centrifuge at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, with a particular focus on developing nations. View the full article

Image: 3D-printed lunar floor View the full article

Image: Quantum technology or stage at a music festival? Both would have one thing in common: students. Oscar-Qube, short for Optical Sensors based on CARbon materials: QUantum Belgium, is an experiment developed by a group of students from the University of Hasselt, Belgium. Part of ESA Education Office’s Orbit Your Thesis! programme, the experiment arrived at the International Space Station on Space X Dragon CR23 resupply mission yesterday. This week, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will install the experiment in the Ice Cubes Facility that offers commercial and educational access to the microgravity environment of the Space Station. Oscar-Qube’s mission is to create a detailed map of Earth’s magnetic field. It makes use of a new type of magnetometer that exploits quantum sensing, meaning that it is highly sensitive, offers measurements to the nano scale, and has a better than 100-nanosecond response time. These features combine to create a powerful experiment that, once in position, will allow it to map the Earth’s magnetic field to an unrivalled level of precision. Oscar-Qube is designed and built exclusively by the first student team to test a quantum technology sensing device in space. They will go on to manage operations during its ten-month stay onboard the International Space Station. Orbit Your Thesis! is a hands-on ESA educational programme that helps university students realise the dream of putting an experiment of their own design into space. The Oscar-Qube students have been assisted at every stage of their journey by ESA experts, helping not only to develop the experiment, but also investing in the students themselves, equipping them with the skills and mindsets needed for future careers in the space sector. View the full article

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest assessment report laying out the accumulating evidence of the climate crisis. The report identifies Earth observing satellites as a critical tool to monitor the causes and effects of climate change and directly acknowledges the contribution of ESA’s Climate Change Initiative – a research programme that draws on observations from multiple satellite missions. View the full article

Video: 00:01:46 ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet takes you on a tour of the International Space Station like no other. Filmed with a 360 camera, the Space Station 360 series lets you explore for yourself alongside Thomas’s explanation – this is the Node 2 module. Node 2 is a European-built connecting module also known as Harmony that acts as an internal passageway and utility hub. Its exterior also serves as a work platform for the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, and has docking ports for spacecraft. In this video, Thomas shows the different modules that Node 2 connects: Europe’s Columbus Laboratory, the US lab Destiny and the Japanese Kibo Laboratory. He also shows workspaces and sleeping cabins where astronauts can have some personal space and sleep with their sleeping bags attached to the wall. Click and drag with your mouse or move your smartphone around see different angles and feel like you are in space with Thomas. Follow Thomas: https://blogs.esa.int/exploration/it/category/astronauts/thomas-pesquet/ The video is in French, to activate the English subtitles, click on the CC icon at the bottom right of the YouTube player. Access the other Space Station 360 videos View the full article