European Space Agency
The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states dedicated to the exploration of space. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, ESA has a worldwide staff of about 2,200
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ESA has released its new Earth Observation Science Strategy, Earth Science in Action for Tomorrow’s World. Responding to the escalating threats from climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and extreme weather and the need to take action to address these threats, this forward-looking strategy outlines a bold vision for Earth science through to 2040. View the full article
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Image: Nearing Hera era in space View the full article
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The latest edition of ESA Impact is here Your interactive gateway to the most captivating stories and stunning visuals from ESA View the full article
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Week in images: 23-27 September 2024 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Video: 00:20:48 ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), is on an epic eight-year journey to Jupiter. This first episode of ‘The journey of Juice’ tells the story of Juice’s first months in space, from its launch on 14 April 2023 to its lunar-Earth gravity assist (LEGA for short) in August 2024. This flyby was not only the first double gravity assist manoeuvre of its kind, it was also a perfect opportunity to test out the spacecraft’s cameras and science instruments. In this episode, Juice’s Mission Manager Nicolas Altobelli explains how the spacecraft will become the first ever human-made machine to orbit a moon of another planet, in this case Jupiter’s larges…
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Image: This image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission reveals the impact of severe flooding following heavy rain that hit Australia’s Northern Territory in March 2024. View the full article
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Image: On 20 September, the Copernicus Sentinel-2C satellite captured its first stunning image of the Moon, achieved by rolling the satellite sideways in a unique manoeuvre. Although Sentinel-2C is primarily designed for Earth observation, this image – intended for calibration and cross-mission comparisons – exceeded expectations. View the full article
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Video: 00:00:29 Solar wind is a never-ending stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. Rather than a constant breeze, this wind is rather gusty. As solar wind particles travel through space, they interact with the Sun's variable magnetic field, creating chaotic and fluctuating motion known as turbulence. This video confirms something long suspected: the turbulent motion of solar wind begins very close to the Sun, inside the solar atmosphere known as the corona. Small disturbances affecting solar wind in the corona are carried outward and expand, generating turbulent flow further out in space. By blocking out direct light coming from the Sun, the Metis coron…
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Looking deep into the early Universe with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found something unprecedented: a galaxy with an odd light signature, which they attribute to its gas outshining its stars. View the full article
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Over the nearly 70 years of spaceflight, about 10 000 intact satellites and rocket bodies have reentered the atmosphere with many more to follow. Yet for such a ubiquitous event, we still lack a clear view on what actually happens to a satellite during its fiery last moments. ESA is preparing the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object (Draco) mission that will collect unique measurements during an actual reentry and breakup of a satellite from the inside. A capsule especially designed to survive the destruction will transmit the valuable telemetry shortly after. View the full article
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Video: 00:03:12 There’s a mystery out there in deep space – and solving it will make Earth safer. That’s why the European Space Agency’s Hera mission is taking shape – to go where one particular spacecraft has gone before. On 26 September 2022, moving at 6.1 km/s, NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into the Dimorphos asteroid. Part of our Solar System changed. The impact shrunk the orbit of the Great Pyramid-sized Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, the mountain-sized Didymos. This grand experiment was performed to prove we could defend Earth against an incoming asteroid, by striking it with a spacecraft to deflect it. DART succeeded. But that still leaves many thin…
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The Sentinel-1B satellite, the second satellite of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, completed its disposal process – which included lowering its orbit and passivating its systems to ensure re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere within 25 years. This careful operation highlights the European Union’s and ESA’s commitment to space safety and sustainability and provides valuable experience for the disposal of current and future spacecraft. View the full article
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On 18–19 September, Europe’s space industry from start-up companies to large system integrators gathered at ESA–ESTEC in the Netherlands for Industry Space Days 2024. View the full article
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Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has snapped a souvenir of the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert in Nevada. View the full article
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XRISM revealed the structure, motion and temperature of the material around a supermassive black hole and in a supernova remnant in unprecedented detail. Astronomers presented the first scientific results of the new X-ray telescope today, less than a year after the telescope’s launch. View the full article
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Just a month after its launch, ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has already delivered its first images, notably capturing Storm Boris, which has been wreaking havoc across central Europe. View the full article
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Hera asteroid mission launch kit Everything you'd ever want to know about ESA's first planetary defence mission View the full article
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Video: 00:03:02 From the arrival of Earth-obversation satellite Sentinel-2C in July 2024 and the first fit-check to launch on the from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, this timelapse shows how the third Sentinel 2 satellite was prepared for launch. The last Vega rocket, flight VV24, lifted off on 5 September at 03:50 CEST (4 September 22:50 local time). Sentinel-2C will provide high-resolution data that is essential to Copernicus – the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme. Developed, built and operated by ESA, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission provides high-resolution optical imagery for a wide range of applications including la…
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Less than two weeks after being launched into orbit, Sentinel-2C has delivered its first images. These spectacular views of Earth offer a sneak peek at the data that this new satellite will provide for Copernicus – Europe’s world-leading Earth observation programme. View the full article
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With the help of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early Universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help scientists understand how supermassive black holes were created. View the full article
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Swatch has again teamed up with ESA to give space fans a new opportunity to design a custom watch featuring breathtaking images of Earth from space. View the full article
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The European Galileo satellite navigation system Galileo keeps growing: a new pair of satellites has joined the constellation after a journey on a Falcon 9 rocket, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 18 September at 00:50 CEST (17 September 18:50 local time). View the full article
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Week in images: 09-13 September 2024 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Video: 00:01:25 Watch the closest flyby of a planet ever, as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft sped past Mercury during its latest encounter on 4 September 2024. This flyby marked BepiColombo’s closest approach to Mercury yet, and for the first time, the spacecraft had a clear view of Mercury’s south pole. This timelapse is made up of 128 different images captured by all three of BepiColombo’s monitoring cameras, M-CAM 1, 2 and 3. We see the planet move in and out of the fields of view of M-CAM 2 and 3, before M-CAM 1 sees the planet receding into the distance at the end of the video. The first few images are taken in the days and weeks before the flyby. Mercury…
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Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image captures algal bloom swirls in the north Adriatic Sea, along the coast of Italy. View the full article
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