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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The second European Service Module was connected to the rest of the Orion spacecraft which will be used in the Artemis II mission that will bring astronauts around the Moon and back for the first time in over 50 years. View the full article
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Launching things into space is hard. Aside from the engines and software, orbital calculations and the launch pad, the tanks that hold the fuel are a masterful example of engineering in their own right – and ESA will soon be testing the next generation of rocket tanks: Phoebus. View the full article
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Video: 00:04:41 At some point, statistically speaking, a large asteroid will impact Earth. Whether that’s tomorrow, in ten years, or a problem for our ancestors, ESA is getting prepared. As part of the world’s first test of asteroid deflection, ESA’s Hera mission will perform a detailed post-impact survey of Dimorphos – the 160-metre asteroid struck, and successfully deflected, by NASA’s DART spacecraft. Hera will soon study the aftermath. Launching in October 2024, Hera will turn this grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and hopefully repeatable planetary defence technique. But before Hera and its two CubeSats fly, they’re rigorously tested at ESA’s ESTE…
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Week in images: 16-20 October 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Image: Like shining jewels in the water, ships passing through the Panama Canal, which cuts across Central America, have been captured in this Copernicus Sentinel-1 image. View the full article
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Video: 01:00:00 ESA Member States met for the 317th session of the ESA Council on 18 and 19 October. Watch the replay of the media briefing in which ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun share the outcome of the meeting. They give an update to media on plans for ESA to cooperate with the UN’s Environment Programme on the use of Earth observation data and technology for the environment, as well as providing assistance to Poland for its national Earth observation project. They also share the latest plans for a Space Summit to be held on 6 and 7 November in Seville, Spain. View the full article
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Image: The scene was set: a research base on the Red Planet was struck by a cyberattack and eight teams on Earth had just a matter of hours to save it. Far from being a farfetched scenario, cyberattacks are unfortunately a daily problem for all sectors, including space exploration, and can have devastating consequences. The ‘Pwn The Rover’ hacking contest was held on 17 October at ESA’s mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, in collaboration with Fraunhofer SIT and ATHENE-Center. Its goal was to bring together, educate and inspire younger generations in the realm of cybersecurity. The hackathon was challenging, really pushing teams in a mix of time-limited and t…
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ESA’s navigation testbed vehicle participated in a campaign organised by Norwegian governmental authorities to assess the impact of jamming and spoofing on satnav systems and test innovative technologies for detection and mitigation. View the full article
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Week in images: 09-13 October 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Image: The landscape around the city of Bentiu in South Sudan is featured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image. View the full article
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New research, based largely on information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and ESA’s CryoSat satellite missions, has revealed alarming findings about the state of Antarctica's ice shelves: 40% of these floating shelves have significantly reduced in volume over the past quarter-century. While this underscores the accelerating impacts of climate change on the world's southernmost continent, the picture of ice deterioration is mixed. View the full article
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When astronauts return to the lunar surface they are probably going to be doing more driving than walking – but to keep billowing moondust at bay they are going to need roads. An ESA project reported in today’s Nature Scientific Reports tested the creation of roadworthy surfaces by melting simulated moondust with a powerful laser. View the full article
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Video: 00:03:42 Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth. Do Hera and her CubeSats have the right stuff to explore space? Before launch they need to prove it, with a round of testing at the ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands – Europe’s largest satellite test facility. Suitable for kids and adults alike, this episode of ‘The Incredible Adventures of Hera’ explains all the tests that Hera has to go through, using facilities that …
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Governments and international disaster response teams have long relied on satellites to assess the impacts of disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Now ESA has partnered with ICEYE, a Finnish microsatellite manufacturer, to improve early warning systems for floods and wildfires and extend their geographical coverage globally. View the full article
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Video: 00:03:44 Nestled between the colossal martian ‘Grand Canyon’ (Valles Marineris) and the tallest volcanoes in the Solar System (the Tharsis region) lies Noctis Labyrinthus – a vast system of deep and steep valleys that stretches out for around 1190 km (roughly the length of Italy here on Earth). This video visualises a flight over the eastern part of Noctis Labyrinthus as seen by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). It presents a perspective view down and across this fascinating landscape, showing distinctive ‘graben’ – parts of the crust that have subsided in relation to their surroundings. The intense volcanism in the nearby Tharsis region …
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With many people around the world suffering from various forms of malnutrition it’s important that the absolute basics such as rice, soya and wheat are as nourishing as possible. ESA-funded research shows that the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission and the Italian Prisma mission could be used to monitor the nutritional content of staple crops. This could, for example, help farmers take appropriate steps to boost the quality of their crops as they grow. View the full article
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Today, ESA's Gaia mission releases a goldmine of knowledge about our galaxy and beyond. Among other findings, the star surveyor surpasses its planned potential to reveal half a million new and faint stars in a massive cluster, identify over 380 possible cosmic lenses, and pinpoint the positions of more than 150 000 asteroids within the Solar System. View the full article
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Andreas Mogensen had a busy first month in space, with plenty of science from sleeping in orbit and capturing pictures of thunderstorms to making chocolate mousse. Here is an overview of Andreas’s first month of science on the Space Station. View the full article
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ESA is calling for visionary ideas for how to use a constellation of communication and navigation satellites around the Moon to establish lunar businesses – and unlock opportunities on Earth. View the full article
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If you are interested in applying for a job at ESA, curious to know what opportunities we have for you or would like to hear about the projects our teams are working on, then mark your calendar for 9 November 2023! For this fully online event, we will be streaming a programme packed full of sessions giving you an insider’s look at STEM careers at ESA. View the full article
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Week in images: 02-06 October 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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The European Space Agency ESA and Axiom Space signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 1 October in Paris to explore collaborative opportunities in human spaceflight, science, technology, and commercialisation. View the full article
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Among the smallest passengers aboard Europe’s Vega launch tonight are also the most ambitious in nature: twin miniaturised laboratories, or CubeSats, for the in-orbit demonstration of disruptive state-of-the-art space technologies. View the full article
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The smallest flowering plant on Earth might become a nutritious foodstuff for astronauts in the future, as well as a highly efficient source of oxygen. To help test their suitability for space, floating clumps of watermeal – individually the size of pinheads – were subjected to 20 times normal Earth gravity aboard ESA’s Large Diameter Centrifuge by a team from Mahidol University in Thailand. View the full article
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