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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Data from ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has led to the surprising revelation that an ultra-hot exoplanet that orbits its host star in less than a day is covered by reflective clouds of metal, making it the shiniest exoplanet ever found. View the full article
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Week in images: 03-07 July 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will bring a different kind of chocolate to the International Space Station on his Huginn mission, created by the Danish chef Thorsten Schmidt. View the full article
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Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured this image of the powerful Cyclone Mocha on 13 May 2023 as it made its way across the Bay of Bengal heading northeast towards Bangladesh and Myanmar. View the full article
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Last week, members of ESA’s astronaut support teams participated in a helicopter underwater escape training. This training is mandatory for people involved in astronaut landing operations, including flight surgeons and photographers, who capture the key moments of an astronaut mission. View the full article
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When the RIME antenna on ESA’s Juice mission failed to deploy a few days after launch, the engineering teams faced the mighty challenge to understand the fault and rectify it. At stake was a chance to see inside Jupiter’s mysterious icy moons. View the full article
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Commercial air passengers across Europe will soon experience fewer flight delays and greener travel thanks to pilots being able to use satellites to route their planes. View the full article
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Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket has completed its final flight, placing two payloads – the German aerospace agency DLR’s Heinrich Hertz experimental communications satellite and the French communications satellite Syracuse 4b – into their planned geostationary transfer orbits. View the full article
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Video: 00:04:49 Discover the first results from Europe’s first Lightning Imager onboard the Meteosat Third Generation. The Lightning Imager can continuously detect rapid flashes of lighting in Earth’s atmosphere whether day or night from a distance of 36 000 km. This is the first time a geostationary weather satellite has the capability to detect lightning across Europe, Africa and the surrounding waters. Each camera can capture up to 1000 images per second and will continuously observe lightning activity from space. The data will give weather forecasters greater confidence in their predictions of severe storms. More information on the Lightning Imager first data.…
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The first ever satellite instrument capable of continuously detecting lightning across Europe and Africa has now been switched on. New animations from the innovative ‘Lighting Imager’ confirm the instrument will revolutionise the detection and prediction of severe storms. View the full article
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ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will be commander of the International Space Station (ISS) during his Huginn mission, becoming the sixth European astronaut to fulfil this role. View the full article
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Video: 00:05:59 ESA’s latest astrophysics mission, Euclid, lifted off on a Space X Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, at 17:12 CEST on 1 July 2023. Euclid has now started its month-long journey to Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, located 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, in the opposite direction from the Sun. The telescope will survey one third of the sky with unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity. By observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, it will create the most extensive 3D-map of the Universe, with the third dimension representing time. ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Univers…
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ESA’s Euclid spacecraft lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA, at 17:12 CEST on 1 July. The successful launch marks the beginning of an ambitious mission to uncover the nature of two mysterious components of our Universe: dark matter and dark energy, and to help us answer the fundamental question: what is the Universe made of? View the full article
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Image: Euclid ore-launch briefing complete at ESA's mission control View the full article
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Week in images: 26-30 June 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Video: 00:02:23 ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence will perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos asteroid in deep space. But first Hera needs to cross millions of kilometres of space to get there. That is the task of Hera’s Propulsion Module, forming around half of the overall spacecraft, which has been prepared by Italy’s Avio company. Formed of a central tube plus a supporting structure, the Module has been fitted with propellant tanks, piping and thrusters (inside the red protective covers). But before it can be joined to Hera’s other element, the Core Module, this Propulsion Module had to undergo its crucial ‘global leak test’ – as seen here. The Modul…
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ESA’s mission Euclid is getting ready for lift-off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, with a target launch date of 1 July 2023. View the full article
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The team working on ESA’s Hera asteroid mission have glimpsed its destination. Last September NASA’s DART mission returned images of the boulder-strewn Dimorphos moonlet just before it impacted it, in an audacious and ultimately successful attempt to shift its orbit around its parent asteroid Didymos. Following on from DART, Hera will carry with it a pair of shoebox-sized ‘CubeSats’ that conclude their own observations by landing on Dimorphos. Team members have been using DART images to help visualise this process of touchdown. And in the process they can't help but imagine: what would it be like for human explorers to one day follow in these CubeSats’ footsteps? View th…
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Image: Testing the Lunar Equipment Support Assembly (LESA) investigation during a partial gravity parabolic flight. View the full article
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Image: Rotterdam and part of the Zeeland province in southwest Netherlands are featured in this radar image acquired by Copernicus Sentinel-1. View the full article
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Video: 00:46:06 Watch the replay of the media briefing following the 316th ESA Council which takes place on 28 and 29 June in Stockholm. ESA Council Chair Anna Rathsman (Sweden) and ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher will share the outcome of the meeting and provide an update on the launch of new ESA Earth observation missions, upcoming astronaut missions, the Space Summit planned for 6-7 November 2023 in Sevilla (Spain), as well as the decision on the public release of official ESA documents. View the full article
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Video: 00:04:20 ESA’s Euclid space telescope is nearly ready for launch. The spacecraft arrived in Florida on 30 April for final tests and checks, and now being integrated with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will carry it into space. For the team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, this means that the most intense phase of their work is about to begin. To prepare themselves, the team has simulated the launch operations, tackling issues ranging from team members falling ill to a computer mouse being taped over. Euclid is ESA’s space telescope designed to explore the dark Universe. The mission will create the largest, most accura…
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Image: On 27 June, this last glimpse of ESA’s Euclid space telescope was caught right before it was encapsulated by a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing, meaning that the nose of the rocket was installed over the spacecraft. Euclid is 4.7-m tall and 3.7-m in diameter, fitting nicely in the Falcon 9 fairing with height of 13.1-m and width of 5.2-m. The Euclid satellite is getting ready for the target launch date of 1 July 2023 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA. The Falcon 9 fairing will keep Euclid safe and clean during the last days before lift-off and it will protect the spacecraft against Earth’s atmosphere during launch. Euclid’s telescope and instruments are extremely sen…
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Our ‘ESA Photolibrary for Professionals’ platform has relaunched with a new modern user interface, additional search features and download options. Register for a user account and you can access the largest selection of high-resolution professional images from ESA. View the full article
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