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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When one thinks of the damage that climate change is doing, it’s probable that what comes to mind is a vision of huge lumps of ice dropping off one of the polar ice sheets and crashing into the ocean. While Greenland and Antarctica are losing masses of ice, so too are most of the glaciers around the world, but it’s tricky to measure how much ice they are shedding. Thanks to ESA’s CryoSat satellite and a breakthrough way of using its data, scientists have discovered that glaciers worldwide have shrunk by a total of 2% in just 10 years, and it’s because of higher air temperatures. View the full article
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The European Space Agency is currently looking for a new Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications and new Director of Internal Services to join its executive board and support the Director General, with responsibility for relevant ESA activities and overall objectives. View the full article
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The ESA/NASA SOHO observatory has overturned 14 years of thinking about the strange Sun-skirting ‘rock comet’ known as Phaethon that could reopen the mystery of how the Geminid meteor shower was born. View the full article
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Not one, but two rocket launches with ESA-led experiments are flying to the edge of space just a week apart, providing unique data to researchers eager to learn more about fundamental physics, semiconductor production, the formation of planets and how our immune cells react to spaceflight. View the full article
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Week in images: 17-21 April 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Image: The historic centre of Rome, Italy’s capital city, is featured in this image captured on 28 March 2023. View the full article
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Image: ESA’s technical centre expands View the full article
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Global food security is a major challenge in the face of population growth and climate change. One of the first steps in achieving food security for all is to know which crops are growing where and how – each season. Launching today, ESA’s WorldCereal is the world’s first dynamic system capable of providing seasonally updated crop information to help monitor agricultural production across the globe. View the full article
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A report, publishing today, states that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica has increased fivefold since the 1990s, and now accounts for a quarter of sea-level rise. View the full article
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Making use of the very first resources of another world would be a major feat for our species, bringing us closer to living in space to stay. But reaching such a milestone will take sustained inventiveness and effort – so ESA invites your ideas to help make it happen. View the full article
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Press Release N° 18–2023 At the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, USA, on 18 April ESA signed a letter of intent with the Swedish National Space Agency to send an ESA astronaut to visit the International Space Station on an Axiom mission. View the full article
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The Euclid satellite embarked on the next leg of the 1.5 million km long journey to space from where it will unlock the mysteries of the dark Universe. View the full article
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Every year on 22 April, we’ve celebrated Earth Day and the beautiful planet we call home. Earth Day, established in 1970, has been used to highlight our planet’s environmental challenges and raise awareness of the importance of protecting our world for future generations. But shouldn’t every day be Earth Day? We only have one beautiful planet after all. We hope you enjoy this curated list of 10 of the most remarkable facts about Earth. Scroll to the end of the article to take part in ESA's Earth Day 2023 campaign. View the full article
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On 30 April 2023, all nominal operations of Aeolus, the first mission to observe Earth’s wind profiles on a global scale, will conclude in preparation for a series of end of life activities. View the full article
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Video: 00:42:00 ESA’s Solar Orbiter may have taken another step towards solving the eighty-year-old mystery of why the Sun’s outer atmosphere is so hot. On 3 March 2022, just a few months into Solar Orbiter’s nominal mission, the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) returned data showing for the first time that a magnetic phenomenon called reconnection was taking place persistently on tiny scales. At that time, the spacecraft was about halfway between the Earth and the Sun. This enabled coordinated observations with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) missions. The data from the three missions was then …
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ESA has signed contracts for two parallel concept studies for commercial-scale Space-Based Solar Power plants, representing a crucial step in the Agency’s new SOLARIS initiative – maturing the feasibility of gathering solar energy from space for terrestrial clean energy needs. View the full article
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Image: Juice gets wings View the full article
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ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) has taken its first monitoring camera images showing part of the spacecraft with Earth as a stunning backdrop. The mission launched on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou on 14 April 14:14 CEST and the images were captured in the hours afterwards. View the full article
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Video: 02:22:14 Watch a replay of the launch broadcast for ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice. Juice was launched into space on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 13 April 2023, on an eight-year cruise to Jupiter. It will make detailed observations of gas giant Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. The programme includes live segments from the Spaceport and ESA’s European Spacecraft Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. Access the related broadcast quality video material. View the full article
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ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 14:14 CEST on 14 April. The successful launch marks the beginning of an ambitious voyage to uncover the secrets of the ocean worlds around giant planet Jupiter. View the full article
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Week in images: 10-14 April 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Video: 00:01:38 ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, Juice, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 14:14 CEST on 14 April 2023 to begin its eight-year journey to Jupiter, where it will study in detail the gas giant planet’s three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life…
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Data from ESA’s star-mapping Gaia spacecraft has allowed astronomers to image a gigantic exoplanet using Japan's Subaru Telescope. This world is the first confirmed exoplanet found by Gaia’s ability to sense the gravitational tug or ‘wobble’ a planet induces on its star. And the technique points the way to the future of direct exoplanet imaging. View the full article
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Video: 00:01:58 Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice integration and rollout timelapse at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. Juice – Jupiter Icy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.…
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Image: At ESA’s mission control, before the launch comes the pre-launch briefing – and the all-important group photo. This is the team that will fly Juice to Jupiter with four planetary flybys of Earth and Venus, then switching orbit from Jupiter to its largest moon, Ganymede, followed by a tour of the icy, complex Jovian system comprising a whopping 35 lunar flybys. Never before has a mission switched orbit from a planet other than our own to one of its moons. Radiation at Jupiter will be extreme. Light at the edge of the solar system will be just 3% of what powers us on Earth. It will be cold. Time delays of up to two hours mean teams are only ever communicating with…
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