European Space Agency

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As ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence goes through pre-flight testing, the system that will steer it around its target binary asteroid system is also undergoing its final checks for space. View the full article

With liftoff now set for 29 May at 00:20 CEST (28 May, 15:20 local time), ESA’s EarthCARE satellite ready for launch at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Once in orbit, this new satellite is set to revolutionise our understanding of how clouds and aerosols affect Earth’s climate. View the full article

ESA’s Solar Orbiter made the first ever connection between measurements of the solar wind around a spacecraft to high-resolution images of the Sun’s surface at a close distance. The success opens a new way for solar physicists to study the source regions of the solar wind. View the full article

Image: Last look at EarthCARE View the full article

Week in images: 20-24 May 2024 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:06:08 ESA’s Euclid space mission has released five unprecedented new views of the Universe. These never-before-seen images demonstrate Euclid’s remarkable ability to unravel the secrets of the cosmos. Scientists are now equipped to hunt for rogue planets, study mysterious matter through lensed galaxies, and explore the evolution of the Universe. Join us as we explore these groundbreaking discoveries and what they mean for the future of space exploration. View the full article

ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission is getting ready for lift-off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg, California, with a target launch date of no earlier than 28 May 2024. Save the date and watch the launch live on ESA WebTV or ESA YouTube. View the full article

Video: 00:04:07 Clouds are one of the biggest mysteries in the climate system. They play a key role in the regulating the temperature of our atmosphere. But we don’t know how their behaviour will change over time as Earth’s atmosphere gets warmer. This is where EarthCARE comes in. Launching on 28 May 2024, ESA’s Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer will help quantify the role that clouds and aerosols play in heating and cooling Earth’s atmosphere. With its suite of four cutting-edge instruments, EarthCARE is a groundbreaking advancement in satellite technology. It promises to deliver unprecedented data – unravelling the complexities of both clouds and aerosols. With this, we can refine our atmospheric models and climate forecasts, giving us the tools to tackle the challenges of a changing climate with greater accuracy and precision. Watch EarthCARE launch live on ESA WebTV or ESA YouTube. For more information on how to stream the launch, click here. View the full article

Spacemanic, a Slovak and Czech startup company, won this year’s Prix Bulles Cardin award of €20 000 on 17 May for its ocean WaterCube. This device, which is based on space hardware, has sensors which measure pollution levels in sea water allowing the identification of pollution hotspots. With this data, action can be taken to safeguard habitats and species critical for the long-term sustainability of marine ecosystems and fisheries. View the full article

Image: Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula is featured in this colourful radar image captured by Copernicus Sentinel-1. View the full article

Image: Cool by design 3D printing View the full article

Video: 00:51:05 ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission is designed to advance our understanding of the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface. Developed as a cooperation between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), this exciting mission will make a range of different measurements that together will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s delicate temperature balance. With global climate change increasingly affecting our planet, EarthCARE is poised to provide data for climate research, improve the accuracy of climate models and support numerical weather prediction. The EarthCare pre-launch press briefing featured: Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Observation Programmes, ESA, Dirk Bernaerts, EarthCARE project manager and Acting Head Earth Explorers Division, ESA, Futoshi Takiguchi, Vice President and Director General for the Space Technology Directorate, JAXA, Eiichi Tomita, EarthCARE/CPR Project Manager, JAXA and Maximilian Sauer, EarthCARE Project Manager, Airbus. View the full article

Explore this mission kit to learn more about EarthCARE – ESA’s new mission that will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s climate. View the full article

Ariane 6 media kit View the full article

EarthCARE: cloud and aerosol mission View the full article

Week in images: 25-29 March 2024 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission takes us over northern Brazil, where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean. View the full article

ESA has teamed up with Samsung to launch the first watch face for our Solar System. View the full article

In the run up to April’s total solar eclipse, ESA-led Solar Orbiter and NASA-led Parker Solar Probe are both at their closest approach to the Sun. They are taking the opportunity to join hands in studying the driving rain of plasma that streams from the Sun, fills the Solar System, and causes dazzlement and destruction at Earth. View the full article

Video: 00:38:30 ESA Member States met in Paris, France, for the 323rd session of the ESA Council on 26 and 27 March 2024. Watch the replay of the information session in which ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun share the outcome of the meeting. They gave an update to media about ESA's vision for the European space sector by 2040 and the status of actions provided in the roadmap for the implementation of the Resolution on present and future European Space Transportation. They also addressed the progress made in addressing critical challenges faced by ESA in preparation for the next Ministerial Council in 2025. This includes the establishment of the Independent Project Management Authority (IPMA), updating procurement and geo-return rules, service procurement and agreements with Member States. View the full article

ESA’s gamma-ray space telescope Integral has played a decisive role in capturing jets of matter being expelled into space at one-third the speed of light. The material and energy were liberated when huge explosions occurred on the surface of a neutron star. This world-first observation proved to be “a perfect experiment” for exploring astrophysical jets of all descriptions. View the full article

Image: A citizen scientist digging through data from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has found the mission’s 5000th comet. The tiny comet – indicated between the vertical lines in the inset – belongs to the ‘Marsden group’, named after the British astronomer Brian Marsden, who first recognised the group based on SOHO observations. Marsden group comets are thought to be pieces shed by the much bigger Comet 96P/Machholz, which SOHO observes as it passes close to the Sun every 5.3 years. This 5000th comet was discovered by Hanjie Tan, an astronomy PhD student in Prague, Czechia. Hanjie has been comet hunting since he was just 13 years old, discovering over 200 comets since 2009. Hanjie explains how he felt upon spotting this comet in the data: “The Marsden group comets represent only about 1.5% of all SOHO comet discoveries, so finding this one as the 5000th SOHO comet felt incredibly fortunate. It's really exciting to be the first to see comets get bright near the Sun after they've been travelling through space for thousands of years.” Launched in 1995, SOHO studies the Sun from its interior to its outer atmosphere, providing unique views and investigating the cause of the solar wind. During the last three decades, SOHO has become the most prolific discoverer of comets in astronomical history. The telescope’s prowess as a comet-hunter was unplanned, but turned out to be an unexpected success. With its clear view of the Sun’s surroundings, SOHO can easily spot a special kind of comet called a sungrazer – so-called because of their close approach to the Sun. Like most who have discovered comets in SOHO’s data, Hanjie Tan is a volunteer citizen scientist, searching for comets in his free time with the Sungrazer Project. This NASA-funded citizen science project, managed by Karl Battams from the US Naval Research Lab, grew out of the huge number of comet discoveries by citizen scientists early into SOHO’s mission. “Prior to the launch of the SOHO mission and the Sungrazer Project, there were only a couple dozen sungrazing comets on record – that’s all we knew existed,” said Karl Battams, who is the principal investigator for the Sungrazer Project. “The fact that we’ve finally reached this milestone – 5000 comets – is just unbelievable to me.” SOHO is a cooperative effort between ESA and NASA. Mission control is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment, or LASCO, which is the instrument that provides most of the comet imagery, was built by an international consortium, led by the US Naval Research Lab. Full story SOHO’s 4000th comet SOHO’s 3000th comet [Image description: A bright orange circle covers almost the whole image, with a smaller disc in the middle. Out of the smaller disc protrude wisps of the Sun's atmosphere. To the upper right of the inner circle, an inset zooms in on a small square, with vertical lines surrounding a faint smudge.] View the full article

A small, shoebox-sized spacecraft delivered to ESA’s Hera mission this week promises to make a giant leap forward in planetary science. Once deployed from the Hera spacecraft at the Didymos binary asteroid system, the Juventas CubeSat perform the first radar probe within an asteroid, peering deep into the heart of the Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos moonlet. View the full article