European Space Agency

Image: Pinhole propulsion for satellites View the full article

This year has been a whirlwind of captivating Earth observation stories and news, spanning from dramatic volcanic eruptions to powerful earthquakes to witnessing icebergs on the run. Join us as we revisit some of the most memorable stories from 2023. View the full article

ESA Impact 2023 – Quarter 4 Welcome to this edition of ESA Impact, an interactive publication covering stories and images from the last quarter of 2023. View the full article

The latest international group to employ ESA’s hypergravity-generating Large Diameter Centrifuge is an all-female team from Bolivia, with access sponsored by the United Nations and ESA. The researchers are investigating whether the high gravity levels experienced during rocket launches might contribute to the anemia afflicting many astronauts in space. View the full article

Image: Ten years ago, on 19 December 2013, ESA’s billion star-mapping satellite Gaia launched. Since then, Gaia has been scanning the sky and gathering an enormous amount of data on the positions and motions of 1.8 billion stars, enabling numerous discoveries about the history of our galaxy. Gaia’s catalogue is ever-growing containing data on stars and other cosmic objects such as asteroids in our Solar System, exoplanets, binary stars, and other galaxies. The Gaia collaboration, consisting of about 450 people in 25 countries, prepares the data for scientific use. This has resulted in publications of over 10 000 scientific papers and 128 PhD theses. Find out more about Gaia’s first ten years of science here. View the full article

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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on weird and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that orbits on its side. What Webb found is a dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, and other atmospheric features – including a seasonal polar cap. The image expands upon a two-colour version released earlier this year, adding additional wavelength coverage for a more detailed look. View the full article

Video: 00:08:22 2023’s highlight was the highly anticipated launch of Juice, Europe’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer. The Juice spacecraft was placed on course to Jupiter on the second-to-last Ariane 5 launch vehicle in April. After an eight-year journey, Juice will begin observing the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Calisto and Europa. The Euclid space telescope was launched in July with the aim of unravelling the enigmas of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’. Euclid’s first images were released in November, revealing razor-sharp astronomical images with detail never before seen by a telescope across such a large patch of the sky. After almost five years in space, ESA’s Aeolus wind mission was retired. This trailblazing mission was tasked with observing wind patterns from space thereby improving weather forecasts and climate models.. Aeolus data and technology will have an important role to play in the accuracy of future weather forecasting. On 28 July, it burned up in an assisted re-entry – the first assisted re-entry by a mission which was not designed to do so. As space debris becomes an increasingly serious issue, ESA is determined to search for solutions. Together with its commercial and institutional partners, ESA has developed the ‘Zero Debris Charter’, launched this year. By signing the Charter, space entities worldwide can register their intent to work together towards the sustainable use of Earth’s orbital environment. Earlier in in 2023, MTG-I1, the first of the Meteosat Third Generation missions, sent back its first images. The satellite was launched in 2022 and carries two instruments: a flexible combined imager and a lighting imager. Both instruments performed beyond expectation and a stunning combined image from both was revealed. Earth observation is key to keeping our planet and the population as a whole, safe. Today, monitoring earthquakes, forest fires or flooding from space already helps to coordinate rescue response but the data can also be used to better understand phenomena such as climate change and support the IPCC climate reports. Last year, NASA’s Dart mission impacted on a small moonlet of the asteroid Didymos, changing its course. We’ll soon be launching ESA’s Hera spacecraft to collect data on the aftermath of this collision. The Hera spacecraft was integrated and underwent testing this year in ESA ESTEC’s test centre in the Netherlands. 2023 also saw the first hardware tests for the second generation of Galileo satellites but even more importantly the Galileo High Accuracy Service was launched in January. This new service delivers centimetre accuracy from space further cementing Galileo’s reputation as the most accurate satellite navigation system in the world. View the full article

ESA is launching a competition which initiates a first phase of activities for European companies to eventually demonstrate a complete cargo delivery service to and from space stations in low-Earth orbit by 2028. View the full article

Week in images: 11-15 December 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Space is becoming ever more important to life on Earth – from managing climate change to responding to emergencies to digitalising the economy. To help policymakers and businesses take informed decisions about investing in space, ESA has today published plans to create robust and reliable data on the space economy, in collaboration with international partners. View the full article

Image: As the holiday season swiftly approaches, frosty landscapes tend to be associated with the magical idea of a white Christmas. But this Copernicus Sentinel-3 image over the Antarctica Peninsula sheds light on a different perspective. View the full article

Video: 01:00:00 ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and Swiss ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun give an update on the roll-out of decisions taken at the Space Summit in Seville, including the implications for space transportation and progress towards enabling a European commercial provider to deliver supplies to the International Space Station by 2028 and return cargo to Earth. The evolution of the European Spaceport in Kourou is also covered. Furthermore, the briefing addresses upcoming, high-level political meetings on space and international cooperation projects that ESA runs with partners around the globe, as well as ESA’s contribution to Poland’s Earth observation project “Country awareness mission in land analysis”. View the full article

The second phase of the European Union’s Destination Earth initiative has been approved at ESA Council. Destination Earth, also known as DestinE, will build digital models of Earth allowing greater insight into weather and climate dynamics and their impacts on society. View the full article

Two new senior staff have been appointed by ESA’s 22 Member States at today’s Council meeting. Laurent Jaffart will become the next Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications and Marco Ferrazzani will become the next Director of Internal Services. View the full article

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Discovery helps answer the question: How small can you go when forming stars? Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars, since they form like stars through gravitational collapse, but never gain enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion. The smallest brown dwarfs can overlap in mass with giant planets. In a quest to find the smallest brown dwarf, astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found the new record-holder: an object weighing just three to four times the mass of Jupiter. View the full article

Milani needs you! This is your chance to design a mission patch for the Milani CubeSat which will fly with ESA's Hera planetary defence spacecraft to the Didymos binary asteroid system. View the full article

Video: 00:01:25 Trailer of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission. In 2028, ESA will launch its most ambitious exploration mission to search for past and present signs of life on Mars. Enjoy the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin mission in minute detail – everything down to the colour and size of the wires, sticky tape and scratches. The spacecraft, the rover and martian landscapes are as true to reality as possible for a simulation. The visuals show the spacecraft structural engineering with a faithful robotic appearance. The martian landscape has been simulated with meticulous realism. The story begins with the rover exploring the surface of the Red Planet. There is science to be done. Join the adventure. This trailer provides a first taste for the most accurate animation series made so far of a Mars mission. ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover has unique scientific potential to search for evidence of past life on Mars thanks to its drill and scientific instruments. It will be the first rover to reach a depth of up to two metres deep below the surface, acquiring samples that have been protected from surface radiation and extreme temperatures. The drill will retrieve soils from ancient parts of Mars and analyse them in situ with its onboard laboratory. The mission will also serve to demonstrate key technologies that Europe needs to master for future planetary exploration missions. This includes the capability to land safely on a planet, to move autonomously on the surface, and to perform drilling and sample processing and analysis automatically. The rover will use novel driving techniques including wheel-walking to overcome difficult terrains, as well as autonomous navigation software. Check ESA’s ExoMars website and our frequently asked questions for the latest updates. View the full article

ESA Highlights: the best of ESA in 2023 ESA Highlights is a visual showcase of some of ESA’s key achievements over a 12-month period. View the full article

Video: 00:05:47 Ice is without doubt one of the first casualties of climate change, but the effects of our warming world are not only limited to ice melting on Earth’s surface. Ground that has been frozen for thousands of years, called permafrost, is thawing – adding to the climate crisis and causing serious issues for local communities. Scientists estimate that the world’s permafrost holds almost double the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere. When permafrost warms and thaws, it releases methane and carbon dioxide, adding these greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and making global warming even worse. While permafrost cannot be directly observed from space, a lot of different types of satellite data, along with ground measurements and modelling, allow scientists to paint a picture of permafrost ground conditions. View the full article

Video: 00:00:45 Live conversation between ESA astronaut and commander of the International Space Station (ISS) Andreas Mogensen and the 2023 Nobel Prize laureates Ferenc Krausz (in physics) and Moungi Bawendi (in chemistry). The event took place at the Nobel Prize Museum in Oslo which was connected to the ISS. Andreas showed a Nobel Prize he brought with him to the Space Station. View the full article

The winning entry to a Europe-wide data visualisation contest was announced and showcased last week at COP28. The ‘Little Pictures’ competition challenged the continent’s creative talent to design compelling illustrations using the range of global observation records available from ESA, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), to highlight the key changes taking place across the climate. View the full article