European Space Agency

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In around six months, ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer mission will take to the skies to advance our understanding of the interactions between clouds, aerosols and radiation in Earth’s atmosphere. But how will it do that exactly? View the full article

Video: 00:03:39 Focus on Euclid with Guadalupe Cañas Herrera: “I’m exactly where I’ve always wanted to be.” Guadalupe Cañas Herrera, an ESA Internal Research Fellow currently working for ESA’s Euclid mission at ESTEC, the Netherlands, describes in this interview her personal and professional trajectory. Passionate about space since her early childhood, she has spent endless nights looking at the stars. Now, this theoretical physicist develops her activities within the Euclid Scientific Consortium to establish the quantity of dark matter and dark energy existing in the Universe. Listen to Guadalupe for a vivid account from a vocational scientist and an ardent defender of scientific collaboration. Space Team Europe is an ESA space community engagement initiative to gather European space actors under the same umbrella sharing values of leadership, autonomy, and responsibility. Access the other Space Team Europe for Euclid videos View the full article

Video: 00:02:07 We are all intricately interconnected to our Earth – from the trees that provide us with oxygen, to the natural sources that shape our landscape. ESA's Earth observation programme is at the forefront of monitoring our planet's dynamic changes. Using cutting-edge satellite technology, ESA captures invaluable data on Earth's atmosphere, land and oceans. From tracking climate patterns to assessing environmental health, ESA's Earth observation initiatives provide essential insights for scientific research, environmental management and disaster response. By harnessing space technology, ESA contributes significantly to our understanding of Earth – ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come. View the full article

With all eyes about to focus on the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, new scientific findings show, again, that the climate crisis is taking its toll on Antarctica – a continent, up to recently, thought better able to withstand the immediate effects of rising global temperatures. Using satellite data, scientists have discovered that the ice shelf extending into the ocean from Cadman Glacier on the west Antarctic Peninsula collapsed, leaving the glacier exposed to unusually warm ocean water, which caused the glacier to accelerate and retreat rapidly. View the full article

Video: 00:03:08 Henk Hoekstra, professor of observational cosmology at Leiden University, the Netherlands, shares his professional trajectory linked to weak gravitational lensing, a technique used by ESA’s Euclid mission. Henk explains how Euclid will reveal the dark side of the Universe. He uses enlightening examples involving a swimming pool and other terrestrial objects. Listen to Henk Hoekstra to understand how Euclid can make the invisible visible. Space Team Europe is an ESA space community engagement initiative to gather European space actors under the same umbrella sharing values of leadership, autonomy, and responsibility. View the full article

Image: This new Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects in the upper portion of the image are thought to host two further protostars. This image was captured with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam). Infrared imaging is powerful in studying newborn stars and their outflows, because the youngest stars are invariably still embedded within the gas and dust from which they are formed. The infrared emission of the star’s outflows penetrates the obscuring gas and dust, making Herbig-Haro objects ideal for observation with Webb’s sensitive infrared instruments. Molecules excited by the turbulent conditions, including molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide, emit infrared light that Webb can collect to visualise the structure of the outflows. NIRCam is particularly good at observing the hot (thousands of degree Celsius) molecules that are excited as a result of shocks. Using ground-based observations, researchers have previously found that the for cold molecular gas associated with HH 797, most of the red-shifted gas (moving away from us) is found to the south (bottom right), while the blue-shifted gas (moving towards us) is to the north (bottom left). A gradient was also found across the outflow, such that at a given distance from the young central star, the velocity of the gas near the eastern edge of the jet is more red-shifted than that of the gas on the western edge. Astronomers in the past thought this was due to the outflow’s rotation. In this higher resolution Webb image, however, we can see that what was thought to be one outflow is in fact made up of two almost parallel outflows with their own separate series of shocks (which explains the velocity asymmetries). The source, located in the small dark region (bottom right of centre), and already known from previous observations, is therefore not a single but a double star. Each star is producing its own dramatic outflow. Other outflows are also seen in this image, including one from the protostar in the top right of centre along with its illuminated cavity walls. HH 797 resides directly north of HH 211 (separated by approximately 30 arcseconds), which was the feature of a Webb image release in September 2023. [Image Description: In the lower half of the image is a narrow, horizontal nebula that stretches from edge to edge. It is brightly coloured with more variety on its right side. In the upper half there is a glowing point with multi-coloured light radiating from it in all directions. A bright star with long diffraction spikes lies along the right edge, and a few smaller stars are spread around. The background is covered in a thin haze.] Release on esawebb.org View the full article

ESA’s first human spaceflight mission lifted off 40 years ago today. Accompanied by the first ESA astronaut, Ulf Merbold, the Spacelab module took flight inside the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay, turning NASA’s ‘space truck’ into a mini-space station for scientific research. Europe continues to be highly active in the crewed module business to this day. View the full article

Video: 00:07:54 Focus on Euclid with Jean-Charles Cuillandre: “What we see in the first Euclid images is a promise of what will come in the future.” Jean-Charles Cuillandre, astronomer at CEA Paris-Saclay, explains that he was “blown away” when he saw the first full-colour images captured by ESA’s recently launched Euclid space telescope. Being a specialist of wide-field imaging, Jean-Charles was not only involved in the programme committee that selected the celestial targets for the ESA Euclid’s ‘Early Release Observations’, but he was also in charge of processing the data both for their scientific and their outreach value. Jean-Charles expected the resulting images to look extremely crispy since they are taken by instruments outside of the Earth’s disturbing atmosphere, but even he was not prepared for the astonishing results. The combination of the field-of-view (the area of sky covered with a single shot of the telescope), and the resolution (the number of pixels in the instruments) are unique for Euclid. The first five released images therefore show the scientific potential of the Euclid space mission. The Euclid Consortium is responsible to fulfill this promise. More than 2000 scientists from 300 institutes in 13 European countries, the US, Canada and Japan, will try to decipher the dark Universe through the analysis of Euclid’s scientific data. In this interview, Jean-Charles Cuillandre shares with us his view of Euclid and the elusive dark matter and dark energy. He specifically describes the apparent astronomical objects and reveals the hidden information behind their beautiful appearance. Be ready to be “blown away”. Space Team Europe is an ESA space community engagement initiative to gather European space actors under the same umbrella sharing values of leadership, autonomy, and responsibility. ©ESA - European Space Agency Euclid images ©ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO View the full article

Week in images: 20-24 November 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:01:25 Cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un. Allumage Vulcain! This is the moment Ariane 6’s main engine was sparked into life, and the entire main stage of the new rocket and the many parts of the launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, practised for the full duration of a launch. Of course, as planned, the test model did not leave the ground. Without its boosters, instead of piercing the clouds Ariane 6’ created its own on Earth: a clean byproduct of the Vulcain 2.1 engine’s oxygen and hydrogen propellants, which came together to send out impressive swirls of H2O. After the almost 150 tonnes of propellant was burnt through and the clouds dispersed, the curtains closed on the successful rehearsal. The data from thousands of monitors around the rocket will be crunched in the coming weeks to learn all that’s needed for Ariane’s next, real, flight. Access the related broadcast quality video material. View the full article

Watch the live launch broadcast of Ireland’s first satellite EIRSAT-1 on ESA Web TV Channel 2 and ESA YouTube, currently scheduled for 29 November. Coverage of this historic moment is set to begin shortly before 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET) (times to be confirmed). View the full article

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures the colourful waters of two salty lakes in East Africa: Lake Natron in northern Tanzania and Lake Magadi in southern Kenya. View the full article

Video: 00:08:32 On 23 November 2023, in preparation for its first flight, Ariane 6 went through its biggest test to date: a full-scale rehearsal that meant complex fuelling, a launch countdown and ignition of the core stage Vulcain 2.1 engine, followed by over seven minutes of engine burn that covered the entire core stage flight phase, just as would happen during a real launch into space. The engine roared into action after a slight anomaly meant there was a suspenseful pause to the automated sequence, before the countdown was reset and began to tick again. The live feed continued until just after core stage operations were complete and the engine had burnt through all of its propellant. For this rehearsal the boosters were not ignited, so the Ariane 6 test model stayed firmly on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. This was the longest ‘full-stack’ run performed to date for the rocket’s liquid propulsion module with a Vulcain 2.1 engine. The Vulcain 2.1 engine burnt through almost 150 tonnes of propellant supplied from the Ariane 6 core stage tanks – liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen – supercooled to temperatures below -250°C. With thousands of monitors situated around the launchpad, the data from this rehearsal will be analysed meticulously and used for Ariane 6’s next and first real flight. View the full article

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Video: 02:02:28 One giant planet. Three icy moons. An eight-year journey. One special spacecraft. Building a mission to Jupiter took years of planning and thousands of people. Now that Juice is finally en route to its destination, we go behind the scenes to discover the story of the making of Juice. The film features exclusive interviews with scientists and engineers from across Europe, as well as backstage footage from the planning, testing and launch of this once-in-a-generation mission. Follow the final three years of Juice’s life on Earth. Discover why the mission was named Juice, how teams working on the spacecraft handled the COVID-19 pandemic, and why the spacecraft carries a special plaque dedicated to Galileo. Join Juice as it gets assembled, probed and tested to be certain that it is ready for Jupiter. And experience the emotion as Juice is put into a rocket and launched into space, marking the beginning of its 12-year adventure in the Solar System. View the full article

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ESA has reached a significant milestone in its commitment towards a deeper understanding of Earth's dynamic processes and addressing pressing environmental challenges with the selection of two new candidates – Cairt and Wivern – to progress to the next development phase as part of the process of realising the Agency’s eleventh Earth Explorer satellite mission. View the full article

The latest image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense centre of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. The star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. View the full article

Embracing the New Space approach, it has taken just 36 months to develop and build ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite. Now complete, this remarkable microsatellite has been shipped from OHB in Sweden to Germany where it is starting a series of tests to make sure that it will survive liftoff next year and its subsequent life in orbit. View the full article

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Week in images: 13-17 November 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: The North Channel, between Northern Ireland and Scotland, is featured in this false-colour radar image from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. View the full article

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