European Space Agency

The new Galileo satellite model from Thales Alenia Space underwent mechanical and signal performance testing this summer at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre. Structural models resisted launch-like noise and vibrations while an electrical model proved its ability to send Galileo signals - a major milestone in the development of Galileo’s Second Generation. View the full article

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has measured the size of the nearest Earth-sized exoplanet that passes across the face of a neighbouring star. This alignment, called a transit, opens the door to follow-on studies to see what kind of atmosphere, if any, the rocky world might have. View the full article

Video: 00:22:10 A team of university students from University College Dublin is taking Ireland to space, for the very first time. The story begins in 2017, when the team was accepted to ESA's educational CubeSat programme, Fly Your Satellite! Over the course of six years, they have designed, built, and tested the satellite with the help of ESA experts and with access to ESA's state-of-the-art spacecraft testing facilities. As the team prepares for launch and operations, hear more about their journey to this historic moment. View the full article

Image: One of the world’s most active volcanoes, Mount Etna, erupted on Sunday – spewing lava and clouds of ash high over the Mediterranean island of Sicily. This image, captured on 13 November by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, has been processed using the mission’s shortwave-infrared bands to show the lava flow at the time of acquisition. View the full article

Video: 00:39:52 Watch the replay of the press conference with ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt taking place at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne (Germany) as he prepares for his first mission to the International Space Station. He was joined by another ESA astronaut, Matthias Maurer. Marcus’s mission, called Muninn, is supported by ESA and the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA). The mission will last up to 14 days, in which Marcus will take part in microgravity research and educational outreach activities. Marcus will be a mission specialist on Ax-3 and his launch is scheduled on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft no earlier than January 2024. Access the related broadcast quality footage. View the full article

Forty years ago this month, the first European-built Spacelab was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on board Space Shuttle Columbia. Also on board was Ulf Merbold, who became ESA's first astronaut in space. The 10-day Spacelab-1 mission marked ESA's entry into human spaceflight activities. View the full article

Video: 00:02:00 Overview of ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt’s training for his mission to space. The Swedish astronaut will travel to the International Space Station on Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) no earlier than January 2024. He will spend up to 14 days in orbit conducting microgravity research and educational activities. Marcus Wandt started intensive training for his mission in June 2023. Lessons on payloads and simulators take place in training facilities and space centres around the world. Each of the partners is in charge of training astronauts on the elements that they contribute to the International Space Station. Marcus’s training in Europe focuses on the Columbus module systems and the experiments he will conduct during his Muninn mission. Marcus spent over 100 hours of training to fully qualify to operate, monitor and maintain Columbus and its experiments. Spaceflight instructors adjust their lessons to his level and that has helped speed up the training. While he is yet to experience microgravity, Marcus has a solid understanding of flight vehicle systems, their main safety features and how to interpret flight data. Marcus was one of the 17 new astronaut candidates chosen from over 22 500 applicants from across ESA Member States in November 2022. Access the related broadcast quality footage. View the full article

Having satellites in different types of orbit is essential to delivering data to forecast the weather accurately. With the first Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite safely in geostationary orbit since December 2022, it’s also time to focus on its polar-orbiting cousin, the MetOp Second Generation mission. And now, for the first time, two MetOp Second Generation satellites have been brought together to stand side-by-side for testing. View the full article

Image: Fall into an ice giant’s atmosphere View the full article

An enormous burst of gamma rays, detected by ESA’s Integral space telescope, has struck Earth. The blast caused a significant disturbance in our planet’s ionosphere. Such disturbances are usually associated with energetic particle events on the Sun but this one was the result of an exploding star almost two billion light-years away. Analysing the effects of the blast could provide information about the mass extinctions in Earth’s history. View the full article

Europe – and the world – is in the midst of the ‘quantum decade’: a period in which the peculiar properties of matter that manifest at the very tiniest of scales are being transformed from mere scientific curiosities into the basis of practical technologies and products. The result? Major leaps forward in communications, navigation, computing and environmental sensing. The same is true in space: ESA is currently sending a quantum-enabled probe to Jupiter, developing communications based on quantum technologies and planning flying a quantum clock to the International Space Station, as part of its quantum technology cross-cutting initiative. View the full article

Video: 00:03:23 Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide. Curbing methane emissions could deliver immediate and long-lasting benefits for the climate, seeing as the gas only lingers in the atmosphere for a relatively short time. Satellites have a really important role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Tropomi instrument onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite is the only instrument that maps global methane concentrations every single day. This lets scientists detect hotspots for large methane sources around the world – allowing us to address the consequences of methane emissions on our climate and environment. View the full article

Week in images: 06-10 November 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

ESA’s Hera asteroid mission has completed acoustic testing, confirming the spacecraft can withstand the sound of its own lift-off into orbit. Testing took place within the Agency’s Large European Acoustic Facility at the ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands. This is Europe’s largest and most powerful sound system, fitted with a quartet of noise horns that can generate more than 154 decibels of extreme noise. View the full article

Image: This image, from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on 1 November 2023, captures the colours of autumn over the Japanese archipelago. View the full article

When future astronauts explore Mars’s polar regions, they will see a green glow lighting up the night sky. For the first time, a visible nightglow has been detected in the martian atmosphere by ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission. View the full article

Video: 00:04:25 On Saturday 21st October, the European Space Agency opened the doors of the European Space Astronomy Centre in Villanueva de la Cañada (near Madrid), ESAC, to host the ESA Open Day. With a full program of talks and activities, the event featured tours, hands-on laboratories for children and get-togethers with science communicators, ESA astronaut and experts. More than 1800 people, among adults and children, had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the activities and programs in which ESA is involved every day. View the full article

At the ESA Space Summit in Seville, ESA, Airbus and Voyager Space have signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining their collaboration for the Starlab space station in the post-International Space Station (ISS) era. View the full article

In a groundbreaking development, researchers from the University of Leeds have unveiled a neural network that can swiftly and accurately chart the expanse of large Antarctic icebergs in satellite images, accomplishing the task in a mere 0.01 seconds. This novel approach is in stark contrast to the laborious and time-consuming manual efforts needed previously. View the full article

Image: Earth through a 2-mm lens View the full article

ESA has committed further 'Boost! Programme' funding to German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg, known as RFA, for the development of commercial space transportation services based on the RFA One launch vehicle at sites in Portugal, Germany and the UK. View the full article

Video: 00:45:00 ESA is releasing the first full-colour images of the cosmos captured by its recently launched space telescope Euclid. Follow live a broadcast of the reveal on Tuesday 7 November at 13:15 GMT / 14:15 CET. Never before has a telescope been able to create such razor-sharp astronomical images across such a large patch of the sky. Five images show that the telescope is ready for its mission to create the most extensive 3D map of the Universe yet and uncover some of its hidden secrets. View the full article

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After years of development with the support of the ESA Education programme, the Educational Irish Research Satellite 1 (EIRSAT-1) is set to launch in November, marking Ireland’s first steps into space. View the full article

Video: 00:45:00 Government ministers representing ESA’s Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States met for a Council meeting on 6 November 2023 during the Space Summit in Seville, Spain. They resolved together to strengthen Europe’s space ambitions to better serve European citizens. At the same time, ESA will open a new era of modernising the implementation of its programmes, responding to growing commercialisation and privatisation of space activities, in particular in the fields of space transportation and space exploration. The opening of the meeting was followed by an introduction by ESA Director General and statements by Member, Associate and Cooperating States and observers. Watch all the replays from the ESA Council at ministerial level. View the full article