European Space Agency

Video: 00:00:57 More than 5000 exoplanets have been discovered to date, but what do they look like? ESA’s dedicated exoplanet missions Cheops, Plato and Ariel are on a quest to find out. Cheops will focus its search on mini-Neptunes, planets with sizes between Earth and Neptune, on short orbits around their stars. Cheops will find out how large these planets are, and may detect whether the planets have clouds. Plato will look at all kinds of exoplanets and determine their sizes and ages. Plato’s instruments are so sensitive it may discover the first Earth-like planet on an Earth-like orbit. Finally, Ariel will look at the atmospheres of exoplanets using the technique of transmission spectroscopy and discover what they are made of. Together these missions will discover what exoplanets and their systems look like and they will also reveal how special our own Solar System is. View the full article

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

Image: Hubble’s neighbourhood watch View the full article

Image: Botswana’s Okavango Delta – the world’s largest inland delta – is featured in this multitemporal radar image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission. View the full article

How students built Ireland's first satellite View the full article

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A Wolf-Rayet star is a rare prelude to the famous final act of a massive star: the supernova. As one of its first observations in 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope captured the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 in unprecedented detail. View the full article

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Video: 00:13:54 A year has passed since the launch of the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover mission was put on hold, but the work has not stopped for the ExoMars teams in Europe. In this programme, the ESA Web TV crew travel back to Turin, Italy to talk to the teams and watch as new tests are being conducted with the rover’s Earth twin Amalia while the real rover remains carefully stored in an ultra-clean room. The 15-minute special programme gives an update on what happened since the mission was cancelled in 2022 because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the plan ahead, the new challenges, the latest deep drilling test and the stringent planetary protection measures in place. ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover has unique drilling capabilities and an on-board science laboratory unrivalled by any other mission in development. Its twin rover Amalia was back on its wheels and drilled down 1.7 metres into a martian-like ground in Italy – about 25 times deeper than any other rover has ever attempted on Mars. The rover also collected samples for analysis under the watchful eye of European science teams. ESA, together with international and industrial partners, is reshaping the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mission with new European elements, including a lander, and a target date of 2028 for the trip to Mars. The newly shaped Rosalind Franklin Mission will recover one of the original objectives of ExoMars – to create an independent European capability to access the surface of Mars with a sophisticated robotic payload. More information: https://www.esa.int/ExoMars View the full article

Europe’s Galileo is the world’s most precise satellite navigation system, providing metre-level accuracy and very precise timing to its four billion users. An essential ingredient to ensure this stays the case are the atomic clocks aboard each satellite, delivering pinpoint timekeeping that is maintained to a few billionths of a second. These clocks are called atomic because their ‘ticks’ come from ultra-rapid, ultra-stable oscillation of atoms between different energy states. Sustaining this performance demands, in turn, even more accurate clocks down on the ground to keep the satellites synchronised and ensure stability of time and positioning for users. View the full article

An impressive 70 mocktail recipes representing a wide range of flavours of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission were submitted to the Agency’s #SpaceJuice competition in January. View the full article

Image: The icy landscape of Graham Coast, which lies on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula, is featured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image. View the full article

Would you like to know the future of satellite navigation? Try ESA’s Navigation Laboratory. This is a site where navigation engineers test prototypes of tomorrow's user receivers, using simulated versions of the navigation signals planned for the coming decade, such as set to be transmitted from Galileo’s Second Generation satellites. View the full article

Passengers flying on Italy’s national carrier ITA Airways will experience fewer flight delays and greener travel thanks to pilots being able to use satellites to route their planes. View the full article

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The interactive version of the Space Ambition book is now online, featuring all the content and images included in the hardcover edition. View the full article

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Today Galileo is the world’s most precise satellite navigation system, delivering metre-level accuracy, and if you are a modern smartphone owner then you – like nearly four billion others around the world – are among its users. This week we are celebrating that almost exactly a decade ago, on 12 March 2013, Europe for the first time ever was able to determine a position on the ground using only its own independent navigation system, Galileo. View the full article

A partnership between ESA and PLAYMOBIL continues to inspire and educate children about space. It also helps to support the children’s humanitarian organisation UNICEF and its work with vulnerable children around the world. View the full article

Week in images: 27 February - 03 March 2023 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:45:00 The Independent Enquiry Commission tasked with analysing the loss of the Vega-C Flight VV22 mission shares its findings. View the full article

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image shows Poyang Lake in China’s Jiangxi Province during winter. View the full article

Image: Galactic seascape View the full article

Press Release N° 7–2023 On Tuesday 20 December 2022, Arianespace announced the loss of the Vega-C VV22 mission after its launch at 22h47 local time in French Guiana (2h47 CET/1h47 GMT on 21 December 2022). The mission was carrying two payloads, Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 Earth observation satellites for Airbus Defence and Space. View the full article

Image: Part of an Ariane 5 launcher in a large warehouse View the full article