European Space Agency

Image: Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI composite image) View the full article

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It’s no surprise that when a massive lump of ice drops off the edge of a glacier into the sea, the surface waters of the ocean get pretty churned up. However, in addition to causing tsunamis at the surface of the ocean, recent research has led to the discovery that glacier calving can excite vigorous internal tsunami waves – a process that has been neglected in driving ocean mixing in computer models. View the full article

With liftoff now scheduled for 13 December, Europe’s first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite has been fuelled – a critical and extremely hazardous milestone on the road to launch. Once in geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator, this all-new weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level. View the full article

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The province of Zaragoza, in northeast Spain, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article

23 Member and Associate States of the Agency pledged a total 117.6 million euros to ESA’s ScaleUp programme at ESA’s Ministerial Council CM22 to encourage entrepreneurship and commercialisation in the European space sector. This amount exceeds the target funding request by more than 17%, thus confirming the strong support that ESA Member States intend to provide to the development of a strong and sustainable commercial space ecosystem. View the full article

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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies. While Webb and other space telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this heated planet’s atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds. The latest data also give a hint of how these clouds might look up close: broken up rather than as a single, uniform blanket over the planet. View the full article

Video: 00:40:00 ESA’s new class of astronauts is announced on Wednesday, 23 November 2022 at the Grand Palais Éphémère (GPE) in Paris. The new class includes career astronauts, reserve astronauts as well as astronauts with a physical disability for a feasibility project. Last year and for the first time since 2008, ESA launched a call for applications and it received more than 22 500 valid applications. Today, ESA now reveals which of these were successful. Watch the other ESA Astronaut Class 2022 videos. Access the related broadcast quality footage. View the full article

Europe will strengthen its autonomy, leadership and sustainability in space, following today’s decision to increase ESA’s budget by 17% compared to the last Ministerial meeting in 2019. View the full article

Video: 00:44:11 Watch the replay of the press conference that brings the Council Meeting at Ministerial Level in Paris (CM22) to a close. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, as well as the hosting minister and the CM22 chair, present the outcome of this high-level meeting that takes place on 22 and 23 November. ESA’s plans for the next three years reflect the needs to raise Europe up another level in space activities, and to ensure that space continues to serve European citizens. Watch the other CM22 videos. View the full article

Image: The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module (left), Earth (middle) and the Moon (right) are captured in this ‘family portrait’ by Orion’s solar array camera during the spacecraft’s closet approach to the lunar surface. Six days into the 25-day Artemis I mission, the Orion spacecraft performed a key manoeuvre: just a little more than 130 km from the lunar surface, the main engine on the European Service Module – a repurposed Space Shuttle engine that is now on its 20th spaceflight – fired for just under 150 seconds to push the spacecraft and head towards a lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to reduce fuel consumption. The manoeuvre, known as the Outbound Powered Flyby, was another success for the Artemis I mission, whose goal is to test the mission profile, the spacecraft, and the people operating it in preparation for flights with astronauts on future missions. The European Service Module is powering Orion around the Moon and back, providing propulsion, temperature control, electricity as well as storage and delivery for essential supplies such as fuel, water and air. Mission control for Orion is at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA, where European engineers are on hand at all times to offer in-depth expertise on the finer details of the service module. The mission evaluation room based at ESA’s technical heart in The Netherlands also has personnel round the clock in direct communication with their US and European colleagues in mission control in Houston. “Operationally the spacecraft is performing perfectly and the international collaboration with this new spacecraft with new flight rules is great to see,” says ESA’s Programme Manager for the European Service Modules, Philippe Deloo, “The teams across both sides of the Atlantic are showing exemplary skills, knowledge and teamwork leading humankind forward to the Moon.” Stunning new imagery of Earth from a human-rated spacecraft such as this image is also important to the mission, bringing the wonder of space exploration to the public some 50 years after the last Apollo mission. This photo was taken by a Go-Pro fastened to the end of one of four 7 m-long solar array, and connects to the spacecraft over a wireless network. The solar arrays provide enough electricity to power two households on Earth. Find the latest updates on Artemis I on the ESA Orion blog and on Twitter @esaspaceflight. View the full article

The European Space Agency has chosen 17 new astronaut candidates from more than 22 500 applicants from across its Member States. In this new 2022 class of ESA astronauts are five career astronauts, 11 members of an astronaut reserve and one astronaut with a disability. View the full article

Join us live as ESA unveils the names and faces of the new class of European astronauts. ESA WebTV will broadcast the event at 14:20 CET (13:20 GMT) on Wednesday, 23 November 2022. View the full article

Video: 02:14:29 It is time for critical decisions about space in Europe. For two days on 22 and 23 November, ESA Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States observers are gathering in Paris to discuss how to strengthen Europe’s space sector for the benefit of all - including climate change monitoring and mitigation, secure communications under European control and rapid and resilient crisis response. Watch the replay of the following CM22 video, ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level - Statements continue. Watch the other CM22 videos. View the full article

ESA and 20 other European space actors have come together to sign a “Statement for a Responsible Space Sector”. Space exploration has allowed us to look back on our planet in a way that no human could imagine before, revealing a fragile world with limited resources. As today’s statement explains, the responsibility to take care of our planet extends to and depends on, our actions in space. View the full article

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The ESA Council at Ministerial level (CM22) is taking place in Paris, France, on 22 and 23 November. ESA’s Member States, Associated States and Cooperating States will be invited to together strengthen Europe’s space ambitions and ensure that space continues to serve European citizens. Follow our live coverage of CM22 via ESA WebTV. View the full article

Image: Hall of mirrors for Proba-3 laser testing View the full article

Video: 00:02:19 Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director General, explains what is on the table for ESA at CM22, ESA’s Council at Ministerial level taking place on 22 and 23 November 2022, a crucial milestone as Europe sets out its ambitions and plans for space activities in the coming years and decades. View the full article

Week in images: 14-18 November 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

ESA’s Optical Ground Station, perched high on the slopes of Tenerife’s Mount Teide volcano, has now been peering skyward for a quarter of a century. Originally designed for laser-based communications with satellites, it is today additionally employed for tracking space debris and near-Earth asteroids as well as supporting world-class science: this year’s Physics Nobel Prize winner used the station for a quantum teleportation experiment that extended to the neighboring island of La Palma. View the full article

Shipping is the most energy efficient form of transport, and more than 80% of goods traded globally are carried via the oceans, with a doubling in volume during the last quarter of a century. Recognising the global need for seamless maritime navigation, ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, NAVISP – inventing the future of navigation with more than 200 R&D projects initiated to date – is therefore focused not only on the land but also the sea. View the full article