European Space Agency

Video: 00:01:46 Short animation featuring key moments of the Mars Sample Return campaign: from landing on Mars and securing the sample tubes to launching them off the surface and ferrying them back to Earth. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are developing plans for one of the most ambitious campaigns ever attempted in space: bringing the first samples of Mars material safely back to Earth for detailed study. European scientists are part of an international team giving advice on what samples to choose for return and the best analysis methods to use once they land on Earth. The diverse set of scientifically curated samples being collected by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover could help scientists answer the question of whether ancient life ever arose on the Red Planet. Bringing samples of Mars to Earth for future study would happen in several steps with multiple spacecraft, and in close collaboration between ESA and NASA. The first step of the campaign began with the arrival of the Perseverance rover at Jezero Crater on 18 February 2021. ESA will give robotic assistance with the Sample Transfer Arm. The 2.5 m robotic arm will pick up the tubes filled with precious material from Mars and transfer them to a rocket for a launch into martian orbit. The European Earth Return Orbiter will then be the first interplanetary spacecraft to capture samples in orbit and make a return trip between Earth and Mars. This strategic partnership with NASA will be the first to return samples from another planet. The samples to be returned are thought to be the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for life. View the full article

Astronomy is driven by big questions, and they don’t come much bigger than wondering how the first stars and galaxies began to form – eventually giving rise to our own existence. View the full article

World leaders, policymakers and delegates from nearly 200 countries have convened in Sharm El-Sheikh over the past two weeks at the COP27 UN Climate Summit. Today we take a closer look at the Egyptian city through the eyes of Copernicus Sentinel-2. View the full article

An advanced X-ray monitoring instrument tested for space aboard an ESA CubeSat will serve as an operational space weather payload on the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Next Lagrange 1 Series satellite, currently planned for launch in 2028, which will operate 1.5 million km from Earth, keeping watch for eruptions from our Sun. View the full article

In October 2022, an updated ESA astronaut patch celebrated the joining of ESA’s newest Associate Member, Slovakia. The new patch adds the Slovakian flag to a design that has evolved over the decades to represent ESA’s growing space family. View the full article

ESA’s Investor Network continues to grow, with Einstein Industries Ventures as its latest member via the signature of a collaboration agreement. Over the next ten years, Einstein Industries Ventures’ management team targets a fund worth €300 million to invest in Europe's leading growth-stage New Space downstream technologies, Earth observation and sensor technology. View the full article

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the once-hidden features of the protostar within the dark cloud L1527 with its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), providing insight into the formation of a new star. These blazing clouds within the Taurus star-forming region are only visible in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb. View the full article

Video: 00:02:02 Space is delivering more accurate, more precise and more varied data than ever before. State-of-the-art digital technologies, such as Digital Twins of Earth and High Performance Computing, are enabling faster and more complex calculations, allowing us to replicate the Earth system, its climate and life on our planet. ESA is exploiting digital technologies and artificial intelligence, supporting scientists and industry to respond to global challenges such as the climate crisis and designing innovative solutions for our future. ESA’s Council at Ministerial level, CM22, taking place next week is a time for critical decisions. Space supports scientists, policymakers and political leaders not only to monitor, understand, model and predict, but – crucially – to act on climate-induced and other crises. Earth observation data allows institutions, the scientific community, citizens and industry to harness space data for their use – paving the way for a sustainable and green future for all. View the full article

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As part of worldwide efforts to slow climate change, the United Nations has revealed a new satellite-based system to detect methane emissions. The Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) initiative, launched at COP27, will scale up global efforts to detect and act on major emissions sources and accelerate the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge. The Sentinel-5P satellite, the first Copernicus mission dedicated to monitoring our atmosphere, will be crucial in implementing this ambitious initiative. View the full article

Image: Antenna to link up CubeSat chains View the full article

Video: 00:02:53 The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard lifted off at 07:47 CET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 16 September 2022. The most powerful rocket ever built sent NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module (ESM) to a journey beyond the Moon and back. No crew will be on board Orion this time, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams on Earth. ESM provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back. View the full article

Image: ‘Twas the day before launch and all across the globe, people await liftoff for Artemis I with hope. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft with its European Service Module, is seen here on Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, on 12 November. After much anticipation, NASA launch authorities have given the GO for the first opportunity for launch: tomorrow, 16 November with a two-hour launch window starting at 07:04 CET (06:04 GMT, 1:04 local time). Artemis I is the first mission in a large programme to send astronauts around and on the Moon sustainably. This uncrewed first launch will see the Orion spacecraft travel to the Moon, enter an elongated orbit around our satellite and then return to Earth, powered by the European-built service module that supplies electricity, propulsion, fuel, water and air as well as keeping the spacecraft operating at the right temperature. The European Service Modules are made from components supplied by over 20 companies in ten ESA Member States and USA. As the first European Service Module sits atop the SLS rocket on the launchpad, the second is only 8 km away being integrated with the Orion crew capsule for the first crewed mission – Artemis II. The third and fourth European Service Modules – that will power astronauts to a Moon landing – are in production in Bremen, Germany. With a 16 November launch, the three-week Artemis I mission would end on 11 December with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The European Service Module detaches from the Orion Crew Module before splashdown and burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere, its job complete after taking Orion to the Moon and back safely. Backup Artemis I launch dates include 19 November. Check ESA’s Orion blog for updates and more details. Watch the launch live on ESA Web TV from 15 Nov, 20:30 GMT (21:30 CET) when the rocket fuelling starts, and from 16 November 00:00 GMT/01:00 CET for the launch coverage. View the full article

Europe’s bid to deliver a return-to-Earth service for in-orbit transportation and research projects is rapidly taking shape, with teams working on the Space Rider spacecraft gearing up for a series of drop tests in 2023. Drop tests with small-scale models will be followed by a full-scale test in anticipation of inaugural flight towards the end of 2024. View the full article

ESA’s Mars Express has revealed that Mars churns up surprisingly Earth-like cloud patterns that are reminiscent of those in our planet’s tropical regions. View the full article

ESA has created a space-inspired virtual environment to enable its workforce to experience the COP27 climate summit – which is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt – without the environmental cost of travelling. View the full article

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Europe should demonstrate responsibility, leadership and autonomy in space – and its highest priority should be to address climate change, according to a poll of European citizens. View the full article

Achieving net-zero by the second half of the century is considered vital if global temperatures are to remain well below the two degrees rise as set out by the Paris Agreement for climate. From their vantage point in space, satellites provide a unique means of tracking progress towards achieving this balance between greenhouse gas emissions from sources and removal by sinks. How space-based approaches can support the UN Global stocktake, starting in 2023, are the focus of technical discussions at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) currently taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, and feature results from ESA’s trailblazing REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes project. These results come at a critical time ahead of next week’s ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level. View the full article

Video: 00:04:05 Galileo is Europe’s largest satellite constellation – and the world’s most accurate satnav system. The work on Galileo began two decades ago with two test GIOVE satellites, followed by a series of operational launches. The two GIOVE satellites, the first Galileo In-Orbit Validation satellite and all 34 Galileo Full Operational Capability satellites were tested at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre, Europe’s largest satellite testing facility. On this day the very last satellite in the Galileo First Generation series leaves the site, and the people responsible for readying them for space have gathered to say goodbye. Next will come the Galileo Second Generation satellites, already in development. About Galileo Galileo is managed and funded by the European Union. The European Commission, ESA and EUSPA (the EU Agency for the Space Programme) have signed an agreement by which ESA acts as design authority and system development prime on behalf of the Commission and EUSPA as the exploitation and operation manager of Galileo/EGNOS. View the full article

Video: 00:00:11 Solar Orbiter has spotted a ‘tube’ of cooler atmospheric gases snaking its way through the Sun’s magnetic field. The observation provides an intriguing new addition to the zoo of features revealed by the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission, especially since the snake was a precursor to a much larger eruption. The snake was seen on 5 September 2022, as Solar Orbiter was approaching the Sun for a close pass that took place on 12 October. It is a tube of cool plasma suspended by magnetic fields in the hotter surrounding plasma of the Sun’s atmosphere. Plasma is a state of matter in which a gas is so hot that its atoms begin to lose some of their outer particles, called electrons. This loss makes the gas electrically charged and therefore susceptible to magnetic fields. All gas in the Sun’s atmosphere is a plasma because the temperature here is more than a million degrees centigrade. The plasma in the snake is following a particularly long filament of the Sun’s magnetic field that is reaching from one side of the Sun to another. “You're getting plasma flowing from one side to the other but the magnetic field is really twisted. So you're getting this change in direction because we're looking down on a twisted structure,” says David Long, Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL), UK, who is heading up the investigation into the phenomenon. The movie has been constructed as a time-lapse from images from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager onboard Solar Orbiter. In reality, the snake took around three hours to complete its journey but at the distances involved in crossing the solar surface that means the plasma must have been travelling at around 170 kilometres per second. What makes the snake so intriguing is that it began from a solar active region that later erupted, ejecting billions of tonnes of plasma into space. This raises the possibility that the snake was a sort of precursor to this event – and Solar Orbiter caught it all in numerous instruments. For the spacecraft’s Energetic Particle Detector (EPD), the eruption was one of the most intense solar energetic particles events detected so far by the instrument. “It's a really nice combination of datasets that we only get from Solar Orbiter,” says David. More intriguing still is that the plasma from this eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection, happened to sweep over NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, allowing its instruments to measure the contents of the eruption. Being able to see an eruption take place and then sample the ejected gasses, either with its own instruments or those of another spacecraft, is one of Solar Orbiter’s principal scientific aims. It will allow a better understanding to be developed of solar activity and the way it creates ‘space weather’, which can disrupt satellites and other technology on Earth. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. It launched on 10 February 2020, and earlier this month celebrated its 1000th day in space. View the full article

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Week in images: 07-11 November 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured this image of Santiago – the capital and largest city of Chile. View the full article

Video: 00:05:17 At the Thales Alenia Space test facility in Cannes, France, the massive door of the thermal vacuum chamber was opened after a month of rigorous testing of ESA’s Euclid mission to explore the dark Universe. In Cannes the fully integrated spacecraft was subjected to the conditions of space and its subsystems were fully tested for the first time. With the Euclid space telescope, scientists hope to learn more about dark matter and dark energy which could make up more than 95% of our Universe. The film includes soundbites from ESA Euclid Mission and Payload Manager: Alexander Short and ESA Euclid VIS-Instrument Engineer: Magdalena Szafraniec. View the full article