European Space Agency

Like many places, the Antarctic Peninsula is falling victim to rising temperatures. However, when scientists used radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission acquired between 2014 and 2021, they were taken aback to discover just how the fast 105 glaciers on the west coast are flowing in the summer months. View the full article

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A new era of lunar exploration is on the rise, with dozens of Moon missions planned for the coming decade. Europe is in the forefront here, contributing to building the Gateway lunar station and the Orion spacecraft – set to return humans to our natural satellite – as well as developing its large logistic lunar lander, known as Argonaut. As dozens of missions will be operating on and around the Moon and needing to communicate together and fix their positions independently from Earth, this new era will require its own time. View the full article

Image: Aurora over Wales View the full article

ESA is inviting private space companies in Europe and Canada to create a shared commercial telecommunication and navigation service for lunar missions by putting a constellation of satellites around the Moon. View the full article

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

Image: The Triple Frontier, a region where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, is featured in this false-colour image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article

Image: Cosmic contortions View the full article

ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence is about to gain its sight. Two complete and fully tested Asteroid Framing Cameras have reached OHB in Germany for integration aboard Hera’s payload module. This instrument will provide the very first star-like view of Hera’s target for the mission to steer towards the Dimorphos asteroid, which last year had its orbit altered by an impact with NASA’s DART mission. View the full article

Video: 00:08:47 In the 1980s, scientists discovered a gaping hole in Earth's ozone layer, caused by humanmade chemicals. But thanks to the historical Montreal Protocol, the world came together to take bold action to save our planet. Decades later, we can see the steady recovery of the ozone hole. How did we do it? And what does space have to do with it? Join us as we explore the journey of the ozone hole, from its alarming discovery to the incredible strides made to fix it, and how satellites are helping us track its recovery. View the full article

Image: Farming on the Moon View the full article

This year started with a nice imaging opportunity for Solar Orbiter, and a chance to further improve the quality of its data. On 3 January 2023, inner planet Mercury crossed the spacecraft’s field of view, resulting in a transit where Mercury appeared as a perfectly black circle moving across the face of the Sun. View the full article

Understanding Earth’s delicate natural balance and how it is being altered by human activity is not only key to advancing science but also fundamental to acting on environmental issues, the climate crisis, and preparing for their societal impact. With their hallmark of demonstrating novel space technologies and returning scientific excellence, ESA’s family of Earth observing Earth Explorer research satellite missions are world-renowned – and now it’s time for scientists to pitch their new ideas for the twelfth mission in this outstanding series. View the full article

Image: ESA’s Euclid mission is undergoing the final test before launch in July 2023. Here it is standing in a special room in the Thales Alenia Space test facilities in Cannes, France, where it successfully underwent electromagnetic compatibility testing. This kind of testing is routine for spacecraft. All electronics emit some form of electromagnetic waves that can cause interference with other devices. Think of the buzz that speakers give out right before an incoming call on a mobile phone. Spacecraft electronics can cause similar interference, but out in space such interference can have disastrous consequences, so all systems must be checked before launch. The large test chamber at TAS, called the Compact Antenna Test Range, simulates the electromagnetic environment of deep space, being lined with cones that absorb radio signals and prevent reflections. To avoid TV or radio interference, the walls of the chamber form a steel ‘Faraday cage’, impenetrable to electromagnetic signals from the outside world. In this radiation-free environment, the team studied the radio signals and electrical noise coming from the various systems on the spacecraft and checked whether they caused any electromagnetic interference with each other. ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter. Euclid is a fully European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2000 scientists from 300 institutes in 13 European countries, the US, Canada and Japan – provided the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its Service Module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the Payload Module, including the telescope. NASA provided the near-infrared detectors of the NISP instrument. View the full article

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

Video: 00:04:54 After many years of study, development, building and testing, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, has finally arrived at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. At the end of 2022 the spacecraft underwent its final thermal vacuum test at an Airbus Defence and Space facility in Toulouse, as well as its final software verification tests, whereby it was controlled from the ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Soon, an Ariane 5 will lift Juice into orbit and send it on its journey to explore the largest planet in our Solar System and its three icy moons, Europa, Callisto and in particular Ganymede. By exploring and studying the Jovian system, the mission neatly fullfills its role in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, teaching us about our Universe and the origins of life. View the full article

Image: The Liverpool Land peninsula, on the east coast of Greenland, is featured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image. View the full article

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Image: No one saw the Chelyabinsk meteor of 15 February 2013 coming – the largest asteroid to strike Earth in over a century. Just after sunrise on a sunny winter’s day, a 20-metre, 13 000 tonne asteroid struck the atmosphere over the Ural Mountains in Russia at a speed of more than 18 km/s. The relatively small rock exploded in the atmosphere at an altitude of 30 km, releasing about half a megaton of energy (equivalent to 35 Hiroshima-sized bombs). Two minutes later, the shockwave reached the ground damaging thousands of buildings, breaking windows and injuring roughly 1500 people from flying shards of glass. Hidden in the glare of our Sun are an unknown number of asteroids, on paths we do not know, many of which could be heading for Earth, and we just don’t know it. “Asteroids the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor strike Earth roughly every 50-100 years,” explains Richard Moissl, ESA’s Head of Planetary Defence. “Injuries caused by airbursts or similar events could be prevented if people are informed of an oncoming impact and its predicted effects. With advance warning, local authorities would be able to advise the public to keep well away from windows and glass.” Richard adds, “ESA’s upcoming NEOMIR mission will detect asteroids like Chelyabinsk coming from the same region in the sky as the Sun, filling a vital gap in our current abilities to predict and plan for hazardous impacts”. Of course, there is also the risk of an even bigger asteroid impacting Earth from the dayside. Such a scenario is less likely, as the larger the asteroid the fewer there are in the Solar System and the easier they are to detect. In fact, almost all asteroids larger than 1 km have already been discovered. But as the dinosaurs would tell us, if they could, when a huge asteroid strikes it causes unimaginable damage. Fortunately, as NASA’s DART impact has shown and ESA’s Hera mission will build on, we can deflect such an asteroid. So, how do we make sure we are prepared? NEOMIR will be located at the “L1” Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun. Undisturbed by Earth’s atmosphere, its infrared telescope will be able to spot asteroids 20 metres and larger currently lurking in the sunlight. With enough warning, an asteroid impact is the only natural disaster we can prevent. This 3D simulation of the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion by Mark Boslough was rendered by Brad Carvey using the CTH code on Sandia National Laboratories' Red Sky supercomputer. Andrea Carvey composited the wireframe tail. View the full article

ESA and the Mexican space agency, Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM) signed a Cooperation Agreement on 14 February 2023. The objective of this agreement is to allow Mexico and ESA to create a framework for more-intensive cooperation in joint projects in the future. View the full article

Image: For the seventh time, a small asteroid – a meteoroid as astronomers call it – was discovered in space as it raced towards Earth for impact. The predicted time and location of the impact (02:50 - 03:03 UTC, above northern France) were made possible with observations by European astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky using the 60 cm Schmidt telescope from the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary. 2023 CX1 is the second impactor discovered by Krisztián, after the impact of 2022 EB5 less than a year ago. The last three predicted impacts have all occurred in the last 12 months– an encouraging illustration of how asteroid detection capabilities are rapidly advancing. What happened? At 20:18:07 UTC on 12 February 2023, the new asteroid (now officially designated 2023 CX1 but initially designated Sar2667 by its discoverer) was imaged by the Piszkéstető Observatory. Once a second observation was taken, it was reported to the Minor Planet Center at 20:49 UTC. About 40 minutes later, follow-up observations reported by the Višnjan Observatory in Croatia confirmed the object. At this point various impact assessment systems around the globe calculated a 100% impact probability, expected above the English Channel between 02:00 - 04:00 UTC. The asteroid was estimated to be around one metre in diameter and posed no harm to people or property. Over the next seven hours, astronomers around the globe observed the Earth-bound object and pinpointed its ‘impact corridor’ over the Channel with a trajectory going from west to east. The object continued to be observed until just ten minutes before impact, only five minutes before it fell into Earth’s shadow becoming ‘invisible’. On impact the beautiful fireball lit up the skies within the expected time window (at 02:59 UTC) and location. Observations came mostly from southern UK and France but also from Belgium, the Netherlands and even Germany. It is likely that some fragments of the meteoroid could have survived its atmospheric journey and landed somewhere onshore, close to the coast north of Rouen in Normandy, France. The team at ESA’s Planetary Defence Office contributed to this historic event both with timely notifications from the ‘Meerkat’ warning system and use of a network of optical telescopes established for just these occasions. As it becomes more common that we can predict these small, stunning shooting stars in our skies, more people can be in the right place at the right time to witness a phenomenon only few have been lucky enough to spot before. Of course, one day we’ll find an imminent impactor that isn’t one metre in size, but perhaps 100. To protect ourselves, as NASA’s DART mission has shown is possible and ESA's Hera Mission will build on, we need to see them coming. View the full article

Video: 00:01:00 ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter. Euclid is a fully European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2000 scientists from 100 institutes in 13 European countries and the US – provided the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its Service Module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the Payload Module, including the telescope. NASA provided the near-infrared detectors of the NISP instrument. More about Euclid View the full article

Türkiye and Syria are reeling from one of the worst earthquakes to strike the region in almost a century. Tens of thousands of people have been killed with many more injured in this tragedy. Satellite data are being used to help emergency aid organisations, while scientists have begun to analyse ground movement – aiding risk assessments that authorities will use as they plan recovery and reconstruction, as well as long-term research to better model such events. View the full article

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

ESA celebrates the International Day of Women and Girls in Science  this 11 February, and highlights the story of the first all-female Systems Team in ESA’s Concurrent Design Facility, the place where ideas for new space missions, systems and structures take definite shape. View the full article