European Space Agency

NASA has delivered a retroreflector array to ESA that will allow the Lunar Pathfinder mission to be pinpointed by laser ranging stations back on Earth as it orbits the Moon. Such centimetre level laser measurements will serve as an independent check on the spacecraft as it fixes its position using Galleo and GPS signals from an unprecedented 400 000 km away from Earth – proving the concept of lunar satnav while also relaying telecommunications ahead of ESA’s dedicated Moonlight initiative. View the full article

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Image: Gearing up for the Moon View the full article

Video: 00:03:21 Going to the Moon was the first step. Staying there is the next ambition. ESA is a key partner in NASA’s Artemis programme, which aims to return people to the Moon by the end of decade. Dozens of other international public and private missions are setting their sights on the lunar surface in the coming years. But to achieve a permanent and sustainable presence on the Moon, reliable and autonomous lunar communications and navigation services are required. This is why ESA is working with its industrial partners on the Moonlight initiative, to become the first off-planet commercial telecoms and satellite navigation provider. Following their launch, three or four satellites will be carried into lunar orbit by a space tug and deployed one by one, to form a constellation of lunar satellites. The number and specification of these satellites are currently being defined. The constellation's orbits are optimised to give coverage to the lunar south pole, whose sustained sunlight and polar ice make it the focus of upcoming missions. Moonlight will provide data capacities sufficient to serve these planned and future missions, with a navigation service that enables accurate real-time positioning for all lunar missions. View the full article

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An advanced broadband satellite that can offer high-speed internet connectivity anywhere on Earth is ready to enter its final assembly ahead of launch. View the full article

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is widely referred to as the successor to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In reality, it is the successor to a lot more than that. With the inclusion of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), Webb also became a successor to infrared space telescopes such as ESA’s Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. View the full article

Satellite operator Intelsat has placed an order for the first small geostationary “HummingSat” developed as part of ESA’s efforts to support fast, dynamic and agile private space firms in Europe. View the full article

Week in images: 31 October - 4 November 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

The complex and diverse landscape that surrounds Nushagak Bay in Alaska is featured in this true-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article

Video: 00:06:36 Galileo has grown to become Europe’s single largest satellite constellation, and the world’s most accurate satellite navigation system, delivering metre-level positioning to more than 3.5 billion users around the globe. It all began at ESTEC’s Test Centre, Europe’s largest satellite testing facility. This is where the very first positioning fix took place in March 2013, after the launch into orbit of the initial four IOV satellites. Following that, all 34 Galileo Full Operational Capability satellites also passed by ESTEC for their pre-flight testing. This 3000 sq. m environmentally-controlled complex, operated and managed by European Test Services for ESA, hosts an array of test equipment able to simulate all aspects of spaceflight, from the noise and vibration of launch to the vacuum and temperature extremes of Earth orbit. The production line at manufacturer OHB in Germany completed one new satellite every six weeks. After integration each satellite was then shipped to the ESTEC Test Centre for a three-month test campaign, after which it would be accepted by the Agency and declared ready for flight. Some facilities have had to be adapted specifically for Galileo, and the ESTEC Test Centre had to institute new security protocols because this was the first time that satellites with security restrictions were being tested at the site. Today there are 28 of these Galileo First Generation satellites in service, with 10 more due to be launched in the next years. Upgraded Galileo Second Generation satellites are under development and will follow them into orbit later this decade. Members of ESA’s Galileo team and ETS look back on this massive testing effort that established Galileo was ready for space. 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

The 2023 internship opportunities at ESA have been published! Opportunities are open for one month and positions are available in engineering, science, IT, natural/social sciences, business and administration services. This is your chance to kick-off your experience in space! View the full article

For decades, satellites have been instrumental in monitoring our changing climate and improving our understanding of the processes that drive it. But to achieve our climate goals and make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, we need ideas that take the next step and begin to use space technologies to actively prevent, slow, reverse or otherwise address these changes. View the full article

There are times when we could all do with a bit of magic in our lives. And, with the Global Climate Observing System announcement of ‘terrestrial water storage’ as a completely new Essential Climate Variable, the world of climate research and climate crisis response would certainly benefit from a satellite mission called MAGIC. View the full article

Image: Halloween Crack for Halloween View the full article

This is not an ethereal landscape of time-forgotten tombs. Nor are these soot-tinged fingers reaching out. These pillars, flush with gas and dust, ‘bury’ stars that are slowly forming over many millennia. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has snapped this eerie, extremely dusty view of the Pillars of Creation in mid-infrared light – showing us a new view of a familiar landscape. View the full article

Week in images: 24-28 October 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: Mini-radar for asteroid CubeSat View the full article

Extremely high temperatures recorded this summer caused record melting across Svalbard – one of the fastest warming places on the planet. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured this rare, cloud-free acquisition of the Norwegian archipelago in August 2022. View the full article

Video: 00:03:53 This week’s edition of the Earth from Space programme features a rare, cloud-free Copernicus Sentinel-2 acquisition over the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. See also Svalbard to download the image. View the full article

The first samples to be taken from Mars and sent to Earth will be sourced from Jezero Crater, where the Perseverance rover has been exploring the crater floor and nearby ancient delta. The location of an initial cache of samples, called Three Forks, is flat and free of obstacles – an ideal spot for a Mars Sample Return landing and pickup operations. View the full article

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Video: 00:01:27 The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission has experienced its second close encounter with the Sun. It is delivering more stunning data, and at higher resolution than ever before. The moment of closest approach took place on 12 October at 19:12 UTC (21:12 CEST), when Solar Orbiter was just 29% of the Earth’s distance from the Sun. This movie comes from 13 October, when the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) returned the highest resolution movie of the quiet corona ever taken with any instrument. Each pixel on this movie spans 105 km on the surface of the Sun. This means that if EUI were to look at the Earth from this distance, our entire planet would span just 120 pixels across. The movie itself contains 2048 across, meaning that 17 Earths would fit side by side across this image. The corona is the Sun’s outer atmosphere. It is termed quiet when there is little appreciable solar activity such as flares or coronal mass ejections. This movie, and others taken during the encounter, show the dynamic nature of the Sun's million degree-hot corona. The electrically charged gas here, known as plasma, is in constant motion, guided and accelerated by changes of the Sun's magnetic field. The arches of bright plasma in the movie are being held in place by loops of magnetism that burst up into the corona from the Sun’s interior. The Sun is currently ramping up for a peak in its activity levels, known as solar maximum, in 2025. So views of a quiet corona are likely to become rarer in the coming few years. The Sun launches a solar wind of particles that streams out through the Solar System. It originates in the corona but the precise mechanism by which this happens is poorly understood. Investigating this phenomenon is a key focus for solar physicists, and one of Solar Orbiter’s main scientific objectives. This particular encounter benefited from Solar Orbiter rapidly flying in the direction of Earth. This allowed much more data to be downlinked. It also allowed for coordinated observations of solar features to be made with Earth-based telescopes, from 21 October onwards. “I am very much looking forward to data from all ten instruments being downloaded during the next few weeks, and then the world-wide science community will be very busy discovering new things using this unique data set,” says Daniel Müller, ESA Project Scientist for Solar Orbiter. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. This movie was enhanced with Wavelet Optimized Whitening technique. View the full article

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Video: 00:02:56 Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth. Suitable for kids and adults alike, this episode of ‘The Incredible Adventures of Hera’ details the miniaturised James-Bond-style technology that Hera and its CubeSats will carry aboard with them to explore their asteroid target. View the full article