European Space Agency

This beautifully crisp icy scene with a swirling ribbon of rusty red and white striped terrain connecting two large craters wraps up the year on Mars. View the full article

Image: How Hera asteroid mission will phone home View the full article

Press Release N° 72–2022 Arianespace announced early today the failure of Flight VV22 carrying Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 satellites. View the full article

Image: Young ESA team prepare Ariane 6 passenger View the full article

Year in images 2022 Our year through the lens: a selection of our favourite images for 2022 View the full article

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image shows the wide-coverage of snowfall in the Alps, which hopefully bodes well for the coming year. View the full article

Image: Webb's picture of the month December is dominated by NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. This spiral galaxy has recently been studied as part of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRGs Survey (GOALS), which aims to study the physics of star formation, black hole growth, and feedback in four nearby, merging luminous infrared galaxies. Other galaxies studied as part of the survey include previous ESA Webb Pictures of the Month II ZW 096 and IC 1623. NGC 7469 is home to an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is an extremely bright central region that is dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas as it falls into the galaxy’s central black hole. This galaxy provides astronomers with the unique opportunity to study the relationship between AGNs and starburst activity because this particular object hosts an AGN that is surrounded by a starburst ring at a distance of a mere 1500 light-years. While NGC 7469 is one of the best studied AGNs in the sky, the compact nature of this system and the presence of a great deal of dust have made it difficult for scientists to achieve both the resolution and sensitivity needed to study this relationship in the infrared. Now, with Webb, astronomers can explore the galaxy’s starburst ring, the central AGN, and the gas and dust in between. Using Webb’s MIRI, NIRCam and NIRspec instruments to obtain images and spectra of NGC 7469 in unprecedented detail, the GOALS team has uncovered a number of details about the object. This includes very young star-forming clusters never seen before, as well as pockets of very warm, turbulent molecular gas, and direct evidence for the destruction of small dust grains within a few hundred light-years of the nucleus — proving that the AGN is impacting the surrounding interstellar medium. Furthermore, highly ionised, diffuse atomic gas seems to be exiting the nucleus at roughly 6.4 million kilometres per hour — part of a galactic outflow that had previously been identified from the ground, but is now revealed in stunning detail with Webb. With analysis of the rich Webb datasets still underway, additional secrets of this local AGN and starburst laboratory are sure to be revealed. A prominent feature of this image is the striking six-pointed star that perfectly aligns with the heart of NGC 7469. Unlike the galaxy, this is not a real celestial object, but an imaging artifact known as a diffraction spike, caused by the bright, unresolved AGN. Diffraction spikes are patterns produced as light bends around the sharp edges of a telescope. Webb has three struts, with two angled at 150 degrees from its vertical strut, and its primary mirror is composed of hexagonal segments that each contain edges for light to diffract against. Webb’s struts are designed so that their diffraction spikes partially overlap with those created by the mirrors. Both of these lead to Webb’s complex star pattern. View the full article

Space companies in Europe that could create telecommunications and navigation services for missions to the Moon will be invited to bid for the work, following the completion of two feasibility studies. View the full article

Download this launch kit (in English, other languages below) to learn more about the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission and its science goals. View the full article

Enjoy ESA’s Impact over the last quarter! Welcome to this edition of ESA Impact, an interactive publication covering stories and images from the fourth quarter of 2022. View the full article

The voice counted backwards in French from ten to one, then announced, “Décollage” – lift-off. The 15-year-long collaboration between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency had just entered its most critical phase: the launch itself. What happened next would determine whether the James Webb Space Telescope made it into space or not. View the full article

One ESA: now in six languages The One ESA brochure explores ESA’s establishments and how they work together on European space missions. The brochure is printed in English and is available as a PDF and interactive format in five additional languages. View the full article

Video: 00:07:33 2022 was a year of many ‘firsts’ for space in Europe, seeing the first European female ISS commander, the launch of the first Vega-C rocket, Solar Orbiter’s first close encounter with our home star, the launch of the first Artemis mission working to bring humans back to the Moon, and first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Let’s take a look at the highlights and accomplishments of the European Space Agency during 2022. View the full article

Week in images: 12-16 December 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

At this time of the year, the mention of Lapland conjures up visions of Santa getting his gift-laden sleigh and nine reindeer ready to take to the skies for the most important deliveries of all. However, the skies of Lapland have witnessed something rather different recently – a big white balloon, which may not provide the immediate gratification of a much-wanted Christmas present, but nonetheless plays a role in helping to safeguard our children’s future. View the full article

Making satellite navigation sufficiently accurate by improving its integrity for aircraft to rely on, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System, EGNOS, is today employed by hundreds of airports across our continent, guiding airliners down through all weathers to the point where pilots gain sight of runways to initiate landing. Now an upgraded version of the system, EGNOS v3, has passed its Critical Design Review – putting it on track to enter service by the second part of the decade. View the full article

Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland, is featured in this image captured by Copernicus Sentinel-2. View the full article

Researchers have found evidence for the existence of a new type of planet they have called a “water world,” where water makes up a large fraction of the entire planet. These worlds, discovered in a planetary system 218 light-years away, are unlike any planets in our Solar System. View the full article

Video: 01:03:00 Watch the replay of the media session following the 314th ESA Council meeting which takes place on 14 and 15 December in Paris. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Anna Rathsman share the outcome of this meeting. Updates on the outcomes of CM22 and the next implementation steps are provided to the media. View the full article

ESA’s wind mission continues to shine as engineers have worked their Christmas magic. With a switch back to its original laser, Aeolus is now shining more than twice as brightly with its best ever performance – just in time for the holidays. View the full article

ESA and OHB have signed a contract to move forward with the design and construction of ESA’s ambitious Comet Interceptor spacecraft, planned for launch in 2029. View the full article

As of today, ESA has appointed two new Directors - the Director of Science and the Director for Technology, Engineering and Quality. ESA Council approved the Director General’s proposal to appoint the new Directors at its meeting on 15 December 2022. View the full article

Image: Tomorrow’s technology centre View the full article

The Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite, set to revolutionise short-term weather forecasting in Europe, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket at 21:30 CET (17:30 local time in Kourou) on 13 December from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The satellite separated from the rocket 34 minutes later and then Malindi ground station in Kenya received the signal from MTG-I1, indicating the satellite is in good health. View the full article

Video: 00:03:13 Watch the replay the MTG-I1 launch coverage. The video includes streaming of the event at ESA’s ESTEC establishment in the Netherlands and footage of liftoff from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 13 December at 21:30 CET. From 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. The satellite carries two completely new instruments: Europe’s first Lightning Imager and a Flexible Combined Imager. MTG-I1 is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical data for weather forecasting over the next 20 years. In full operations, the mission will comprise two MTG-I satellites and one MTG Sounding (MTG-S) satellites working in tandem. The MTG mission is a cooperation between Eumetsat and ESA. ESA is responsible developing and procuring the six MTG satellites. Eumetsat defines the system requirements, develops the ground systems, procures the launch services, operates the satellites, and makes the data available to users. View the full article