European Space Agency

Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. View the full article

Image: Webb in full focus View the full article

This network of long grooves and scratches forms part of a giant fault system on Mars known as Tantalus Fossae, and is shown here as seen by ESA’s Mars Express. View the full article

Video: 00:01:34 ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert “Bob” Hines and Jessica Watkins arrive to the International Space Station after docking at 01:37 CEST on Thursday 28 April 2022. Collectively known as Crew-4, the four astronauts were launched at 08:52 BST/09:52 CEST Wednesday 27 April from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida USA. Transit to the Station is expected to take under 24 hours. Samantha is the third ESA astronaut to travel to the orbital outpost in a Crew Dragon. During the journey she and Jessica will serve as mission specialists. Kjell is Crew-4 Commander and Bob is Crew-4 Pilot. Upon arrival, Crew-4 will be greeted by the Space Station’s current crew – including ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer. Samantha and Matthias will enjoy a brief handover in orbit before he returns to Earth with Crew-3 in April. Samantha first flew to space in 2014 for her Italian Space Agency ASI-sponsored mission Futura. Her ESA space mission – known as Minerva – will officially begin once she reaches the Station. Throughout her mission, Samantha will hold the role of US Orbital Segment (USOS) lead, taking responsibility for all operations within the US, European, Japanese and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station. She will support around 35 European and many more international experiments in orbit. For more about Samantha and her Minerva mission, visit the Minerva mission page. Access the related broadcast quality video material. View the full article

Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom, carrying ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and her NASA colleagues Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins, docked to the International Space Station at 01:37 CEST Thursday 28 April. View the full article

Video: 00:03:55 The Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule carrying ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert “Bob” Hines and Jessica Watkins to the International Space Station lifts off from Launchpad 39A. Collectively known as Crew-4, the four astronauts were launched at 08:52 BST/09:52 CEST Wednesday 27 April from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida USA. Transit to the Station is expected to take under 24 hours. Samantha is the third ESA astronaut to travel to the orbital outpost in a Crew Dragon. During the journey she and Jessica will serve as mission specialists. Kjell is Crew-4 Commander and Bob is Crew-4 Pilot. Upon arrival, Crew-4 will be greeted by the Space Station’s current crew – including ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer. Samantha and Matthias will enjoy a brief handover in orbit before he returns to Earth with Crew-3 in April. Samantha first flew to space in 2014 for her Italian Space Agency ASI-sponsored mission Futura. Her ESA space mission – known as Minerva – will officially begin once she reaches the Station. Throughout her mission, Samantha will hold the role of US Orbital Segment (USOS) lead, taking responsibility for all operations within the US, European, Japanese and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station. She will support around 35 European and many more international experiments in orbit. For more about Samantha and her Minerva mission, visit the Minerva mission page. Access the related broadcast quality video material. View the full article

Launcher integration for the inaugural flight of Vega-C began with the P120C solid-fuel first stage being delivered to the Vega Launch Zone (Zone de Lancement Vega, or ZLV) at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 15 April 2022. P120C will also fly on Ariane 6, with two or four units serving as boosters depending on mission requirements. The interstage segment to join the P120C first stage with the Z40 second stage followed on the 22nd. For flight VV21, the principal payload will be LARES-2, a scientific mission of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Also onboard will be six European research CubeSats. View the full article

ESA Careers Week is just around the corner and we are excited to see you during this four-day virtual event from 2 - 5 May. Curious to know what’s on the agenda and how to register for the fair? Keep reading! View the full article

Tune in to ESA Web TV this Wednesday 27 April to watch ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti begin her journey to the International Space Station. Launch is scheduled at 09:52 CEST (07:52 GMT), and live streaming will start at 06:00 CEST (05:00 GMT). View the full article

Launched back in 2018, Aeolus has outlived its 36-month in-orbit design life – but going above and beyond, it continues to deliver excellent data. This shows that there’s life yet in the satellite, meaning ESA’s wind mission is now expected to continue shining a light on the wind for another year. View the full article

Image: Hubble observations used to answer key exoplanet questions View the full article

Image: ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is all smiles after arriving at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, last week with NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins. Collectively known as Crew-4, the astronauts flew in from Houston, Texas, USA, and are spending the days ahead in quarantine before being launched this week to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom. “This is getting real,” said Samantha. “It’s very emotional for me, that this final stretch to the launchpad has started with the landing here, on this runway.” Samantha recalled her childhood fascination watching the Space Shuttle launches in the 1980s and her reality now: “I am landing on the Space Shuttle landing facility!” This is the second long-duration space mission for Samantha who first flew to the orbital outpost in 2014 for her Italian Space Agency ASI-sponsored mission Futura. This year’s ESA space mission, known as Minerva, will officially begin once she reaches the Station. Samantha will be welcomed to the Space Station by fellow ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and enjoy a short handover in orbit before Matthias returns to Earth as part of Crew-3. Throughout her mission, Samantha will hold the role of US Orbital Segment (USOS) lead, taking responsibility for all operations within the US, European, Japanese and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station. She will support around 35 European and many more international experiments in orbit. Samantha has the honour of many ‘firsts’ in her spaceflight career. She was the first astronaut to brew a cup of coffee in space. Her 2014 Futura mission held the record for the longest European space mission, at 199 days, until Thomas Pesquet’s mission Alpha in 2020. Samantha was also the first astronaut to blog extensively during training and from space. Outpost 42: Earthlings’ guide to the galaxy is a treasure trove of 289 posts about living in space. For mission Minerva, Samantha continues to trailblaze by being the first ever astronaut on social media platform TikTok, bringing space content and European research to a wider audience. Follow Samantha to go where no TikToker has gone before! Stay #Cristofoready for launch updates on social media on twitter by following Samantha and ESA Spaceflight. View the full article

Week in images: 18-22 April 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Europe experienced its warmest summer on record in 2021, accompanied by severe floods in western Europe and dry conditions in the Mediterranean. These are just some of the key findings from the Copernicus Climate Change Service’s European State of the Climate report released today. The in-depth report provides key insights and a comprehensive analysis of climate conditions in 2021, with a special focus on Europe and the Arctic. View the full article

Since 2016, ESA’s Space Debris Office has published an annual Space Environment Report to provide a transparent overview of global space activities and determine how well these and other international debris-reduction measures are improving the long-term sustainability of spaceflight. Here are some of the key findings of the 2022 report. View the full article

Each year on 22 April, people across the planet join forces to raise awareness about the depleting quality of the environment, the unequivocal effects of climate change and the importance of protecting our planet for future generations. We celebrate Earth Day every day at ESA. This week, this spectacular image of Earth is brought to you by the Meteosat Second Generation series of missions. View the full article

If man’s best friend is a dog, then in the future astronauts’ closest companions might well be rovers. A technique allowing astronauts in orbit to control rovers exploring planetary surfaces has been developed by a research team from ESA, the German Aerospace Center DLR and European academia and industry, culminating in an Earth-based rover session commanded from the International Space Station. A paper published in the prestigious Science Robotics journal this week details their results. View the full article

As one of the last milestones before liftoff at the end of the year, the first Meteosat Third Generation weather satellite is being fitted with its Lightning Imager. From geostationary orbit, 36 000 km above Earth’s surface, this state-of-the-art European instrument will continuously monitor lightning over more than 80% of Earth’s disc for early warnings of dangerous storms. Remarkably, it is capable of imaging relatively weak lightning events in full sunlight. View the full article

Image: Celebrating Hubble’s 32nd birthday with a galaxy grouping View the full article

Week in images: 11-15 April 2022 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:01:24 Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is preparing for the arrival of Ariane 6, ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket. The latest round of testing aims to validate the system of fuel lines and mechanical supporting arms that will keep Ariane 6 topped up with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in the critical moments before liftoff. This work is part of the final preparations of the new Ariane 6 launch complex and all the systems necessary for a launch. With the mobile gantry fully retracted – as for a launch – two articulated arms attached to the upper part of the Ariane 6 mast on the launch pad were separated and retracted while filled with hydrogen that is cooled to its liquid state at cryogenic temperatures. This manoeuvre mimics the seconds before liftoff. The ‘cryo-arms’ are part of the fluidic connection system which connects to Ariane 6 in the final countdown to launch. They support the upper umbilicals which supply cryogenic top-up fuel, maintain the correct pressurisation of the tanks, cool the engines before ignition and generally keep the upper stage in an optimal condition right up to the point of liftoff. The same umbilicals allow the fuel to be drained safely if a launch is aborted. Each arm is 13 m long and weighs 20 tonnes. One arm supplies liquid hydrogen at -250°C, the other supplies liquid oxygen at -180°C. When Ariane 6 lifts off, these arms will disconnect from the rocket and then pivot away quickly, in just 2.6 seconds, to avoid interfering with the rocket's ascent. This manoeuvre requires great precision. Almost simultaneously it is necessary to disconnect the arms, protect the supply hoses from gas ejections from the boosters and allow the launch vehicle to pass while avoiding any contact with it. A 50-tonne counterweight inside the mast speeds up the retraction of the arms. A smart damping system allows the arms to brake before the end of their swing backwards in order to protect the mechanical links with the mast. Keeping the fluid supplies connected with the rocket until the moment of liftoff guarantees the best availability and simplification of the interface with the launch vehicle. The disconnection of the cryo-arms from Ariane 6 is much faster than it is from Ariane 5, where the manoeuvre comes six seconds before liftoff. This means the sequence for Ariane 6 can be triggered at the latest possible moment in the countdown, reducing the chance of unnecessary disconnects in the event of an aborted launch. Technical qualification tests are continuing. The objective now is to complete the qualification process of the hydrogen and oxygen filling lines and launcher interfaces for the lower, core stage. Further information: Ariane 6 Europe’s Spaceport View the full article

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured this impressive shot of the almost cloud-free Scandinavian Peninsula on 20 March. View the full article

The test version of a unique satellite navigation receiver has been delivered for integration testing on the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft. The NaviMoon satnav receiver is designed to perform the furthest ever positioning fix from Earth, employing signals that will be millions of times fainter than those used by our smartphones or cars. View the full article

Image: A satisfying, audible ‘pop’ marked a successful piercing of the sealed Apollo 17 sample container using the ESA designed and built piercing tool. The tool forms part of a gas sampling system with a gas extraction manifold, designed and built by Washington University St Louis, USA. Francesca McDonald, science and project lead of ESA’s contribution to the Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) programme, is pictured at the centre of this image with the piercing tool, which contains the pristine sample. Francesca and colleague, Timon Schild, delivered the ESA piercing tool to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in late 2021 in preparation of the opening of the specially curated Apollo 17 core sample, which had remained sealed under vacuum since its collection in 1972 at the Moon’s surface by Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan. The job of the tool, jokingly called the “Apollo can opener” amongst the team, was to puncture the Moon sample vacuum container in such a way as to aid capturing trapped lunar gases within. This was successfully done in February 2022, with the fragile gases then collected in dedicated canisters via an extraction manifold designed by a partner team at Washington University in Saint-Louis, USA. “The piercing tool was bespoke designed for this Core Sample Vacuum Container (CSVC),” explains Francesca. Even if it’s not used again, she notes that, “there are a lot of lessons learned that we can take for future exploration of the Moon and Mars.” Combined science and engineering investigations are producing a set of findings on how well the CSVC performed and what can be learnt for improving the sample return chain in the future. The gas sample canisters are being sent to specialised laboratories around the world, including within Europe, for detailed studies using highly sensitive mass spectrometry analytical techniques to learn about the origin and evolution of volatile species on the Moon and to understand the geologic history of the Apollo 17 landing site. Follow up work is commencing to assess the full performance of the tool and to attain a set of lessons learned for future volatile-rich sample return, containment and gas sampling, which can inform Artemis and Mars Sample Return. The gas extraction experiment is part of the larger Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) programme that is coordinating the analysis of several pristine Moon samples from the Apollo era. And for the first time ever, ESA is involved in the opening of soil returned from the Moon. View the full article

With the climate crisis continuing to tighten its grip, nations around the world are making efforts to reduce emissions of climate warming gases. To track action, countries report their greenhouse gas emissions to the UNFCCC – the body responsible for driving global action to combat climate change. While accurate and consistent reporting is crucial, very few countries exploit Earth observation satellite data to check and improve their estimates. Scientists have now devised new ways of comparing national greenhouse gas inventories with independent measurements taken from space. View the full article