European Space Agency

Download this launch kit to learn more about the international James Webb Space Telescope and the science goals of the mission. View the full article

Video: 00:03:35 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’ takes you on a fun and informative journey to visit Didymos together with Hera. Along the way, you will discover who the main characters are, why this mission is so important, what ESA hopes to achieve with Hera and much more. View the full article

Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two briefcase-sized Cubesats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos and Dimorphos, an asteroid pair typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth. View the full article

As our climate warms, ice melting from glaciers around the world is one of main causes of sea-level rise. As well as being a major contributor to this worrying trend, the loss of glacier ice also poses a direct threat to hundreds of millions of people relying on glacier runoff for drinking water and irrigation. With monitoring mountain glaciers clearly important for these reasons and more, new research, based on information from ESA’s CryoSat mission, shows how much ice has been lost from mountain glaciers in the Gulf Alaska and in High Mountain Asia since 2010. View the full article

It’s time to block your agendas to make sure you don’t miss out on the biggest Earth observation conference in the world – ESA’s next Living Planet Symposium, which is set to take place on 23–27 May 2022 at the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany. View the full article

Week in images: 24 - 28 May 2021 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:04:10 In the midst of COVID restrictions rendering travel close to impossible, ESA had to produce an ambitious video to call for applications to the 2021 astronaut selection. The challenge of this project was to show locations as varied as a spaceship, a city, a canyon, a forest, ESA's satellite testing or control centres, Europe's space port in Kourou, or even the Moon. To create the illusion of immersing the protagonists into these various environments, ESA teamed up with Duck Factory to use a "Virtual Set": a new technology, that had not yet been used to the full extend of its potential. A "Virtual Set" is a regular stage on which previously created 3D images are projected. Thanks to a tracker equipped camera, the background follows the movement of the protagonists, eliminating the usual parallax issues. View the full article

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is expected to serve as International Space Station commander for Expedition 68, following an in-principle agreement by international partners on 19 May, pending consolidation of the Space Station’s operational plans and launch dates. View the full article

All five of North America’s Great Lakes are pictured in this spectacular image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission: Lake Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. View the full article

Acting on behalf of the European Commission, ESA has signed two contracts for an overall amount of €1.47 billion, to design and build the first batch of the second generation of Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites. View the full article

Imagine driving down a road which has more broken cars, bikes and vans lining the street than functioning vehicles. This is the scene our satellites face in Earth orbit. In fact, since the start of the space age there has been more debris, “space junk”, in orbit than operational satellites. So how do we clean up this mess? View the full article

Keeping information secure in today’s interconnected world is becoming ever more important, so ESA is supporting efforts to ensure that future communications are kept confidential. View the full article

Image: Jupiter antenna that came in from the cold View the full article

Live now: Lunch with the Moon Live now: Lunch with the Moon View the full article

Image: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet snapped this image of the Moon from the Russian segment on board the International Space Station earlier this month. Currently on his first month of the six-month Alpha mission, Thomas is taking stunning photos of Earth and other wondrous objects when not working on science or Station maintenance. “The blueish picture is when it was still low and the sky was not yet dark,” he notes. “It turned into its black and white self only moments later.” Parts of North and South America, Australia and the Pacific will be treated to a lunar eclipse, which occurs when the Moon is engulfed by Earth’s shadow and the only sunlight that reaches its surface passes through our planet’s atmosphere, giving it a beautiful red-orange tint. Today’s lunar eclipse will be the only total lunar eclipse of this year, and that same evening the Moon will be just 357 311 km away, often called a ‘SuperMoon’. Despite the first human visit more than 50 years ago, the Moon remains largely unexplored yet promises to help us understand the formation of our planet, how crucial chemicals like water, necessary for life, came to the Earth-Moon system, and how we could one day use resources on the Moon to enable human presence. In the near future, ESA will go ‘forward to the Moon’ when the European Service Module powers NASA’s Orion mission into lunar orbit, and in the next decade, ESA will play a key role in the development of the Gateway, an orbiting science station that will support future human landings. For now, ESA is bringing the lunar eclipse to Europe with real-time coverage of the total lunar eclipse starting at midday today, 26 May, on ESA Web TV. The live programme begins at 11:30 CEST and runs over lunchtime in Europe and will provide commentary on this fantastic eclipse, with special guest astronomers, scientists, engineers and experts from Europe and Australia. For more info on today’s schedule and how to follow live, see here. For more stunning images from space, follow Thomas Pesquet during Mission Alpha here. View the full article

Join us, and the Moon, for a lunch date like no other starting from 11:30 CEST on Wednesday 26 May. View the full article

Aspiring astronauts now have until 18 June 2021 to submit an application for ESA’s astronaut selection. The three-week extension comes as ESA welcomes Lithuania as a new Associate Member state. View the full article

Week in images: 17 - 21 May 2021 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

A series of ground-based high-speed extraction tests confirm the readiness of a new and upgraded parachute and bag system for a high-altitude drop test in early June, part of critical preparations to keep the ExoMars 2022 mission on track for its next launch window. View the full article

With alarm bells ringing about the rapid demise of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, satellite data have revealed how the intrusion of warmer Atlantic waters is reducing ice regrowth in the winter. In addition, with seasonal ice more unpredictable than ever, ESA’s SMOS and CryoSat satellites are being used to improve sea-ice forecasts, which are critical for shipping, fisheries and indigenous communities, for example. View the full article

With alarm bells ringing about the rapid demise of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, satellite data have revealed how the intrusion of warmer Atlantic waters is reducing ice regrowth in the winter. In addition, with seasonal ice more unpredictable than ever, ESA’s SMOS and CryoSat satellites are being used to improve sea-ice forecasts, which are critical for shipping, fisheries and indigenous communities, for example. View the full article

Metalysis and ESA announce team Malt as winner of the first phase of the Grand Challenge to develop innovative techniques for future lunar settlements. View the full article

The European Space Agency is currently looking for a new Director of Commercialisation, Industry & Procurement, to join its executive board and support the Director General, with responsibility for relevant ESA activities and overall objectives. View the full article

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Los Cabos – a municipality on the southern tip of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula. View the full article

Video: 00:01:56 As international teams across the world forge plans to revisit the Moon, ESA is elaborating how best to facilitate this exploration. As part of its Moonlight initiative, the agency is encouraging European space companies to put a constellation of telecommunications and navigation satellites around the Moon. To succeed, the proposed lunar missions will require reliable navigation and telecommunication capabilities. Building these independently would be costly, complex and inefficient. If this work were outsourced to a consortium of space companies, each individual mission would become more cost-efficient. Having one system dedicated to lunar telecommunications and navigation could reduce design complexity, liberating missions to concentrate on their core activities. Because missions could rely on this dedicated telecommunications and navigation service, they would be lighter. This would make space for more scientific instruments or other cargo. An accurate and reliable telecommunications and navigation service would enable missions to land wherever they wanted. Radio astronomers could set up observatories on the far side of the Moon. Rovers could trundle over the lunar surface more speedily. It could even enable the teleoperation of rovers and other equipment from Earth. Finally, lowering the ticket price to lunar exploration could empower a wider group of ESA member states to launch their own national lunar missions. Even on a relatively low budget, an emerging space nation would be able to send a scientific cubesat mission to the Moon, inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. View the full article