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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:11:10 In 2024, ESA continued to drive Europe’s innovation and excellence in space, equipping the continent with advanced tools and knowledge to address global and local challenges. The year saw pioneering missions, cutting-edge satellites and the pivotal restoration of Europe’s independent access to space.
The first Ariane 6 launch was perhaps ‘the’ highlight of the year but it was only one of many achievements. We saw the last Vega launch and then the return to flight of Vega-C, the more powerful, upgraded version carrying Sentinel-1C.
Far away in our Solar System, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft performed twoMercury flybys in 2024, needed so that it can enter orbit around Mercury in 2026. Juice also performed a crucial gravity assist, this time becoming the first spacecraft to conduct a Moon-Earth double flyby on its way to Jupiter.
Twenty years after ESA’s Rosetta was launched and 10 years since its historic arrival at the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, we launched another spacecraft to a small body, the Hera planetary defence mission to investigate asteroid Dimorphos.
2024 was an important year for Europe’s Galileo constellation which continued to expand with the launch of four new satellites and an updated Galileo ground system. The year also saw the launch of ESA’s Proba-3 mission: two precision formation-flying satellites forming a solar coronagraph to study the Sun’s faint corona.
In human spaceflight, Europe continues to contribute to science from the ISS as Andreas Mogensen’s Huginn mission continued into 2024. Andreas even met up in space with ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt who was launched on his Muninn mission, making it the first time two Scandinavians were in space together.
Meanwhile the latest class of ESA astronauts completed basic training and graduated in April. Two of them, Sophie and Raphaël, were then assigned to long-duration missions to the ISS in 2026.
We made crucial steps for Europe in gaining access to the Moon: the inauguration of our LUNA facility with DLR, and the delivery of a third European Service Module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis programme.
Europe is also contributing to the international Lunar Gateway and developing and ESA lunar lander called Argonaut. These landers will rely on ESA Moonlight, the programme to establish Europe’s first dedicated satellite constellation for lunar communication and navigation.
As 2024 draws to a close, ESA’s achievements this year have reinforced Europe’s role in space. ESA’s journey continues to explore new frontiers, shaping the space landscape for generations to come.
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By European Space Agency
The Sentinel-1C satellite, the third satellite of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, has arrived at the European spaceport in French Guiana for liftoff on the Vega-C rocket at the end of 2024. The satellite will continue the critical task of delivering key radar imagery of Earth’s surface for a wide range of Copernicus services and scientific applications.
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By NASA
This photo shows the Wide Field Instrument for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arriving at the big clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. About the size of a commercial refrigerator, this instrument will help astronomers explore the universe’s evolution and the characteristics of worlds outside our solar system. Unlocking these cosmic mysteries and more will offer a better understanding of the nature of the universe and our place within it.NASA/Chris Gunn The primary instrument for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a sophisticated camera that will survey the cosmos from the outskirts of our solar system all the way out to the edge of the observable universe. Called the Wide Field Instrument, it was recently delivered to the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The camera’s large field of view, sharp resolution, and sensitivity from visible to near-infrared wavelengths will give Roman a deep, panoramic view of the universe. Scanning much larger portions of the sky than astronomers can with NASA’s Hubble or James Webb space telescopes will open new avenues of cosmic exploration. Roman is designed to study dark energy (a mysterious cosmic pressure thought to accelerate the universe’s expansion), dark matter (invisible matter seen only via its gravitational influence), and exoplanets (worlds beyond our solar system).
“This instrument will turn signals from space into a new understanding of how our universe works,” said Julie McEnery, the Roman senior project scientist at Goddard. “To achieve its main goals, the mission will precisely measure hundreds of millions of galaxies. That’s quite a dataset for all kinds of researchers to pull from, so there will be a flood of results on a vast array of science.”
Technicians inspect NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Wide Field Instrument upon delivery to the big clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.NASA/Chris Gunn About 1,000 people contributed to the Wide Field Instrument’s development, from the initial design phase to assembling it from around a million individual components. The WFI’s design was a collaborative effort between Goddard and BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado. Teledyne Imaging Sensors, Hawaii Aerospace Corporation, Applied Aerospace Structures Corporation, Northrop Grumman, Honeybee Robotics, CDA Intercorp, Alluxa, and JenOptik provided critical components. Those parts and many more, made by other vendors, were delivered to Goddard and BAE Systems, where they were assembled and tested prior to the instrument’s delivery to Goddard this month.
“I am so happy to be delivering this amazing instrument,” said Mary Walker, Roman’s Wide Field Instrument manager at Goddard. “All the years of hard work and the team’s dedication have brought us to this exciting moment.”
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a next-generation observatory that will survey the infrared universe from beyond the orbit of the Moon. The spacecraft’s giant camera, the Wide Field Instrument, will be fundamental to this exploration. Data it gathers will enable scientists to discover new and uniquely detailed information about planetary systems around other stars. The instrument will also map how matter is structured and distributed throughout the cosmos, which could ultimately allow scientists to discover the fate of the universe. Watch this video to see a simplified version of how the Wide Field Instrument works.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Seeing the Bigger Picture
After Roman launches by May 2027, each of the Wide Field Instrument’s 300-million-pixel images will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full moon. The instrument’s large field of view will enable sweeping celestial surveys, revealing billions of cosmic objects across vast stretches of time and space. Astronomers will conduct research that could take hundreds of years using other telescopes.
And by observing from space, Roman’s camera will be very sensitive to infrared light –– light with longer wavelengths than our eyes can see –– from far across the cosmos. This ancient cosmic light will help scientists address some of the biggest cosmic mysteries, one of which is how the universe evolved to its present state.
From the telescope, light’s path through the instrument begins by passing through one of several optical elements in a large wheel. These elements include filters, which allow specific wavelengths of light to pass through, and a grism and prism, which split light into all of its individual colors. These detailed patterns, called spectra, reveal information about the object that emitted the light.
Then, the light travels on toward the camera’s set of 18 detectors, which each contain 16 million pixels. The large number of detectors and pixels gives Roman its large field of view. The instrument is designed for accurate, stable images and exquisite precision in measuring the exact amount of light in every pixel of every image, giving Roman unprecedented power to study dark energy. The detectors will be held at about minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 184 degrees Celsius) to increase sensitivity to the infrared universe.
“When the light reaches the detectors, that marks the end of what may have been a 10-billion-year journey through space,” said Art Whipple, an aerospace engineer at Goddard who has contributed to the Wide Field Instrument’s design and construction for more than a decade.
Once Roman begins observing, its rapid data delivery will require new analysis techniques.
“If we had every astronomer on Earth working on Roman data, there still wouldn’t be nearly enough people to go through it all,” McEnery said. “We’re looking at modern techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence to help sift through Roman’s observations and find where the most exciting things are.”
Now that the Wide Field Instrument is at Goddard, it will be tested to ensure everything is operating as expected. It will be integrated onto the instrument carrier and mated to the telescope this fall, bringing scientists one step closer to making groundbreaking discoveries for decades to come.
One panel on the Wide Field Instrument for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope contains hundreds of names of team members who helped design and build the instrument.BAE Systems To virtually tour an interactive version of the telescope, visit:
https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/interactive
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940
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Last Updated Aug 13, 2024 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Dark Energy Dark Matter Exoplanets Goddard Space Flight Center Science-enabling Technology The Universe View the full article
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