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Combined tests start for Ariane 6 at Europe’s Spaceport
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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 NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This animation shows data taken by NASA’s PACE and the international SWOT satellites over a region of the North Atlantic Ocean. PACE captured phytoplankton data on Aug. 8, 2024; layered on top is SWOT sea level data taken on Aug. 7 and 8, 2024. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio One Earth satellite can see plankton that photosynthesize. The other measures water surface height. Together, their data reveals how sea life and the ocean are intertwined.
The ocean is an engine that drives Earth’s weather patterns and climate and sustains a substantial portion of life on the planet. A new animation based on data from two recently launched missions — NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) and the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellites — gives a peek into the heart of that engine.
Physical processes, including localized swirling water masses called eddies and the vertical movement of water, can drive nutrient availability in the ocean. In turn, those nutrients determine the location and concentration of tiny floating organisms known as phytoplankton that photosynthesize, converting sunlight into food. These organisms have not only contributed roughly half of Earth’s oxygen since the planet formed, but also support economically important fisheries and help draw carbon out of the atmosphere, locking it away in the deep sea.
“We see great opportunity to dramatically accelerate our scientific understanding of our oceans and the significant role they play in our Earth system,” said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This visualization illustrates the potential we have when we begin to integrate measurements from our separate SWOT and PACE ocean missions. Each of those missions is significant on its own. But bringing their data together — the physics from SWOT and the biology from PACE — gives us an even better view of what’s happening in our oceans, how they are changing, and why.”
A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), the SWOT’ satellite launched in December 2022 to measure the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface. It is providing one of the most detailed, comprehensive views yet of the planet’s ocean and its freshwater lakes, reservoirs, and rivers.
Launched in February 2024, NASA’s PACE satellite detects and measures the distribution of phytoplankton communities in the ocean. It also provides data on the size, amount, and type of tiny particles called aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere, as well as the height, thickness, and opacity of clouds.
“Integrating information across NASA’s Earth System Observatory and its pathfinder missions SWOT and PACE is an exciting new frontier in Earth science,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, program scientist for SWOT and the Integrated Earth System Observatory at NASA Headquarters.
Where Physics and Biology Meet
The animation above starts by depicting the orbits of SWOT (orange) and PACE (light blue), then zooms into the North Atlantic Ocean. The first data to appear was acquired by PACE on Aug. 8. It reveals concentrations of chlorophyll-a, a vital pigment for photosynthesis in plants and phytoplankton. Light green and yellow indicate higher concentrations of chlorophyll-a, while blue signals lower concentrations.
Next is sea surface height data from SWOT, taken during several passes over the same region between Aug. 7 and 8. Dark blue represents heights that are lower than the mean sea surface height, while dark orange and red represent heights higher than the mean. The contour lines that remain once the color fades from the SWOT data indicate areas of the ocean with the same height, much like the lines on a topographic map indicate areas with the same elevation.
The underlying PACE data then cycles through several groups of phytoplankton, starting with picoeukaryotes. Lighter green indicates greater concentrations of this group. The final two groups are cyanobacteria — some of the smallest and most abundant phytoplankton in the ocean — called Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus. For Prochlorococcus, lighter raspberry colors represent higher concentrations. Lighter teal colors for Synechococcus signal greater amounts of the cyanobacteria.
The animation shows that higher phytoplankton concentrations on Aug. 8 tended to coincide with areas of lower water height. Eddies that spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere tend to draw water away from their center. This results in relatively lower sea surface heights in the center that draw up cooler, nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean. These nutrients act like fertilizer, which can boost phytoplankton growth in sunlit waters at the surface.
Overlapping SWOT and PACE data enables a better understanding of the connections between ocean dynamics and aquatic ecosystems, which can help improve the management of resources such as fisheries, since phytoplankton form the base of most food chains in the sea. Integrating these kinds of datasets also helps to improve calculations of how much carbon is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean. This, in turn, can indicate whether regions of the ocean that absorb excess atmospheric carbon are changing.
More About SWOT
The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES. The KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly was provided by CSA.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov
More About PACE
The PACE mission is managed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which also built and tested the spacecraft and the Ocean Color Instrument, which collected the data shown in the visualization. The satellite’s Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter #2 was designed and built by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration was developed and built by a Dutch consortium led by Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Airbus Defence, and Space Netherlands.
To learn more about PACE, visit:
https://pace.gsfc.nasa.gov
News Media Contacts
Jacob Richmond (for PACE)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
jacob.a.richmond@nasa.gov
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang (for SWOT)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Dec 09, 2024 Related Terms
PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) Climate Science Oceans SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) Explore More
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By NASA
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
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The Canadarm2 removes materials science samples from the Kibo laboratory module's airlock. NASA The Materials ISS Experiment Flight Facility mounted on the outside of the International Space Station allows researchers to test the performance and durability of materials and devices. This is done by exposing items of interest to everything that makes the space environment harsh, including radiation, highly reactive atomic oxygen, microgravity, and extreme temperatures.
Currently, one suite on the platform holds MISSE-20-Commercial, an investigation conducting 12 experiments from different research teams. Among MISSE-20-Commercial is the Space Entanglement and Annealing Quantum Experiment (SEAQUE) which tests two technologies that could advance the field of quantum communications. The first technology is a novel method to transmit quantum data. This method could make way for a scalable quantum information network and provide the foundation of quantum cloud computing, a technology that holds the promise of operating millions of times faster than conventional computers. SEAQUE will also validate technology to “self-heal” its sensitive detectors against radiation damage using laser annealing, prolonging the life of these quantum tools in a space environment.
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By NASA
Media are invited to learn about a unique series of flight tests happening in Virginia in partnership between NASA and GE Aerospace that aim to help the aviation industry better understand contrails and their impact on the Earth’s climate. Contrails are the lines of clouds that can be created by high-flying aircraft, but they may have an unseen effect on the planet – trapping heat in the atmosphere.
The media event will occur from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 25 at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA Langley’s G-III aircraft and mobile laboratory, as well as GE Aerospace’s 747 Flying Test Bed (FTB) will be on site. NASA project researchers and GE Aerospace’s flight crew will be available to discuss the Contrail Optical Depth Experiment (CODEX), new test methods and technologies used, and the real-world impacts of understanding and managing contrails. Media interested in attending must contact Brittny McGraw at brittny.v.mcgraw@nasa.gov no later than 12 p.m. EST, Friday, Nov. 22.
Flights for CODEX are being conducted this week. NASA Langley’s G-III will follow GE Aerospace’s FTB in the sky and scan the aircraft wake with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. This will advance the use of LiDAR by NASA to generate three-dimensional imaging of contrails to better characterize how contrails form and how they behave over time.
For more information about NASA’s work in green aviation tech, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/green-aero-tech
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David Meade
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
757-751-2034 davidlee.t.meade@nasa.gov
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