Space News & Blog Articles

Week in images: 24-28 April 2023

Juice’s ice-penetrating RIME antenna has not yet been deployed as planned. During the first week of commissioning, an issue arose with the 16-metre-long Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna, which is preventing it from being released from its mounting bracket.

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The European Space Agency (ESA) is currently training five astronaut candidates for future missions to the International Space Station and beyond. Their training programme consists of three phases: The first phase is basic training, which covers medical exams, fitness assessments, and space programmes and systems. The second phase, the pre-assignment training, is advanced training in specific areas such as systems training, vehicle training, robotics and EVA-training. The third phase is mission-specific training, which is tailored to the tasks and experiments that astronauts will perform during their mission. ESA's astronaut training programme also includes training for exploration of the lunar surface, as astronauts will need to apply their skills and knowledge to new challenges in future space missions beyond Earth orbit. 

Image: Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 8 April 2023, this image shows Los Angeles and part of the hinterland in Southern California.

ESA is inviting companies with an interest in merchandising to submit a tender to become the space agency’s official ESA-branded merchandise supplier.

Image: Juice’s first taste of science from space

When one thinks of the damage that climate change is doing, it’s probable that what comes to mind is a vision of huge lumps of ice dropping off one of the polar ice sheets and crashing into the ocean. While Greenland and Antarctica are losing masses of ice, so too are most of the glaciers around the world, but it’s tricky to measure how much ice they are shedding.

The European Space Agency is currently looking for a new Director of Connectivity and Secure Communications and new Director of Internal Services to join its executive board and support the Director General, with responsibility for relevant ESA activities and overall objectives.

The ESA/NASA SOHO observatory has overturned 14 years of thinking about the strange Sun-skirting ‘rock comet’ known as Phaethon that could reopen the mystery of how the Geminid meteor shower was born.

Not one, but two rocket launches with ESA-led experiments are flying to the edge of space just a week apart, providing unique data to researchers eager to learn more about fundamental physics, semiconductor production, the formation of planets and how our immune cells react to spaceflight.

Week in images: 17-21 April 2023

Image: The historic centre of Rome, Italy’s capital city, is featured in this image captured on 28 March 2023.

Image: ESA’s technical centre expands

Global food security is a major challenge in the face of population growth and climate change. One of the first steps in achieving food security for all is to know which crops are growing where and how – each season. Launching today, ESA’s WorldCereal is the world’s first dynamic system capable of providing seasonally updated crop information to help monitor agricultural production across the globe.

Press Release N° 18–2023

A report, publishing today, states that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica has increased fivefold since the 1990s, and now accounts for a quarter of sea-level rise.

Making use of the very first resources of another world would be a major feat for our species, bringing us closer to living in space to stay. But reaching such a milestone will take sustained inventiveness and effort – so ESA invites your ideas to help make it happen.

The Euclid satellite embarked on the next leg of the 1.5 million km long journey to space from where it will unlock the mysteries of the dark Universe.

Every year on 22 April, we’ve celebrated Earth Day and the beautiful planet we call home. Earth Day, established in 1970, has been used to highlight our planet’s environmental challenges and raise awareness of the importance of protecting our world for future generations. But shouldn’t every day be Earth Day? We only have one beautiful planet after all. We hope you enjoy this curated list of 10 of the most remarkable facts about Earth. 

On 30 April 2023, all nominal operations of Aeolus, the first mission to observe Earth’s wind profiles on a global scale, will conclude in preparation for a series of end of life activities.

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ESA’s Solar Orbiter may have taken another step towards solving the eighty-year-old mystery of why the Sun’s outer atmosphere is so hot.