Space News & Blog Articles

Week in images: 29 May - 02 June 2023

The food we eat determines how we feel, and nothing beats a good fry-up, although in moderation of course. As we prepare for missions to the Moon and on to Mars, astronauts will be happy to hear from researchers that one staple comfort food is not out of reach, even in space: fries.

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A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

A new mosaic of Mars marks 20 years since the launch of ESA's Mars Express, and reveals the planet’s colour and composition in spectacular detail.

Image: 20 years and counting: Mars Express in numbers

Image: From the Chugach Mountains on the right to the Cook Inlet on the left, this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image features the varied landscape surrounding Anchorage, the largest and most populous city in the state of Alaska in the United States.

Image: Trial by sound

Join us live to follow the ‘Ready for the Moon’ event, a high-level political conference on the challenges and ambitions for Europe's space sector. ESA Web TV will broadcast on its Channel Two the conference, including the media briefing on 2 June starting at 14:00 CEST (13:00 BST).

Earth observation has been essential in identifying and monitoring climate change. Satellite data form the baseline for effective European mitigation and adaptation strategies to support the Green Transition, the European Union to reach its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, as well as its Green Deal.

The main procurements batch of Galileo Second Generation initiated last summer has been finalised, leaving the system ready for its In Orbit Validation development phase. Today, following the opening session of the European Navigation Conference (ENC), ESA Director of Navigation Javier Benedicto invited Thales Alenia Space (Italy), Airbus Defence and Space (Germany) and Thales Six GTS (France) to sign the respective contracts commencing System Engineering Support for the next generation of Europe’s navigation satellite system.

Everything burns. Given the right environment, all matter can burn by adding oxygen, but finding the right mix  and generating enough heat makes some materials combust more easily than others. Researchers interested in knowing more about a type of fire called discrete burning used ESA’s microgravity experiment facilities to investigate.

For one hour on Friday 2 June, join ESA on YouTube for a space first as live images stream down direct from Mars – this will be the closest you can get to a live view from the Red Planet.

Registration is now open for ESA’s first-ever Earth Observation Commercialisation Forum. Taking place at ESA Headquarters in Paris from 30 to 31 October 2023, investors, institutions, entrepreneurs and companies of any size from the Earth observation sector will now be able to come together and discuss the commercial potential and challenges of Earth observation, together with the technical, industrial and risk-capital support available to European companies.

Interaction between moon’s plumes and Saturn’s ring system explored with Webb

A water vapour plume from Saturn’s moon Enceladus spanning more than 9600 kilometres — long enough to stretch across the Eurasian continent from Ireland to Japan — has been detected by researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Not only is this the first time such water ejection has been seen over such an expansive distance, but Webb is also giving scientists a direct look, for the first time, at how this emission feeds the water supply for the entire system of Saturn and its rings.

Flight controllers at ESA’s mission control centre in Germany have been busy this week, working with instrument teams on the final deployments to prepare ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) for exploring Jupiter.

Week in images: 22-26 May 2023

Image: This radar image from Copernicus Sentinel-1 shows the city of São Paulo and part of the homonymous state in southeast Brazil.

Video: 00:02:10

Detect, fetch and collect. A seemingly easy task is being tested to find the best strategy to collect samples on the martian surface, some 290 000 km away from home.

Earth’s declining ice is without a doubt one of the clearest signs of climate change. A new high-resolution sea-ice concentration data record has just been released as part of ESA’s Climate Change Initiative – providing new insights of sea ice concentration across the globe.

Video: 00:12:42

Enjoy a sneak peek of ESA’s new documentary that looks at fire in all its fury - and how satellite technology is helping to mitigate this consequence of climate change. Join us on this journey as we meet the firefighter who fought one of the largest wildfires in his career, climate scientists working with satellite data, and the people on the frontline using these data to aid those affected. The full documentary will be released this summer.