One year ago, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, causing widespread destruction to the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga, spewing volcanic material up to 58 km into the atmosphere. It brought a nearly 15 m tsunami that crashed ashore, destroying villages, and creating a sonic boom that rippled around the world – twice.
Two teams of astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope have observed repeated outbursts of light from inactive black holes that partially destroy stars again and again. This discovery is unexpected, since outbursts of black holes usually appear only once when a black hole consumes a star.
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At the start of 2023 the European Space Agency ESA is happily looking forward to another year filled with a host of thrilling new missions, cutting edge science and the continued effort to guarantee independent access to space for Europe. We will see the first images of the first Meteosat Third Generation satellite, the launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, and of Euclid and another Sentinel-1 satellite launch. It will also be the year of Ariane 6 which will make its inaugural flight and the first Dane in space, Andreas Mogensen will return to the ISS as the new astronaut-candidates commence their training. Near the end of the year the second Space Summit will further cement ESA’s ambitions for Space in Europe.
Image: Europe has kicked off the new year with an intense winter heatwave. The warm temperatures and lack of snowfall in the Alps has left several ski resorts with little or no snow. The difference in snow cover is visible in these Copernicus Sentinel-2 images captured in January 2022 compared to January 2023.
Researchers have confirmed the presence of an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star, using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope for the first time. Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth’s diameter.
Scientists have developed a new Artificial Intelligence, or AI, technique using radar images from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission, to reveal how the Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue in West Antarctica is being damaged by squeezing and stretching as it flows from the middle of the continent to the coast. Being able to track fractures and crevasses in the ice beneath the overlying snow is key to better predicting the fate of floating ice tongues under climate change.
ESA is kicking off the new year by inviting you to create a unique juice mocktail to represent the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – also known as Juice – launching in April. The winner of the most imaginative recipe will be invited to ESA’s Social Space launch event in Darmstadt, Germany, where our favourite space juices will be served!
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Recently, Andreas Mogensen, now getting ready for his ‘Huginn’ mission to the ISS in 2023, stopped by ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to meet with some of the experts who keep our satellites flying.
This beautifully crisp icy scene with a swirling ribbon of rusty red and white striped terrain connecting two large craters wraps up the year on Mars.
Press Release N° 72–2022
Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image shows the wide-coverage of snowfall in the Alps, which hopefully bodes well for the coming year.
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Webb's picture of the month December is dominated by NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.
Space companies in Europe that could create telecommunications and navigation services for missions to the Moon will be invited to bid for the work, following the completion of two feasibility studies.
The voice counted backwards in French from ten to one, then announced, “Décollage” – lift-off. The 15-year-long collaboration between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency had just entered its most critical phase: the launch itself. What happened next would determine whether the James Webb Space Telescope made it into space or not.
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2022 was a year of many ‘firsts’ for space in Europe, seeing the first European female ISS commander, the launch of the first Vega-C rocket, Solar Orbiter’s first close encounter with our home star, the launch of the first Artemis mission working to bring humans back to the Moon, and first images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
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