With liftoff now scheduled for 13 December, Europe’s first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite has been fuelled – a critical and extremely hazardous milestone on the road to launch. Once in geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator, this all-new weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level.
23 Member and Associate States of the Agency pledged a total 117.6 million euros to ESA’s ScaleUp programme at ESA’s Ministerial Council CM22 to encourage entrepreneurship and commercialisation in the European space sector. This amount exceeds the target funding request by more than 17%, thus confirming the strong support that ESA Member States intend to provide to the development of a strong and sustainable commercial space ecosystem.
The province of Zaragoza, in northeast Spain, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies. While Webb and other space telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this heated planet’s atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds. The latest data also give a hint of how these clouds might look up close: broken up rather than as a single, uniform blanket over the planet.
The European Space Agency has chosen 17 new astronaut candidates from more than 22 500 applicants from across its Member States. In this new 2022 class of ESA astronauts are five career astronauts, 11 members of an astronaut reserve and one astronaut with a disability.
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Watch the replay of the press conference that brings the Council Meeting at Ministerial Level in Paris (CM22) to a close. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, as well as the hosting minister and the CM22 chair, present the outcome of this high-level meeting that takes place on 22 and 23 November. ESA’s plans for the next three years reflect the needs to raise Europe up another level in space activities, and to ensure that space continues to serve European citizens.
Europe will strengthen its autonomy, leadership and sustainability in space, following today’s decision to increase ESA’s budget by 17% compared to the last Ministerial meeting in 2019.
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ESA’s new class of astronauts is announced on Wednesday, 23 November 2022 at the Grand Palais Éphémère (GPE) in Paris. The new class includes career astronauts, reserve astronauts as well as astronauts with a physical disability for a feasibility project.
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The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module (left), Earth (middle) and the Moon (right) are captured in this ‘family portrait’ by Orion’s solar array camera during the spacecraft’s closet approach to the lunar surface.
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It is time for critical decisions about space in Europe. For two days on 22 and 23 November, ESA Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States observers are gathering in Paris to discuss how to strengthen Europe’s space sector for the benefit of all - including climate change monitoring and mitigation, secure communications under European control and rapid and resilient crisis response.
Join us live as ESA unveils the names and faces of the new class of European astronauts. ESA WebTV will broadcast the event at 14:20 CET (13:20 GMT) on Wednesday, 23 November 2022.
ESA and 22 other European space actors have come together to sign a “Statement for a Responsible Space Sector”. Space exploration has allowed us to look back on our planet in a way that no human could imagine before, revealing a fragile world with limited resources. As today’s statement explains, the responsibility to take care of our planet extends to and depends on, our actions in space.
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Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director General, explains what is on the table for ESA at CM22, ESA’s Council at Ministerial level taking place on 22 and 23 November 2022, a crucial milestone as Europe sets out its ambitions and plans for space activities in the coming years and decades.
The ESA Council at Ministerial level (CM22) is taking place in Paris, France, on 22 and 23 November. ESA’s Member States, Associated States and Cooperating States will be invited to together strengthen Europe’s space ambitions and ensure that space continues to serve European citizens. Follow our live coverage of CM22 via ESA WebTV.
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Short animation featuring key moments of the Mars Sample Return campaign: from landing on Mars and securing the sample tubes to launching them off the surface and ferrying them back to Earth.
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