Space News & Blog Articles

Week in images: 14 - 18 March 2022

Video: 00:08:04

One of the many milestones in the leadup to the launch of Artemis is its rollout: this is when a crawler will carry the SLS rocket with Orion and ESM from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launchpad 39B. NASA’s John Giles gives us a tour of the crawler and explains the adaptations made to this “wonderful piece of machinery” since it was first built for the Apollo programme in the 1960s. ESA is playing a key role in NASA’s Artemis programme, which will bring astronauts back to the Moon. The European Service Module – or ESM – will provide propulsion, power and thermal control for the Orion spacecraft.

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer is scheduled to perform his first spacewalk next week, stepping outside the International Space Station on Wednesday 23 March alongside NASA’s Raja Chari.

Part of Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Video: 01:01:27

Replay of the media information session following the 306th ESA Council, held on 16 and 17 March 2022 in Paris, France. Updates were provided on ESA’s main programmes, the outcome of the 16 February Space Summit in Toulouse, upcoming missions for Earth Observation, and for ESA astronauts, the overall rollout of the Director General’s Agenda 2025 on the way to the ESA Ministerial Meeting in November 2022 as well as the implications of the current geopolitical situation on ESA’s activities.

Press Release N° 9–2022

The media information session following the 306th ESA Council will be streamed at esawebtv.esa.int from 16:00 CET.

Following the completion of critical mirror alignment steps, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope team expects that Webb’s optical performance will be able to meet or exceed the science goals the observatory was built to achieve.

On 18 February, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope was photographed by ESA’s Gaia observatory.

Image: Unlimited 3D printing for space

Lunar caves are not only a geologically pristine record of the Moon's history, but they could also provide a safe home for future human explorers. Building upon ESA Discovery's OSIP call and SysNova challenge, ESA gathered a spectrum of over 60 experts in many different areas of science and engineering to design a mission to enter a pit on the Moon's surface and explore the entrance to a lunar cave.

ESA Impact March Council edition

Week in images: 7 - 11 March 2022

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the archipelago of Lofoten in northern Norway.

The time has come to register to attend the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Symposium – one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world. Taking place on 23–27 May 2022 in Bonn, Germany, and jointly organised with the German Aerospace Center, this prestigious event allows all attendees to hear first-hand about the latest scientific findings on our planet. Attendees will also hear how observing Earth from space supports environmental research and action to combat the climate crisis, learn about novel Earth observing technologies and, importantly, learn about the new opportunities emerging in the rapidly changing sector of Earth observation.

Image: The long goodbye

Image: Backbone of Hera asteroid mission

Video: 00:31:09

Join ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer on a tour of Columbus, Europe’s science laboratory on the International Space Station.

It’s very difficult to know what lies beneath a blanket of kilometres-thick ice, so it is hardly surprising that scientists have long contested the shape and geology of the ancient supercontinent from which East Antarctica formed over a billion years ago. An ESA-funded study can now lay some of this conjecture to rest. Using sensors on aircraft to measure changes in the gravity and magnetic signatures of the different rocks under the ice, scientists have discovered a huge bay the size of the UK formed part of the edge of East Antarctica.

Discover ESA