ESA’s Gaia space telescope has further disentangled the history of our galaxy, discovering two surprising streams of stars that formed and wove together over 12 billion years ago.
Space News & Blog Articles
ESA has signed contracts with several European companies for an overall amount of € 233 million to develop Genesis and a LEO-PNT demonstrator, two new missions within the FutureNAV programme that will keep Europe at the forefront of satellite navigation worldwide.
A few layers of water ice – the width of a strand of DNA – are starting to impact Euclid’s vision; a common issue for spacecraft in the freezing cold of space, but a potential problem for this highly sensitive mission that requires remarkable precision to investigate the nature of the dark Universe. After months of research, Euclid teams across Europe are now testing a newly designed procedure to de-ice the mission's optics. If successful, the operations will validate the mission teams’ plan to keep Euclid’s optical system as ice-free as possible for the rest of its life in orbit.
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Astronomers have created the largest yet cosmic 3D map of quasars: bright and active centres of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes. This map shows the location of about 1.3 million quasars in space and time, with the furthest shining bright when the Universe was only 1.5 billion years old.
Image: The historic centre of Vienna, Austria’s capital city, is featured in this image captured on 23 June 2023.
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Climate change exacerbates droughts by making them more frequent, longer, and more severe. This can have a wide range of impacts on the environment, agriculture, ecosystems and communities including water scarcity, crop failure and food shortages.
The shoebox-sized Milani CubeSat, which will perform close-up mineral prospecting of the Dimorphos asteroid, is ready for delivery to ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence. The spacecraft will carry Milani and a second CubeSat, the Juventas radar imaging spacecraft for probing into the target asteroid, which together will be ESA’s first CubeSats to operate in deep space.
ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has passed its environmental test campaign with flying colours – meaning that the satellite has been declared fit for liftoff and its life in the harsh environment of space.
The European mission control centre near Munich, Germany, is set to undergo a transformation into a Moon mission control centre, tasked with supporting operations for missions to a lunar space station, the lunar surface and beyond.
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After more than 6 months on the International Space Station, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen returned to Earth, marking the end of his Huginn mission. It was his second mission to the Space Station and his first long-duration, where he was the pilot of Crew-7, which consisted of Jasmin Moghbeli (NASA), Satoshi Furukawa (JAXA), and Konstantin Borisov (Roscosmos).
In just a few months, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite will be lofted into orbit to fill in a piece of the complex climate puzzle – that piece being how clouds and aerosols, small particles such as dust suspended in the air, affect Earth’s energy balance.
ESA, on behalf of the European Commission, has signed a €12 million contract with Leonardo S.p.A (Italy) and Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica to design and develop a new ultra-precise atomic clock technology for Galileo.
After more than six months on the International Space Station, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and the rest of Crew-7 will undock and make their way down to Earth on 11 March 2024 at 13:15 GMT/14:15 CET, splashing down off the coast the Florida on 12 March, at 09:35 GMT / 10:35 CET. Watch the undocking and splashdown on ESA WebTV.
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Rosemary Coogan, one of ESA’s five astronaut candidates currently undergoing basic astronaut training at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, shares her journey from studying the stars to training for space travel. Join us as we discuss her experiences in astronaut training, her favorite lessons, and her excitement for the future of space exploration.
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Andreas Mogensen launched on his Huginn mission in August 2023 to the International Space Station, becoming the first non-US astronaut to pilot SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Andreas became commander of the International Space Station in September 2023, becoming the longest serving European commander in January 2024. His mission was spent on more than 30 European experiments and plenty of international ones as well, ranging from water purification to studies of human physiology and thunderclouds. After 6 months on the International Space Station, Andreas will come down to Earth together with his Crew-7 crewmates Jasmin Moghbeli (NASA), Satoshi Furukawa (JAXA), and Konstantin Borisov (Roscosmos).