Space News & Blog Articles

From our cosmic backyard in the Solar System to distant galaxies near the dawn of time, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered on its promise of revealing the Universe like never before in its first year of science operations. To celebrate the completion of a successful first year, a new Webb image has been released of a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. While the region is relatively quiet, its proximity at 390 light-years makes for a highly detailed close-up, with no foreground stars in the intervening space.

As the 2023 summer holiday season gets under way, ESA and Amsterdam’s international airport are once again giving travellers a chance to discover some out-of-this-world destinations.

A state-of-the-art conference centre that will support the thriving UK space industry has opened at Harwell campus in Oxfordshire.

After exceeding its planned life in orbit, ESA’s Aeolus wind satellite is on its way back to Earth. The satellite is currently falling around 1 km a day, and its descent is accelerating. ESA’s spacecraft operators will soon intervene and attempt to guide Aeolus in a first-of-its-kind assisted reentry. Why is ESA doing this?

Two European astronauts are following the traces of a treasure trove of rare, Moon-like crystals in a Norwegian fjord as part of the PANGAEA geology training course.

Space-based solar power could provide Earth with clean and reliable energy, 24 hours a day. As part of its SOLARIS initiative, ESA is inviting researchers to help advance our knowledge of key aspects of collecting solar power in space and wirelessly transmitting it to Earth.

Data from ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has led to the surprising revelation that an ultra-hot exoplanet that orbits its host star in less than a day is covered by reflective clouds of metal, making it the shiniest exoplanet ever found.

Week in images: 03-07 July 2023

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will bring a different kind of chocolate to the International Space Station on his Huginn mission, created by the Danish chef Thorsten Schmidt.

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured this image of the powerful Cyclone Mocha on 13 May 2023 as it made its way across the Bay of Bengal heading northeast towards Bangladesh and Myanmar.

When the RIME antenna on ESA’s Juice mission failed to deploy a few days after launch, the engineering teams faced the mighty challenge to understand the fault and rectify it. At stake was a chance to see inside Jupiter’s mysterious icy moons.

Last week, members of ESA’s astronaut support teams participated in a helicopter underwater escape training. This training is mandatory for people involved in astronaut landing operations, including flight surgeons and photographers, who capture the key moments of an astronaut mission.

Commercial air passengers across Europe will soon experience fewer flight delays and greener travel thanks to pilots being able to use satellites to route their planes.

Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket has completed its final flight, placing two payloads – the German aerospace agency DLR’s Heinrich Hertz experimental communications satellite and the French communications satellite Syracuse 4b – into their planned geostationary transfer orbits. 

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Discover the first results from Europe’s first Lightning Imager onboard the Meteosat Third Generation. The Lightning Imager can continuously detect rapid flashes of lighting in Earth’s atmosphere whether day or night from a distance of 36 000 km.

The first ever satellite instrument capable of continuously detecting lightning across Europe and Africa has now been switched on. New animations from the innovative ‘Lighting Imager’ confirm the instrument will revolutionise the detection and prediction of severe storms.

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will be commander of the International Space Station (ISS) during his Huginn mission, becoming the sixth European astronaut to fulfil this role.

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ESA’s latest astrophysics mission, Euclid, lifted off on a Space X Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, at 17:12 CEST on 1 July 2023.

ESA’s Euclid spacecraft lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA, at 17:12 CEST on 1 July 2023. The successful launch marks the beginning of an ambitious mission to uncover the nature of two mysterious components of our Universe: dark matter and dark energy, and to help us answer the fundamental question: what is the Universe made of?