Summertime and the Space Station livin’ is easy.

Like most people this season, the International Space Station is chasing some Sun. Amateur astrophotographer Javier Manteca captured this transit of the Sun on 2 August, at 17:10 CEST from Fuenlabrada in Spain.

The International Space Station regularly transits the Sun but often along a very narrow ground path, which makes it hard to record. Once you lock down the best viewing location on Earth, timing is a critical factor: transits of the Sun last only half a second.

Using a DSLR camera attached to a 150/750 telescope recording in full HD at 30 frames per second, Javier was able to capture the 0.8 seconds it took for the Station to pass. The image is made up of those stacked frames.

An astronomy fan from a young age, Javier’s passion has grown with him. He takes photographs of any near-Earth event, because “who says that daytime astronomy is boring?” Follow Javier and his photography on Instagram.

Meanwhile, on the International Space Station the six-astronaut crew is busy carrying out science experiments, maintain the Station and getting their daily dose of exercise.

Summer is a less noticeable in the controlled environment of the Station, but the atmosphere is pleasant. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano is finding time to sneak in selfies while working with friends.

Back on Earth, summer events are in full swing in the western hemisphere, including next week’s space-themed Stockholm Culture Festival. Held from 13 to 17 August, the mass event welcomes thousands to experience space through popular culture.

Alongside a full programme of family-friendly activities promoting space topics – from talks, to book readings, dance events and movie screenings – festival goers will get to connect to space live with an in-flight call to the International Space Station.

Luca will share his experiences in orbit with fellow astronauts Tim Peake and Thomas Reiter on stage to host the event.

The Culture Festival is also the place to be for the world premiere of the stunning film Space Station Earth, featuring images from space set to music by composer Ilan Eshkeri.

Credits: Javier Manteca

There it is – the first Orion spacecraft to travel to the Moon is seen here in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

Already integrated and tested with the first European Service Module that will power and propel the craft and the Crew Module, Orion has now been fitted with the adaptor cone that will connect it to the Space Launch Systems (SLS) rocket. This is one of the final major hardware checkouts before being integrated with SLS for the Artemis I launch to the Moon next year.

Earlier this month at NASA’s Kennedy, the last solar wing for Orion was unfolded, tested and folded for launch. This week, the four solar arrays will be connected to the main structure.

Each 7 m wing are hinged at two points so they can be folded to fit inside the fairing of the SLS rocket. After launch and in Earth orbit the four wings unfold to span 19 m and swivel and rotate to collect solar energy, turning it into electricity for the spacecraft’s systems.

Needless to say, all teams involved – NASA, ESA and the 16 companies in ten European countries supplying the components that make up humankind’s next generation spacecraft for exploration – are over the Moon.

Read more and stay up to date on Orion news via the blog.

Credits: NASA

The US State of Washington is under a state of emergency following days of severe wind and rain leading to extensive flooding in parts of the state. The extreme weather was caused by an atmospheric river, a huge plume of moisture extending over the Pacific and into Washington. Different satellites in orbit carry different instruments that can provide us with a wealth of complementary information to understand and to respond to flooding disasters.

The first image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission shows the extent of the floods in the Nooksack River, which spilled over its banks this week and washed out several roads in the process. The flooding forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents and lead to the closure of schools.

More than 158 000 people were affected by power outages and disruptions to other services. The conditions triggered mudslides in the region, prompting the closure of the Interstate 5, but it has since reopened.

Optical satellite instruments such as the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites cannot see through clouds, which is why radar missions like Sentinel-1 are particularly useful. Radar images acquired before and after flooding events offer immediate information on the extent of inundation, thanks to Sentinel-1’s ability to ‘see’ through clouds and rain.

The following radar image uses information from two separate acquisitions captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission on 4 November and 16 November 2021 and shows the extent of the flooding of the Nooksack River in dark blue.

The Copernicus Sentinels are a fleet of dedicated EU-owned satellites, designed to deliver the wealth of data and imagery that are central to the European Union's Copernicus environmental programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A small forest of antennas sprouts from the roof of ESA’s Navigation Laboratory, based at the ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, which is among the most frequently satnav-fixed locations on Earth. This is also the site of the very first Galileo positioning fix, acquired back in 2014 using the first quartet of Galileo satellites.

“The antenna is a critical component of any Global Navigation Satellite System user segment, capturing power from the electromagnetic waves it receives, then converting it into electrical current to be processed by the rest of the receiver chain,” explains Radio Navigation Engineer Michelangelo Albertazzi.

“Up here we have a variety of antenna designs in place – such as omnidirectional, high gain and arrays – from leading world receiver manufacturers, which acquire signals from all major global GNSS constellations, including Galileo, GPS, the Russian Glonass and China’s Beidou, as well as regional systems such as Europe’s EGNOS.”

The NavLab is also equipped with state-of-the-art equipment to record, replay and analyze the RF signals picked up by these antennas, to help with its main goal of performing tests, analyses and characterisation of navigation systems for both ESA and external customers.

To find out more about working with ESA facilities, check our new website on the duties and resources of ESA’s Directorate of Technology, Engineering and Quality.

Credits: ESA-Remedia

What looks like an engine made its way to space and back last November. While the hardware of the Perwaves experiment will not end up in your car, results from this research could lead to more efficient and carbon-free fuel in the future.

Perwaves, or Percolating Reaction-Diffusion Waves, set metal powder on fire to study how it burns in a chamber. This is done in weightless conditions because the powder clumps under gravity. In weightlessness, the metal powder can be evenly spaced and suspended, making it easier to study.

Why metals? Because of their high energy density, metals can compete with gasoline and oil for fuel efficiency. The only waste product is rust, which can easily be recycled back into metal powder, making metals a fully carbon-free source of energy. However, metals do not ignite easily unless in powder form, when they burn in a process known as ‘discrete burning.’

Like a sparkler lit on New Year’s Eve, the metal powder ignites and burns completely due to the heat created by other fuel elements around it. Unlike traditional fires that burn through their fuel continuously, discrete fires spread by jumping from one fuel source to another.

The Perwaves experiment is looking for the ideal blend of oxygen and metal powder as well the ideal size of the metal dust to create the best conditions for combustion. The results from the burning will be analysed to create discrete burning models to extrapolate the ideal conditions and to optimise industrial burner designs.

Perwaves launched on the Texus-56 sounding rocket from Esrange, Sweden last November. The rocket flew to 260 km before falling back to Earth, offering researchers six minutes of zero gravity. During this time, researchers confirmed that the hardware works and that iron-fuelled combustion is sustainable.

The team details their work in an article published in Acta Astronautica but the next step is to fly the experiment in the world’s weightless laboratory, the International Space Station, to continue collecting scientific data over longer periods of time.

Perwaves was conceived by McGill University in Montreal, Canada and designed by the sounding rocket team at Airbus in Bremen, Germany.

Credits: Airbus sounding rocket team Bremen

ESA’s Biomass satellite at Airbus’ Astrolabe facilities in Toulouse, France, undergoing its environment campaign. During these mechanical tests, the satellite was subjected to environments that simulated the noise and vibrations of launch. This is to ensure that it will remain intact and healthy during its rough ride into orbit. The satellite is pictured here on the shaker.

Credits: Airbus

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Terra Cimmeria, a region found in the southern highlands of Mars. It comprises data gathered on 11 December 2018 during Mars Express Orbit 18904. The ground resolution is approximately 13 metres per pixel and the images are centred at about 171° East and 40° South. This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface. North is to the right.

Learn more

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The constant ‘rain’ of radiation in space includes cosmic rays, which, despite the name ‘ray’, comprises highly energetic particles arriving from beyond the Solar System. These rays are considered the main health hazard for astronauts conducting future exploration missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

This bad stuff can also play havoc with sensitive spacecraft electronics, corrupting data, damaging circuits and degrading microchips.

There are many different kinds of cosmic rays, and they can have very different effects on spacecraft and their occupants, depending on the types of particles, the particles’ energies and the duration of the exposure.

A new international accelerator, the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), now under construction near Darmstadt, Germany, at the existing GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI), will provide particle beams like the ones that exist in space and make them available to scientists for studies that will be used to make spacecraft more robust and help humans survive the rigours of spaceflight.

For example, researchers will be able to investigate how cells and human DNA are altered or damaged by exposure to cosmic radiation and how well microchips stand up to the extreme conditions in space.

FAIR’s central element will be a new accelerator ring with a circumference of 1100 m, capable of accelerating protons to near-light speeds. The existing GSI accelerators will repurposed to serve as pre-accelerators for the new FAIR facility.

This image shows the high-tech equipment that generates the particles, which are then injected into the GSI and FAIR accelerator systems.

On 14 February 2018, ESA and FAIR inked a cooperation agreement that will build on an existing framework of cooperation between the Agency and GSI, and see the two cooperate in the fields of radiation biology, electronic components, materials research, shielding materials and instrument calibration.

The agreement also includes cooperation in technology and software development and in joint activities in areas such as innovation management.

More information

- The Universe in the Laboratory: ESA and FAIR form partnership for researching cosmic radiation

- Heavy but fast

- New radiation research programme for human spaceflight

- Cosmic opportunity for radiation research at ESA

- Radiation: satellites’ unseen enemy

Follow GSI/FAIR

- Instagram: @universeinthelab

- Twitter: @GSI_en

- Facebook: GSIHelmholtzzentrum & FAIRAccelerator

Credits: GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH/Jan Michael Hosan 2018

Dutch shipbuilder Royal Huisman applied the same concurrent engineering process developed by ESA for space missions to the design of superyacht Sea Eagle II, due to become the world’s largest aluminium sailing yacht when delivered to its owner this spring.

This uniquely contemporary 81 m-long three-masted schooner was recently transported by barge from the company’s shipyard in Vollenhove to Royal Huisman Amsterdam, where its carbon composite rig will be installed, leaving her ready for sea trials and on-board crew training.

Sea Eagle II’s modern style extends to its design, which took place using concurrent engineering, taking inspiration from the long-established Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) at ESA’s technical centre ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where it is employed for performing preliminary design and assessment of potential future space missions and systems.

“Satellites and superyachts are both complex machines, and concurrent engineering is advantageous in designing any complex system,” explains Massimo Bandecchi, founder of ESA’s CDF. “The basic idea is simple: bring together all necessary experts and design tools into a single room to work together as a team on a shared software model that updates immediately as changes are made, to assess design feasibility and trade-offs in a much more effective and reliable way.”

“While our main focus is fulfilling the needs of ESA engineering, there has also been strong interest in our work from industry. Concurrent engineering’s improved performance in terms of time, cost and efficiency speaks for itself. The result is that more than 50 centres have been built following ESA’s original CDF model and are now in operation across Europe, the majority in the space sector, plus around 10 non-space centres.”

Stefan Coronel, Royal Huisman’s Design and Engineering Manager, received training from Massimo and his team before setting up his own concurrent engineering room: “Yacht building is not rocket science, but it does involve a complex, multi-disciplinary system, with lots of trade-offs to be decided.

“The traditional ‘over the hedge’ design method – where one knowledge field does its work, then throws it across to the next team in sequence – demands the subsequent checking of feedback then possible design adjustments, so is quite a time consuming process. In the modern yard-building world there isn’t so much time to spare.

“That said, compared to the dramatic shortening of satellite conceptual design time achieved by ESA, the main benefit we see from concurrent engineering is not gaining time but that the quality of the final design ends up much better, and more complete – giving us confidence to proceed to the build phase.”

Royal Huisman is now applying concurrent engineering to all of their new builds, and many of their refitting and service projects.

Mr. Coronel adds: “Our room is not as fancy as ESA’s CDF, but has the same basic approach of a place where everyone can contribute, with means of accessing all normal engineering tools and calculation methods, plus a splinter room for small separate discussions.”

In the same way that satellite design is broken down into subsystems, yacht design involves some main disciplines taking part in all the sessions: structural strength and stiffness; deck and sail handling; systems such as propulsion, power, heating and air conditioning; electronics and finally interior design – creating a desirable, luxurious interior. Additional external experts, such as noise and vibration specialists, attend as required.

“The kind of trade-offs that concurrent engineering makes easier to resolve include such deceptively simple tasks as placing a side hatch or staircase,” adds Mr. Coronel. “In the case of a hatch it would need to be watertight and endure loads from sea waves, while also integrated with the living space and looking good when trimmed with wood. While any staircase needs to be open and attractive, while also having pipes and electrical cables run through it, and meeting all relevant fire and safety regulations.”

The company’s adoption of concurrent engineering also meant Sea Eagle II’s aluminium panels have had holes and support structures added to them in advance, saving time in construction and the integration of feature such as winches or hatches.

European companies and institutions have variously adopted concurrent engineering for educating students, designing automobiles, planning oil platforms , optimising the production plant of dairy product company FrieslandCampina.

Credits: Royal Huisman

Launched on 25 April 2018, the Sentinel-3B satellite has already delivered impressive first images from its ocean and land colour instrument, and now the radiometer carried on this latest Copernicus satellite has revealed its talents. Captured on 9 May 2018, this image shows a low pressure system over the UK and Ireland, France, the Bay of Biscay, Spain and part of north Africa. Vegetation appears in red.

The Sentinel-3B satellite lifted off from Russia on 25 April and joins it identical twin, Sentinel-3A, in orbit. This pairing of satellites increases coverage and data delivery for the European Union’s Copernicus environment programme. Both Sentinel-3 satellites carry the same suite of instruments.

The sea and land surface temperature radiometer is particularly sophisticated, measuring energy radiating from Earth’s surface in nine spectral bands, including visible and infrared. It also includes dedicated channels for measuring fires. This early image came from its optical channels.

The image is also featured on the Eumetsat website.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by EUMETSAT

Every now and then, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope glimpses a common object — say, a spiral galaxy — in an interesting or unusual way. A sharply angled perspective, such as the one shown in this Picture of the Week, can make it seem as if we, the viewers, are craning our necks to see over a barrier into the galaxy's bright centre.

In the case of NGC 3169, this barrier is the thick dust embedded within the galaxy's spiral arms. Cosmic dust comprises a potpourri of particles, including water ice, hydrocarbons, silicates, and other solid material. It has many origins and sources, from the leftovers of star and planet formation to molecules modified over millions of years by interactions with starlight.

NGC 3169 is located about 70 million light-years away in the constellation of Sextans (The Sextant). It is part of the Leo I Group of galaxies, which, like the Local Group that houses our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of a larger galactic congregation known as the Virgo Supercluster.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Ho; CC BY 4.0

This pretty, cloud-like object may not look much like a galaxy — it lacks the well-defined arms of a spiral galaxy, or the reddish bulge of an elliptical — but it is in fact something known as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies sit somewhere between the spiral and elliptical types; they are disc-shaped, like spirals, but they no longer form large numbers of new stars and thus contain only ageing populations of stars, like ellipticals.

NGC 2655’s core is extremely luminous, resulting in its additional classification as a Seyfert galaxy: a type of active galaxy with strong and characteristic emission lines. This luminosity is thought to be produced as matter is dragged onto the accretion disc of a supermassive black hole sitting at the centre of NGC 2655. The structure of NGC 2655’s outer disc, on the other hand, appears calmer, but it is oddly-shaped. The complex dynamics of the gas in the galaxy suggest that it may have had a turbulent past, including mergers and interactions with other galaxies.

NGC 2655 is located about 80 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe). Camelopardalis contains many other interesting deep-sky objects, including the open cluster NGC 1502, the elegant Kemble’s Cascade asterism, and the starburst galaxy NGC 2146.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Fillipenko, CC BY 4.0

The European Robotic Arm (ERA) successfully made its first moves in orbit during the 250 spacewalk to upgrade the International Space Station.

Two spacewalkers worked outside the orbiting lab for 7 hours and 42 minutes on 28 April 2022. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev removed thermal blankets and then unlocked the robotic arm.

The duo released the launch locks that held the arm in its folded configuration for the journey to space last year. Inside the Space Station, crewmate Sergey Korsakov monitored the first commanded movements of the robotic arm.

One of the robotic arm’s end effectors moved for the first time shortly after 20:00 CEST (18:00 GMT). The European Robotic Arm translated to another base point in a “walkoff” manoeuvre.

The robotic arm brings new ways of operating automated machines to the orbital complex. ERA has the ability to perform many tasks automatically or semi-automatically, can be directed either from inside or outside the Station, and it can be controlled in real time or preprogrammed.

The International Space Station already has two robotic arms – Canadian and Japanese robots play a crucial role in berthing spacecraft and transferring payloads and astronauts.

ERA is the first robot capable of ‘walking’ around the Russian parts of the orbital complex. It can handle components up to 8000 kg with 5 mm precision, and it will transport astronauts from one working site to another.

Additional spacewalks are planned to continue outfitting the European Robotic Arm.

More information about the European Robotic Arm

Credits: ESA/NASA-M. Maurer CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 11 January 2021 at 12:14 CET, this image of Madrid in Spain appears to have been taken in black and white. In fact, it is a true-colour image – but the heaviest snowfall in 50 years has blanketed the region, turning the landscape white.

Storm Filomena hit Spain over the weekend, blanketing parts of the country in thick snow and leaving half of the country on red alert. Madrid, one of the worst affected areas, was brought to a standstill with the airport having to be closed, trains cancelled and roads blocked.

Although this satellite image was taken after the storm had passed, it is clear to see that much snow still remains, especially in the outskirts of the city. For example, some runways at the airport, which is visible in the top-right of the image, are still covered by snow. The unusual cold weather on the Iberian Peninsula is expected to last until later this week with temperatures forecasted to plunge to –12°C. The race is on to clear roads so that supplies of essential goods such as food supplies and Covid vaccines can be delivered.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. Together they cover all Earth’s land surfaces, large islands, inland and coastal waters every five days at the equator.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Ariane 5 flight VA254 with the Eutelsat Quantum and Star One D2 satellites is now on the launch par of the ELA-3 (Ensemble de Lancement Ariane) Ariane 5 launch complex, at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guyana on 29 July 2021.

Quantum, the ESA Partnership Project with Eutelsat, Airbus and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, is a pioneering mission preparing the way for the next generation of telecommunications satellites, which will be more flexible by design and so more adaptable to customer needs once in orbit.

Quantum is a shift from custom-designed satellite with one-off payloads to a more generic approach, resulting in unprecedented in-orbit reconfigurability in coverage, frequency and power, allowing complete mission rehaul, including orbital position.

ESA partnered with satellite operator Eutelsat and manufacturer Airbus to design this programme, in response to today's market requiring satellites to be able to respond to changes in geographical or performance demand, either during manufacturing or after launch. This will enable the operator to address emerging business opportunities — even those that appear after it has ordered a satellite.

Such ESA Partnership Projects maximise the benefits to industry thanks to an efficient, co-managed approach that is tailored to commercial best practice.

Credits:

Title :

Eutelsat Quantum on the launch pad

Credit line image :

ESA - S. Corvaja

Hidden from our sight, the Westerhout 43 star-forming region is revealed in full glory in this far-infrared image from ESA’s Herschel space observatory. This giant cloud, where a multitude of massive stars come to life in the billowing gas and dust, is almost 20 000 light-years away from the Sun, in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle.

Massing more than seven million Suns, this region is home to over 20 stellar nurseries, which are being heated by the powerful light from newborn stars within. These hubs of star formation stand out in blue hue against the cooler yellow and red surroundings.

Nestled in the glowing blue bubble of gas at the centre of the image is a cluster of extremely hot and massive Wolf-Rayet and OB stars, which together are over a million times brighter than our Sun. This bubble, hosting the seeds that will grow into several new stellar clusters, is one of the most prolific birthplaces of stars in our Galaxy.

A less extreme but still very active stellar factory is the large complex of blue bubbles visible in the image towards the right. Scrutinising the Herschel images, astronomers have found evidence of what appears like a network of filaments linking these two intense hubs of star formation.

Located in a very dynamic region of the Milky Way, at the transition between the central bar of the Galaxy and one of its spiral arms, Westerhout 43 is an excellent laboratory to study how stars – especially massive ones – take shape at the collision of two large flows of interstellar matter.

Investigating star-forming regions across our Galaxy in unprecedented detail was one of the main goals of Herschel, which was launched in 2009 and operated for almost four years, observing the sky at far-infrared and submillimetre wavelengths. Sensitive to the heat from the small fraction of cold dust mixed in with the clouds of gas where stars form, imaging such regions points astronomers to dense areas of gas where new stars are being born, enabling them to study the action in detail, just as in this image.

This three-colour image combines Herschel observations at 70 microns (blue), 160 microns (green) and 250 microns (red), and spans about 3º on the long side; north is up and east to the left. The image was obtained as part of Herschel’s Hi-GAL key-project, which imaged the entire plane of the Milky Way in five different infrared bands. A video panorama compiling all Hi-GAL observations was published in April 2016.

Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project. Acknowledgement: UNIMAP / L. Piazzo, La Sapienza – Università di Roma; E. Schisano / G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF, Italy

The Orion spacecraft with integrated European Service Module sit atop the Space Launch System, imaged at sunrise at historic Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 27 August.

The Flight Readiness Review has deemed the trio GO for launch, marking the dawn of a new era in space exploration.

The first in a series of missions that will return humans to the Moon, including taking the first European, Artemis I is scheduled for launch no earlier than Monday 29 August, at 14:33 CEST.

This mission will put NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module to the test during a journey beyond the Moon and back. No crew will be on board Orion this time, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams on Earth.

The crew module, however, won’t be empty. Two mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, will occupy the passenger seats. Their female-shaped plastic bodies are filled with over 5600 sensors each to measure the radiation load during their trip around the Moon. The specially trained woolly astronaut, Shaun the Sheep, has also been assigned a seat.

The spacecraft will enter lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and propel itself almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled.

The second Artemis mission will see four astronauts travel around the Moon on a flyby voyage around our natural satellite.

Mission duration depends on the launch date and even time. It will last between 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits of the Moon mission designers decide to make.

This flexibility in mission length is necessary to allow the mission to end as intended with a splashdown during daylight hours in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, USA.

Two more dates are available if a launch on 29 August is not possible. The Artemis Moon mission can also be launched on 2 September and 5 September. Check all the possible launch options on ESA’s Orion blog.

Orion is the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight outside Earth orbit and high-speed reentry from the vicinity of the Moon. More than just a crew module, Orion includes the European Service Module (ESM), the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion.

ESM provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.

Watch launch coverage on ESA Web TV starting at 12:30 CEST here. Follow @esaspaceflight for updates and live Twitter coverage.

Credits: ESA-A. Conigli

Quantum technology or stage at a music festival? Both would have one thing in common: students.

Oscar-Qube, short for Optical Sensors based on CARbon materials: QUantum Belgium, is an experiment developed by a group of students from the University of Hasselt, Belgium. Part of ESA Education Office’s Orbit Your Thesis! programme, the experiment arrived at the International Space Station on Space X Dragon CR23 resupply mission yesterday.

This week, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will install the experiment in the Ice Cubes Facility that offers commercial and educational access to the microgravity environment of the Space Station.

Oscar-Qube’s mission is to create a detailed map of Earth’s magnetic field. It makes use of a new type of magnetometer that exploits quantum sensing, meaning that it is highly sensitive, offers measurements to the nano scale, and has a better than 100-nanosecond response time.

These features combine to create a powerful experiment that, once in position, will allow it to map the Earth’s magnetic field to an unrivalled level of precision.

Oscar-Qube is designed and built exclusively by the first student team to test a quantum technology sensing device in space. They will go on to manage operations during its ten-month stay onboard the International Space Station.

Orbit Your Thesis! is a hands-on ESA educational programme that helps university students realise the dream of putting an experiment of their own design into space. The Oscar-Qube students have been assisted at every stage of their journey by ESA experts, helping not only to develop the experiment, but also investing in the students themselves, equipping them with the skills and mindsets needed for future careers in the space sector.

Credits: Oscar-Qube–J. Gorissen

Space Science Image of the Week: The eye of Saturn's storm

Sitting at Saturn’s south pole is a vortex of monstrous proportions. The dark ‘eye’ of this feature is some 8000 km across, or about two thirds the diameter of Earth.

This image is 10 times more detailed than any previous picture of the polar vortex and shows a level of detail inside the eye that was not previously observable. Earlier images showed towering clouds around the edge of this vortex, but inside the air was thought to be mostly transparent. Here, however, a multitude of features is revealed.

Clouds are produced by convection – warm, rising gases in the atmosphere of Saturn. As they reach higher, and therefore colder, layers of the atmosphere, the gases condense and appear as clouds. At the 10 o’clock position, a stream of upwelling gas has created its own smaller vortex inside the larger one.

This view is an adjusted composite of two frames taken by the Cassini spacecraft on 14 July 2008. Cassini actually captured the scene from an oblique angle, some 56º below the plane of Saturn’s rings – a far cry from the view directly over the south pole. The orbiter was about 392 000 km from the planet at the time, yet Cassini’s camera still provided a resolution of 2 km per pixel.

Towering eye-walls of cloud are a distinguishing feature of hurricanes on Earth. Like earthly hurricanes, the eye of this storm is composed of warmer gas than the surroundings. However, whereas hurricanes are powered by warm water and move across the surface of our planet, this vortex has no liquid ocean at its base and remains fixed to Saturn’s south pole.

Round, swirling vortices are part of the general circulation in the atmospheres of all four giant, outer planets, and Cassini has spied many mobile ones rolling through Saturn’s clouds at other latitudes. While vortices are often informally referred to as storms, scientists generally reserve that term for bright, short-lived bursts of convection that punch though the clouds, often accompanied by lightning.

In addition to being a thing of beauty, the vortex provides astronomers with a way to look deep into the planet’s atmosphere.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Gulf of Kutch – also known as the Gulf of Kachchh – an inlet of the Arabian Sea, along the west coast of India.

The Gulf of Kutch divides the Kutch and the Kathiawar peninsula regions in the state of Gujarat. Reaching eastward for around 150 km, the gulf varies in width from approximately 15 to 65 km. The area is renowned for extreme daily tides which often cover the lower lying areas – comprising networks of creeks, wetlands and alluvial tidal flats in the interior region.

Gujarat is the largest salt producing state in India. Some of the white rectangles dotted around the image are salt evaporation ponds which are often found in major salt-producing areas. The arid climate in the region favours the evaporation of water from the salt ponds.

Just north of the area pictured here, lies the Great Rann of Kutch, a seasonal salt marsh located in the Thar desert. The Rann is considered the largest salt desert in the world.

The Gulf of Kutch has several ports including Okha (at the entrance of the gulf), Māndvi, Bedi, and Kandla. Kandla, visible on the northern peninsula in the left of the image, is one of the largest ports in India by volume of cargo handled.

The gulf is rich in marine biodiversity. Part of the southern coast of the Gulf of Kutch was declared Marine Sanctuary and Marine National Park in 1980 and 1982 respectively – the first marine conservatory established in India. The park covers an area of around 270 sq km, from Okha in the south (not visible) to Jodiya. There are hundreds of species of coral in the park, as well as algae, sponges and mangroves.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution allow changes in water bodies to be closely monitored.

This image, acquired on 4 April 2020, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Heavy rainfall has triggered flooding in southern Iran, particularly in the Sistan and Baluchestan, Hormozgan and Kerman provinces. The downpour has led to blocked roads and destroyed bridges, crops and houses – displacing thousands of people.

This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, shows the extent of the flooding in the Sistan and Baluchestan province on 13 January 2020. Flooded areas are visible in brown, while the flooded villages are highlighted by dotted circles. Sediment and mud, caused by the heavy rains, can be seen gushing from the Bahu Kalat River, Iran, and Dasht River, Pakistan, into Gwadar Bay.

Zoom in to view the image of the floods at its full 10 m resolution.

The flooding has also affected Zahedan, as well as Konarak, Saravan, Nik Shahr, Delgan, Bazman, Chabahar, Zarābād and Khash.

In response to the flood, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service was activated. The service uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in cases of disaster, the international humanitarian community, respond to emergencies.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Ahead of World Wetlands Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Lake Titicaca – one of the largest lakes in South America.

Zoom in to see this image at its full 10 m resolution or click on the circles to learn more about the features in it.

Covering an area of around 8300 sq km, Lake Titicaca lies on the high Andes plateau and straddles the border between Peru (to the west) and Bolivia (to the east). It is considered the highest major body of navigable water in the world, as it sits at an elevation of 3800 m above sea level.

The lake extends approximately 190 km from northwest to southwest and is 80 km across at its widest point. Tiquina, a narrow strait, actually separates the lake into two separate bodies of water. The larger subbasin in the northwest is called Lake Chucuito in Bolivia and Lake Grande in Peru, while the smaller in the southeast is referred to as Lake Huiñaymarca in Bolivia and Lake Pequeño in Peru.

Many rivers drain into the lake, including the Ramis, one of the largest, visible in the northwest corner of the lake. The smaller Desaguadero river drains the lake at its southern end, which then flows south through Bolivia. This outlet only accounts for a small percentage of the lake’s excess water, as the rest is lost by evaporation caused by persistent winds and intense sunlight.

Forty-one islands rise from Titicaca’s waters, the largest of which, Titicaca Island, or Isla del Sol in Spanish, can be seen just off the tip of the Copacabana Peninsula in Bolivia. Several green algal blooms can be seen in the lake, including in the lake’s northwest and southeast corners. Snow in the Andes mountain range can be seen in the top-right of the image.

Lake Titicaca is a designated Ramsar Site of International Importance, as the waters of Titicaca are essential to the wellbeing of millions of people who rely on the lake for agriculture, fishing and tourism, as well as water birds and animals that live along and on its shores.

The 2 February marks the anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, known as the Ramsar Convention, in Ramsar, Iran in 1971. World Wetlands Day aims to raise global awareness about the vital role of wetlands for our planet and population.

From their vantage point of 800 km high, Earth-observing satellites provide data and imagery on wetlands that can be used to monitor and manage these precious resources sustainably. For example, both the Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 missions have recently been used to monitor the variation of chlorophyll concentrations in the lake and help detect trends and hotspots over time.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme

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Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

This annotated image from ESA’s Mars Express shows the southern flanks of Ascraeus Mons, the second-tallest volcano on Mars.

Several key features are labelled across the frame, including lava flows, chains of craters, channel-like rilles and large fissures, all resembling irregular depressions and grooves in the tan-coloured surface. These are collectively named Ascraeus Chasmata, and encompass an enormous patch of collapsed terrain over 70 km across.

This image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 5 April 2022 during orbit 24045. It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. It is a ‘true colour’ image, reflecting what would be seen by the human eye if looking at this region of Mars.

North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 16 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 254°E/9°N.

Read more

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron liftoff to the International Space Station in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance”.

Collectively known as “Crew-3”, the astronauts were launched from launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. They will spend around six months living and working aboard the orbital outpost before returning to Earth.

It is the first space mission for Matthias, who will be the 600th human to fly to space. He chose the name “Cosmic Kiss” for his mission as a declaration of love for space.

Matthias has a background in materials science and looks forward to supporting a wide range of science and research in orbit. The work he carries out throughout his mission will contribute to the success of future space missions and help enhance life on Earth.

Visit the Cosmic Kiss mission page to learn more about Matthias’s mission.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Barcelona – the second largest city in Spain.

On the northeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, Barcelona occupies a low plateau along the Mediterranean coastal plain. The city and its red roofs contrast with the forested hills and the sea that surround it.

The famous Avinguda Diagonal avenue can be seen in the right of the image. The road is one of Barcelona’s broadest avenues and cuts the city diagonally in two, hence its name. The circular Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes was meant to be the city centre in the original urban plan, but nowadays is used largely as a roundabout.

Dominating the left side of the image are the Garraf Massif mountains, their cliffs reaching the Mediterranean coast. Its highest point on the coastal side is La Morella – almost 600 m above sea level.

The Llobregat River can be seen entering the image in the top left. The river rises in the eastern Pyrenees and flows southeast before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Before reaching the sea, the river forms a small delta, which used to provide a large extension of fertile land but is now largely urbanised. Barcelona-El Prat airport can be seen to the left of the river. Along the coast, the port of Barcelona, one of Europe’s top ten largest container ports, is visible.

Barcelona is home to the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – the largest engineering university in Catalonia. In 2017, the university won ESA’s Small Satellite Challenge and the top prize at the Copernicus Masters competition with its Federated Satellite Systems (FSSCat) project. The FSSCat mission consists of two small CubeSat satellites, each about the size of a shoebox, and will use state-of-the-art dual microwave and multispectral optical sensors.

Ф-sat-1 – an enhancement of FSSCat carried on one of the two CubeSats – is set to launch soon from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou. It will be the first experiment to demonstrate how artificial intelligence can be used for Earth observation. Ф-sat-1 will have the ability to filter out less than perfect images so that only usable data are returned to Earth. This will allow for the efficient handling of data so that users will have access to timely information – ultimately benefiting society at large.

Ф-sat-1 will acquire an enormous number of images that will allow scientists to detect urban heat islands, monitor changes in vegetation and water quality, as well as carry out experiments on the role of evapotranspiration in climate change.

This image, which was captured on 16 March 2017, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The launch pad is 28.5 m deep and 200 m wide, formed with enough concrete to fill 67 Olympic sized swimming pools – approximately 167,500 cubic metres. It comprises a 700 tonne steel launch table that supports Ariane 6. Steel deflectors funnel the fiery plumes of Ariane 6 at liftoff into the exhaust tunnels buried deep under the launch table. Four lightning protection masts, and a water tower for deluge systems are also part of the launch pad.

Credits: CNES 2019

This oblique perspective view of the Mawrth Vallis region of Mars was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express. It shows light-toned clays – the most widespread such deposits found on Mars – overlaid by darker ‘caps’ of volcanic origin.

Read more

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

At first glance, this image is dominated by the vibrant glow of the swirling spiral to the lower left of the frame. However, this galaxy is far from the most interesting spectacle here — behind it sits a galaxy cluster.

Galaxies are not randomly distributed in space; they swarm together, gathered up by the unyielding hand of gravity, to form groups and clusters. The Milky Way is a member of the Local Group, which is part of the Virgo Cluster, which in turn is part of the 100 000-galaxy-strong Laniakea Supercluster.

The galaxy cluster seen in this image is known as SDSS J0333+0651. Clusters such as this can help astronomers understand the distant — and therefore early — Universe. SDSS J0333+0651 was imaged as part of a study of star formation in far-flung galaxies. Star-forming regions are typically not very large, stretching out for a few hundred light-years at most, so it is difficult for telescopes to resolve them at a distance. Even using its most sensitive and highest-resolution cameras, Hubble cannot resolve very distant star-forming regions, so astronomers use a cosmic trick: they search instead for galaxy clusters, which have a gravitational influence so immense that they warp the spacetime around them. This distortion acts like a lens, magnifying the light of galaxies sitting far behind the cluster and producing elongated arcs like the one seen to the left of centre in this image.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0

“Valentine’s Day has struck again,” tweeted ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet when he posted this image of a heart-shaped lake in Mongolia. Thomas took this image from the International Space Station during his Proxima mission in 2017.

Two years on, it is that time of year again, the day that brings some joy and others anxiety. But if thoughts of ordering flowers and making dinner reservations are stressing you out, spare a thought for our stressed-out Earth.

The fact that Earth is rich in flora and fauna is without question, but our planet is changing fast – particularly because human activity is placing pressure on natural resources.

Increasing industrial production and a continued reliance on fossil fuels is causing global temperatures to rise. With a change in climate comes huge environmental challenges that humans will not be able to keep up with.

We need to check the status of our relationship with Earth before we wreck it. How?

The first step to fixing a problem is to understand the causes and full extent of it. The vantage point of space provides a window on the world like no other, through which to understand and monitor our changing planet.

And Earth-observing satellites are not the only tools to do this. Astronauts are also viewing Earth from space and taking pictures. Their photography is not just a perk of being an astronaut; they are often used to supplement satellite imagery and provide a different perspective.

Take the case of ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen. He was tasked with capturing a phenomenon notoriously difficult to photograph from Earth: elusive electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere that sport names such as red sprites, blue jets, pixies and elves. Reported by pilots, they are difficult to study as they occur above thunderstorms. (A dedicated instrument called ASIM has since been launched to the Space Station to monitor this phenomenon).

Besides their value to science, astronaut photographs from space are a great tool for science communication. From the very first images of Earth taken by NASA astronauts in the 1960s that showed the world how fragile Earth is, to the ones like this taken by astronauts and posted to social media, they all drive home an important message:

Love our planet, because it is the only home we have.

Credits: ESA

The image shows sea-surface temperatures in May 2022 and May 2023 compared to a reference period 1985–1993. The temperature of the surface waters of our oceans recently hit an all-time high. With an El Niño looming, concerns are that we will soon be facing even worse extremes. Satellites orbiting overhead are being used to carefully track the patterns that lead up to El Niño to further understand and predict the consequences of this cyclic phenomenon against the backdrop of climate change.

Read full story: Our oceans are in hot water

Credits: ESA (Data source: NOAA)

Solar Orbiter took images of the Sun on 7 March, from a distance of roughly 75 million kilometres, using its Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument. SPICE takes simultaneous “spectral images” at several different wavelengths of the extreme ultraviolet spectrum by scanning its spectrometer slit across a region on the Sun. The different wavelengths recorded correspond to different layers in the Sun’s lower atmosphere. Yellow corresponds to neon at 630 000°C. Each full-Sun image is made up of a mosaic of 25 individual scans. It represents the best full Sun image taken at the Lyman beta wavelength of ultraviolet light that is emitted by hydrogen gas.

Read more

Credits: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/SPICE team; Data processing: G. Pelouze (IAS)

Space Science image of the week:

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the international Cassini–Huygens mission made its final close flyby of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, coming within 1000 km of the atmosphere-clad world.

The image presented here is a raw image sent back to Earth yesterday, taken on Saturday at 18:42 GMT. It is one of many that can be found in the Cassini raw image archive.

The latest flyby used Titan’s gravity to slingshot Cassini into the final phase of its mission, setting it up for a series of 22 weekly ‘Grand Finale’ orbits that will see the spacecraft dive between Saturn’s inner rings and the outer atmosphere of the planet. The first of these ring plane dives occurs on Wednesday.

Cassini will make many additional non-targeted flybys of Titan and other moons in the Saturnian system in the coming months, at much greater distances. Non-targeted flybys require no special manoeuvres, but rather the moon happens to be relatively close to the spacecraft’s path.

A final, distant, flyby of Titan will occur on 11 September, in what has been nicknamed the ‘goodbye kiss,’ because it will direct Cassini on a collision course with Saturn on 15 September. This will conclude the mission in a manner that avoids the possibility of a future crash into the potentially habitable ocean-moon Enceladus, protecting that world for future exploration.

A press conference will be held on 25 April at 13:30 GMT (15:30 CEST), at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, to preview the Grand Finale, as well as celebrate the scientific highlights of Cassini’s incredible 13-year odyssey at Saturn.

Just today a new result was published in Nature Astronomy finds that when viewed from Cassini's orbit, Titan's nightside likely shines 10-200 times brighter than its dayside. Scientists think that this is caused by efficient forward scattering of sunlight by its extended atmospheric haze, a behaviour unique to Titan in our Solar System.

Cassini–Huygens is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

On 5 May 2018, ESA's 35 m-diameter deep-space radio dish at New Norcia, Western Australia, monitored NASA’s InSight spacecraft providing critical tracking support during launch and early operations on its journey to Mars.

ESA’s New Norcia station maintained contact with InSight and its two MarCOs CubeSats as backup to NASA’s own Deep Space Network ground station at Canberra, on the easterly side of the continent.

“NASA requested our support because, at this time of year, the southern hemisphere has very good visibility of the trajectory to Mars,” explained Daniel Firre, the Agency’s ESA-NASA cross-support service manager.

“This meant our Australia station was ideally located to provide back-up support to their DSN station at Canberra.”

New Norcia will also be involved in monitoring Insight’s Mars touchdown on 26 November.

ESA’s deep-space station at Malargüe, Argentina, also in the southern hemisphere, worked in coordination with New Norcia to provide additional tracking coverage on launch day.

Since inauguration in March 2003, New Norcia station has been used for communications with Mars Express, Rosetta, Venus Express and Gaia, among other ESA and partner agency missions.

More information:

Estrack

New Norcia

Malargüe

Credits: Courtesy of David Nicolson

Sometimes doing science is as simple as wiping up. NASA astronaut Jack Fisher is seen here using a wet wipe on the surfaces of the European Cupola module of the International Space Station.

Doubling as both Station maintenance and science experiment, Jack collected microbes living on the surfaces of his orbital home for ESA’s Extremophiles experiment. Headed by Dr. Christine-Moissl Eichinger from the Medical University of Graz, Austria, the experiment studies how microbes settle into the harsh environment of space.

Cosmic radiation exposes not only humans but also bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms to cellular stress. A typical stay in microgravity for an astronaut weakens the immune system and causes more health issues, prompting researchers to ask whether the same was happening to microbiomes, or the organisms found in a particular environment, and whether they resist treatment, becoming ‘super bugs.’

Because the Space Station is a closed environment, microbes can only arrive with new crew and cargo. The Station has accumulated a core group of 55 microbes over 20 years of continuous human inhabitants.

Researchers tested these against microbes found in a similar environment on Earth: spacecraft cleanrooms. They found that space-based microbes did not have a higher resistance and were not more stressed than Earth-based ones.

In short, microbes are no more extremophilic – able to survive in uninhabitable environments – in the weightless and radiative environment of space. The results were recently published in a paper in Nature Communications.

Interestingly, researchers found that space-based microbiomes can react negatively to metal surfaces, especially when those surfaces are wet. As they struggle to adapt to their environment, they attack the metal surfaces they find themselves on by corroding them or creating biofilm.

Researchers and crew are monitoring the situation by keeping metal surfaces dry and easily accessible for regular cleaning and sampling.

After all, there is no getting rid of microbes or any need to. They are a fact of human life.

Credits: ESA/NASA

When observed with the unaided eye, Omega Centauri, the object in this image, appears as a fuzzy, faint star. But the blue orb we see here is, in fact, a collection of stars – 10 million of them. You cannot count them all, but in this sharp, beautiful image you can see a few of the numerous pinpoints of bright light that make up this unique cluster.

The image was taken by Wouter van Reeven, a software engineer at ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid, Spain, during his recent visit to Chile to observe the July total solar eclipse. From his home base in Spain the cluster only grazes the horizon, making it near-impossible to image, but from the La Silla Observatory in Chile it was high in the sky, presenting the ideal opportunity to photograph it.

Omega Centauri is a picture-perfect example of a globular cluster: tightly bound by gravity, it has a very high density of stars at its centre and a nearly perfect spherical shape (the name ‘globular cluster’ comes from the latin word for small sphere, globulus). It lives in the halo of the Milky Way, at a distance of about 15 800 light years from Earth.

As other globular clusters, Omega Centauri is made up of very old stars and it is almost devoid of gas and dust, indicating star formation in the cluster has long ceased. Its stars have a low proportion of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, signaling they were formed earlier in the history of the Universe than stars like our Sun. Unlike in many other globular clusters, however, the stars in Omega Centauri don’t all have the same age and chemical abundances, making astronomers puzzle over the formation and evolution of this cluster. Some scientists have even suggested that Omega Centauri may not be a true cluster at all, but rather the leftovers of a dwarf galaxy that collided with the Milky Way.

Omega Centauri is also special in many other ways, not least because of the sheer number of stars it contains. It is the largest globular cluster in our galaxy, at about 150 light years in diameter, and is also the brightest and most massive of its type, its stars having a combined mass of about four million solar masses.

Omega Centauri can be seen with the naked eye under dark skies and imaging it doesn’t require long exposure times. To create the composition we see here, Wouter combined eight images taken with an exposure time of 10 seconds, seven images of 30 seconds each and another seven images of 60 seconds each. He used a SkyWatcher Esprit 80 ED telescope and a Canon EOS 200D camera.

Credits: ESA/CESAR/Wouter van Reeven, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano captured this image of our planet from the International Space Station and shared it on his social media channels saying: "My first picture from Cupola, since I’ve been back. Reality beats imagination, and once again my words can’t contain the emotion of admiring my planet from orbit... greeted by the Tierra del Fuego."

Follow Luca and his Beyond mission on social media on his website and on his blog.

Credits: ESA/NASA

The Aeolus Mission Control Team in Germany is now wrapping up after a long week of complex operations. They have done everything they planned in what is a first-of-its-kind assisted reentry. Aeolus – a mission that revolutionised wind profiling – is now out of their hands.

From skilled engineers to space debris experts and the wonderful wizards in the flight dynamics team, it's a proud moment in the Main Control Room. The satellite is not yet down, but everything they could do to guide it on its way, they did.

This whole assisted reentry attempt was done to reduce the already small risk of any surviving pieces landing over populated regions. The satellite wasn't designed for this ending, but teams have pushed the satellite to its limits to turn a natural reentry into an assisted one.

Aeolus now turned off, they hand over to the Space Debris Office.

Credits: ESA/J. Mai

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Nectaris Fossae and Protva Valles, complex geological features found on Mars. Key features are labelled across the frame: the broad, deep incised, and intensely eroded valleys of Protva Valles; three prominent wrinkle ridges; and the dust-filled fractures of Nectaris Fossae.

This image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 23 May 2022. It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. It is a ‘true colour’ image, reflecting what would be seen by the human eye if looking at this region of Mars.

North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 23 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 27°S/301°E.

Read more

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops confirmed the existence of four warm exoplanets orbiting four stars in our Milky Way. These exoplanets have sizes between Earth and Neptune and orbit their stars closer than Mercury our Sun.

These so-called mini-Neptunes are unlike any planet in our Solar System and provide a ‘missing link’ between Earth-like and Neptune-like planets that is not yet understood. Mini-Neptunes are among the most common types of exoplanets known, and astronomers are starting to find more and more orbiting bright stars.

Mini-Neptunes are mysterious objects. They are smaller, cooler, and more difficult to find than the so-called hot Jupiter exoplanets which have been found in abundance. While hot Jupiters orbit their star in a matter of hours to days and typically have surface temperatures of more than 1000 °C, warm mini-Neptunes take longer to orbit their host stars and have cooler surface temperatures of only around 300 °C.

The first sign of the existence of these four new exoplanets was found by the NASA TESS mission. However, this spacecraft only looked for 27 days at each star. A hint to a transit – the dimming of light as a planet passes in front of its star from our viewpoint – was spotted for each star. During its extended mission, TESS revisited these stars and the same transit was seen again, implying the existence of planets.

Scientists calculated the most likely orbital periods and pointed Cheops at the same stars at the time they expected the planets to transit. During this hit-or-miss procedure Cheops was able to measure a transit for each of the exoplanets, confirming their existence, discovering their true orbital periods and taking the next step in their characterisation.

The four newly discovered planets have orbits between 21 and 53 days around four different stars. Their discovery is essential because it brings our sample of known exoplanets closer to the longer orbits that we find in our own Solar System.

One of the outstanding questions about mini-Neptunes is what they are made of. Astronomers predict that they have an iron-rocky core with thick outer layers of lighter material. Different theories predict different outer layers: Do they have deep oceans of liquid water, a puffy hydrogen and helium atmosphere or an atmosphere of pure water vapour?

Discovering the composition of mini-Neptunes is important to understand the formation history of this type of planet. Water-rich mini-Neptunes probably formed far out in the icy regions of their planetary system before migrating inwards, while combinations of rock and gas would tell us that these planets stayed in the same place as they formed.

The new Cheops measurements helped determine the radius of the four exoplanets, while their mass could be determined using observations from ground-based telescopes. Combining the mass and radius of a planet gives an estimate of its overall density.

The density can only give a first estimate of the mass of the iron-rocky core. While this new information about the density is an important step forward in understanding mini-Neptunes, it does not contain enough information to offer a conclusion for the outer layers.

The four newly confirmed exoplanets orbit bright stars, which make them the perfect candidates for a follow-up visit by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope or ESA’s future Ariel mission. These spectroscopic missions could discover what their atmospheres contain and provide a definitive answer to the composition of their outer layers.

A full characterisation is needed to understand how these bodies formed. Knowing the composition of these planets will tell us by what mechanism they formed in early planetary systems. This in turn helps us better understand the origins and evolution of our own Solar System.

The results were published in four papers: ‘Refined parameters of the HD 22946 planetary system and the true orbital period of the planet d’ by Z. Garai et al. is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

‘Two Warm Neptunes transiting HIP 9618 revealed by TESS & Cheops’ by H. P. Osborn et al. is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

‘TESS and CHEOPS Discover Two Warm Sub-Neptunes Transiting the Bright K-dwarf HD15906’ by A. Tuson et al. is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

‘TOI-5678 b: a 48-day transiting Neptune-mass planet characterized with CHEOPS and HARPS’ by S. Ulmer-Moll et al. is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Credits: ESA (Acknowledgement: work performed by ATG under contract for ESA), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Amazon rainforest is burning.

As relief agencies turn to satellite data to help assess the scale, astronauts too are helping to provide context from the International Space Station.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano took this image, among a series, from his vantage point 400 km above Earth on 24 August 2019. He tweeted the images, captioning them: “The smoke, visible for thousands of kilometres, of tens of human-caused fires in the Amazon forest.”

The Amazon basin is home to millions of plants and animals and many indigenous people. It also produces around 20% of Earth’s oxygen, for which it is sometimes referred to as ‘the lungs of the world’. The Amazon rainforest covers large parts of Brazil, as well as parts of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, all of which have been affected.

While fires rage in the rainforest, strong winds have carried smoke plumes thousands of kilometres across land and sea, causing a black out in São Paulo, Brazil, some 2500 km away. Data from Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring System (CAMS) shows that smoke has even travelled as far as the Atlantic coast.

Fires are common during the dry season, which runs from July to October. But this year is unlike any other.

Copernicus Sentinel-3 data has helped to detect almost 4000 fires in August 2019 alone, compared to only 1110 fires in the same period last year.

This year’s unprecedented blazes are four times the normal amount and are likely due to legal and illegal deforestation for agricultural purposes.

Rising global temperatures are also thought to make the region more susceptible to fire.

The fires have sparked an international crisis, with many grappling with what a burning Amazon means for local plant, animal, and indigenous populations, not to mention our planet’s future.

As Luca tweeted, there is no Planet B.

Read more about the fires and how satellites are observing them in this article.

Credits: ESA/NASA–L. Parmitano

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Korolev crater, an 82-kilometre-across feature found in the northern lowlands of Mars.

This plan mosaic comprises five different observational strips that have been combined to form a single image, gathered over orbits 18042 (captured on 4 April 2018), 5726, 5692, 5654, and 1412. It covers a region centred at 165° E, 73° N, and has aresolution of approximately 21 metres per pixel.

This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface.

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A satisfying, audible ‘pop’ marked a successful piercing of the sealed Apollo 17 sample container using the ESA designed and built piercing tool. The tool forms part of a gas sampling system with a gas extraction manifold, designed and built by Washington University St Louis, USA.

Francesca McDonald, science and project lead of ESA’s contribution to the Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) programme, is pictured at the centre of this image with the piercing tool, which contains the pristine sample.

Francesca and colleague, Timon Schild, delivered the ESA piercing tool to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in late 2021 in preparation of the opening of the specially curated Apollo 17 core sample, which had remained sealed under vacuum since its collection in 1972 at the Moon’s surface by Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan.

The job of the tool, jokingly called the “Apollo can opener” amongst the team, was to puncture the Moon sample vacuum container in such a way as to aid capturing trapped lunar gases within.

This was successfully done in February 2022, with the fragile gases then collected in dedicated canisters via an extraction manifold designed by a partner team at Washington University in Saint-Louis, USA.

“The piercing tool was bespoke designed for this Core Sample Vacuum Container (CSVC),” explains Francesca. Even if it’s not used again, she notes that, “there are a lot of lessons learned that we can take for future exploration of the Moon and Mars.”

Combined science and engineering investigations are producing a set of findings on how well the CSVC performed and what can be learnt for improving the sample return chain in the future.

The gas sample canisters are being sent to specialised laboratories around the world, including within Europe, for detailed studies using highly sensitive mass spectrometry analytical techniques to learn about the origin and evolution of volatile species on the Moon and to understand the geologic history of the Apollo 17 landing site.

Follow up work is commencing to assess the full performance of the tool and to attain a set of lessons learned for future volatile-rich sample return, containment and gas sampling, which can inform Artemis and Mars Sample Return.

The gas extraction experiment is part of the larger Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) programme that is coordinating the analysis of several pristine Moon samples from the Apollo era. And for the first time ever, ESA is involved in the opening of soil returned from the Moon.

Credits: NASA/James Blair

With searing temperatures and a string of record highs being smashed across western Europe, the current heatwave is all too apparent. Extreme heat warnings have been issued in several countries including France, Spain and Portugal, and deadly wildfires have forced thousands to flee their homes. This satellite image is an example of how the crisis is being viewed by satellites orbiting Earth.

This image, which uses data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission’s radiometer instrument, shows the temperature of the land surface in southern France, Spain and northern Africa in the morning of 17 July 2022.

It is worth noting the difference between air temperature and land-surface temperature. Air temperature, given in our daily weather forecasts, is a measure of how hot the air is above the ground. Land-surface temperature instead is a measure of how hot the actual surface would feel to the touch. The image clearly shows that, in some places, the surface of the land reached a whopping 55°C. Considering Copernicus Sentinel-3 acquired these data in the morning, the temperature would have increased through the afternoon.

Read full story: Feeling the heat from space

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Launched 2 December 1995, the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been observing the Sun for 25 years. This graphic highlights some of the mission’s impressive numbers to date, which will continue to increase over the coming years.

To dive deeper into the stories behind the numbers, explore the interactive version of this graphic.

Credits: ESA

With launch set for 13 December, the Ariane 5 rocket carrying the Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite is rolling out to the launch pad. The rocket also carries two ‘co-passenger’ satellites: Intelsat Galaxy 35 and 36. MTGI-1 carries two completely new instrument that will deliver high-quality data to improve weather forecasts: a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager.

Once in geostationary orbit, 36,000 km above the equator, the all-new MTG-I1 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.

MTGI-1 carries two completely new instrument that will deliver high-quality data to improve weather forecasts: a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager.

The Flexible Combined Imager has more spectral channels and is capable of imaging in higher resolution compared to current Meteosat Second Generation’s Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared instrument.

The Lightning Imager offers a completely new capability for European meteorological satellites. It will continuously monitor more than 80% of the Earth disc for lightning discharges, taking place either between clouds or between clouds and the ground. This new instrument will allow severe storms to be detected in their early stages and will therefore be key for issuing timely warnings. Its detectors are so sensitive that will be able to detect relatively weak lightning, even in full daylight.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

This stereoscopic image shows Tantalus Fossae on Mars, and was generated from data captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on 19 July 2021 during orbit 22173. The anaglyph, derived from data acquired by the nadir channel and one stereo channel of the HRSC, offers a three-dimensional view when viewed using red-green or red-blue glasses.

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Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Another pair of eyes provides a sobering perspective on the fires ravaging Australia. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano took images such as this one on 12 January from his vantage point of the International Space Station.

From satellite imagery tracing smoke and pollution, to images from the ground depicting apocalyptic red skies, there is no denying the fires’ devastating effect.

Starting in New South Wales and extending into Victoria, the ferocious bushfires have been raging since September and are fuelled by record-breaking temperatures. In the midst of a climate crisis, 2019 was the hottest year on record in Australia and with drought and wind, the fires have raged beyond seasonal expectations.

Winds have blown smoke over New Zealand and crossed the South Pacific Ocean, even reaching Chile and Argentina.

A staggering 10 million hectares of land have been burned, at least 24 people have been killed and it has been reported that almost half a billion animals have perished.

Damage to wildlife notwithstanding, the fires have had a serious effect on air quality. Earth observation satellites like Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor has traced increased concentrations of carbon monoxide in the past months along Australia’s southeast coast.

This image was taken as the Station flew above Fraser Range, in Western Australia, near the Dundas Nature Reserve.

Luca posted images of the fire to social media and said: “Talking to my crew mates, we realised that none of us had ever seen fires at such terrifying scale”.

Astronaut photographs of Earth from space complement satellite imagery, allowing experts and the general public more insight on global events.

Like Luca, the world continues to monitor the fires. If there is a silver lining around the smoke, it is the increased awareness of and calls for urgent action on climate change that is continuing to sweep the globe.

Credits: ESA-L.Parmitano; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This oblique perspective view of the Mawrth Vallis region of Mars was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express. It shows two large, interconnected, and highly eroded craters sitting on the boundary between the martian highlands and lowlands (in Chryse Planitia). The larger crater is some 75 km across, and the smaller one about 35 km across. This can be seen in more detail in the associated perspective view.

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Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

What an incredible few days. From the 3-5 March, ESA worked with the Norwegian Space Agency and OHB System to organise the #AuroraHunters SocialSpace – which included talks from European space weather experts, visits to KSAT, EISCAT, the old Tromsø geophysical observatory and an arctic boat trip!

Hundreds of people from across the globe applied to join the event and 30 were selected from different backgrounds, countries and areas of expertise. We are so happy to have met them all - a talented, joyful & spontaneous bunch who are passionate about space, our planet and the amazing work being done to understand both better.

While the weather on Earth proved uncooperative for much of the event, gaps in the clouds hinted that the space weather was in fact on the #AuroraHunters’ side. Although we are currently in a period of low solar activity, the skies were still periodically lit up with the characteristic aurora-green glow.

In this photo, the #AuroraHunters were captured frolicking in the snow in front of Eiscat’s 32-metre ultra-high frequency radar antenna, after a presentation and tour around the grounds.

Find out more about the trip using the hashtag #AuroraHunters, or check out the photos in the dedicated Flickr album.

Information on future SocialSpace events can be found on the @Social4Space twitter page.

Thank you for making this Social Space so special!

Credits: ESA/ J.Makinen

The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Mercury on 1 October 2021 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre.

The image was taken at 23:41:12 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2 when the spacecraft was 1410 km from Mercury. Closest approach of 199 km took place shortly before, at 23:34:41 UTC on 1 October. This image is one of the closest acquired during the flyby.

The cameras provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The magnetometer boom of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and part of the body of the spacecraft are also visible in the image.

Close to the edge of the image is the 342 km Raphael crater, which has smaller, younger craters on its floor. Nearby, the Flaubert crater has a cluster of central peaks rather than the single central peak typical of somewhat smaller craters. Central peaks are a result of ‘elastic rebound’ of the target area when hit by a high-speed impactor. Data from BepiColombo’s orbital tour of Mercury will enable us to better understand impact cratering.

Click here for an annotated image.

The image has been lightly processed to enhance contrast and use the full dynamic range.

The gravity assist manoeuvre was the first at Mercury and the fourth of nine flybys overall. During its seven-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury to help steer on course for Mercury orbit in 2025. The Mercury Transfer Module carries two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. They will operate from complementary orbits to study all aspects of mysterious Mercury from its core to surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere, to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star.

Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO