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Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice ready for launch on the ELA-3 launch pad at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 12 April 2023.
Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Following launch, Juice will embark on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, arriving in July 2031 with the aid of momentum and direction gained from four gravity-assist fly-bys of the Earth-Moon system, Venus and, twice, Earth.
Flight VA 260 will be the final Ariane 5 flight to carry an ESA mission to space.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Morbihan – a French department in the south of Brittany.
Brittany is an important cultural region in the northwest of France and is divided into four departments: Ille-et-Vilaine in the east, Côtes d'Armor in the north, Finistère in the west and Morbihan in the south.
Morbihan takes its name from ‘Mor-Bihan’ which means ‘little sea’ in the Breton language. The Gulf of Morbihan, visible in the centre of the image, is one of the most famous features of the coastline with numerous islands and islets. The gulf is around 20 km long from east to west and around 15 km wide from north to south. It opens onto the Bay of Quiberon by a narrow passage between Locmariaquer and Port-Navalo.
Many ships and vessels can be seen in the bay. Several islands are visible in the image, including the small islands of Houat and Hœdic and the large Belle Île, which is visible in the bottom-left of the image. Belle Île is known for the sharp cliff edges visible on the southwest side, but also for its beaches and renowned opera festival.
The town and sea port of Lorient is visible in the top-left of the image. The town is situated on the right bank of the Scorff River at its confluence with the Blavet on the Bay of Biscay. The island of Groix lies a few kilometres off Lorient. The island has high cliffs on its north coast and sandy beaches in secluded coves on the south coast.
Morbihan is also known for its ‘Alignements de Carnac’ which consists of rows of around 3000 standing stones and megalithic tombs. The stones were said to be erected during the Neolithic period, around 4500 BC. Most of the stones are within the Breton village of Carnac, but some to the east are within La Trinité-sur-Mer.
Fields dominate the French countryside as seen in this image captured on 13 September 2020. Brittany is known for its rich and varied agriculture including meats and dairy products, but also provides a variety of high quality fruit and vegetables including tomatoes, strawberries, peas and green beans.
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission is designed to provide images that can be used to distinguish between different crop types as well as data on numerous plant indices, such as leaf area, leaf chlorophyll and leaf water – all essential to monitor plant growth accurately.
This image 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
This colour-coded topographic image of Tantalus Fossae was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 19 July 2021 during orbit 22173. It is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right.
North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 18 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 43°N/257°E.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
An image taken by the MCAM selfie camera on board of the European-Japanese Mercury mission BepiColombo as it neared Earth ahead of its gravity-assist flyby manoeuvre in April 2020. The image was taken at 21:04 UTC on 9 April 2020, less than a day before the closest approach, from around 128 000 km away.
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This annotated, zoomed-in image of Uranus, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on 6 February 2023, reveals stunning views of the planet’s rings, as well as clouds and the polar cap.
On the right side of the planet is an area of brightening at the pole facing the Sun, known as a polar cap. This polar cap is unique to Uranus because it is the only planet in the Solar System that is tilted on its side, which causes its extreme seasons. A new aspect of the polar cap revealed by Webb is a subtle brightening near the Uranian north pole.
At the edge of the polar cap lies a bright cloud and a few fainter extended features can be seen just beyond the cap’s edge; a second very bright cloud is seen at the planet’s left limb. Such clouds are typical for Uranus at infrared wavelengths, and are likely connected to storm activity.
The planet displays a blue hue in this representative-colour image, made by combining data from two filters (F140M, F300M) at 1.4 and 3.0 microns, which are assigned to blue and orange, respectively.
Learn more here
[Image description: The planet Uranus on a black background. The planet appears light blue with a large, white patch on the right side. The image is labelled to indicate the locations of the planet’s clouds, polar cap, and zeta ring.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. DePasquale (STScI)
The Philippines’ Taal volcano erupted on 12 January 2020 – spewing an ash plume approximately 15 km high and forcing large-scale evacuations in the nearby area.
This almost cloud-free image was captured today 23 January at 02:20 UTC (10:20 local time) by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, and shows the island, in the centre of the image, completely covered in a thick layer of ash.
This optical image has also been processed using the mission’s short-wave infrared band to show the ongoing activity in the crater, visible in bright red. Ash blown by strong winds can be seen in Agoncillo, visible southwest of the Taal volcano. Ash has also been recorded in other areas of the Batangas province, as well as Manila and Quezon.
According to The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology bulletin published today, sulphur dioxide emissions were measured at an average of around 140 tonnes. The Taal volcano still remains on alert level four, meaning an explosive eruption is possible in the coming hours or days. The highest alert level is five which indicates an eruption is taking place.
According to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, over 50 000 people have been affected so far. In response to the eruption, 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
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with the sharpest view yet of the breakup of Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS). The telescope resolved roughly 30 fragments of the comet on 20 April and 25 pieces on 23 April.
The comet was first discovered in December 2019 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) and its fragmentation was confirmed in April 2020.
Learn more here.
Credits: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA), Q. Ye (University of Maryland); CC BY 4.0
The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured the multiple bushfires burning across Australia’s east coast. Around 150 fires are still burning in New South Wales and Queensland, with hot and dry conditions accompanied with strong winds, said to be spreading the fires.
In this image, captured on 12 November 2019 at 23:15 UTC (13 November 09:15 local time), the fires burning near the coast are visible. Plumes of smoke can be seen drifting east over the Tasman Sea. Hazardous air quality owing to the smoke haze has reached the cities of Sydney and Brisbane and is affecting residents, the Australian Environmental Department has warned.
Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed, and many residents evacuated. Flame retardant was dropped in some of Sydney’s suburbs as bushfires approached the city centre. Firefighters continue to keep the blazes under control.
The Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service was activated to help respond to the fires. The service uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in cases of disaster, the international humanitarian community, respond to emergencies.
Quantifying and monitoring fires is fundamental for the ongoing study of climate, as they have a significant impact on global atmospheric emissions. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 World Fire Atlas shows that there were almost five times as many wildfires in August 2019 compared to August 2018.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
A spectacular double crater dominates this scene on Mars, pictured by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter on 7 June 2021.
The crater duo is located in an otherwise smooth plain of Arcadia Planitia [39.1°N/174.8°E].
Double craters like these are formed when two meteorites impact the surface simultaneously and in very close proximity. The two impactors would have originated from the same object that broke apart when it entered the martian atmosphere. The two craters are of similar size, which means that the two projectiles were approximately the same size as well.
During the impact, the interaction of the two shockwaves created an ejecta blanket with a butterfly shape. The remarkable linear streaks in the ejecta material radiates around the double crater, and are an indicator of the good level of preservation of this feature.
To the north are large isolated hills that likely predate the formation of the double crater.
TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planet’s atmospheric gases, and mapping the planet’s surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023.
Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Astronomers developed a mosaic of the distant Universe that documents 16 years of observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image, called the Hubble Legacy Field, contains roughly 265,000 galaxies that stretch back to just 500 million years after the Big Bang.
The wavelength range of this image stretches from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, capturing all the features of galaxy assembly over time. The faintest and farthest galaxies in the image are just one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can observe.
Credits: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth and D. Magee (University of California, Santa Cruz), K. Whitaker (University of Connecticut), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), P. Oesch (University of Geneva), and the Hubble Legacy Field team; CC BY 4.0
ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, outside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour shortly after having splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, USA.
Thomas is the first European to fly to the International Space Station and return on a commercial spacecraft. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour transporting Crew-2 autonomously undocked from the International Space Station and after a series of burns, entered Earth’s atmosphere and deployed parachutes for a soft water-landing. Thomas and crew splashed down on 9 November 2021 at 03:33 GMT (04:33 CET).
Credits: NASA–A.Gemignani
The Rho Ophiuchi complex, a large stellar nursery in the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, as viewed by ESA’s Gaia satellite using information from the mission’s second data release.
This view is not a photograph but has been compiled by mapping the total amount of radiation detected by Gaia in each pixel, combined with measurements of the radiation taken through different filters on the spacecraft to generate colour information.
The image is dominated by the brightest, most massive stars; in some spots, these stars outshine their less bright, lower-mass counterparts.
Five bright stellar clusters stand out in this view: the brightest one, towards the right of the frame, is the globular cluster M4.
Acknowledgement: Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC); A. Moitinho / A. F. Silva / M. Barros / C. Barata, University of Lisbon, Portugal; H. Savietto, Fork Research, Portugal.
Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC
This image, from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), reveals thousands of globular clusters lying at the core of a galaxy cluster. It was created by a Hubble survey that drew on data from three of the telescope’s separate observing programmes to explore the centre of the Coma cluster, a huge gathering of over 1000 galaxies, about 320 million light-years away, all bound together by gravity.
Astronomers spotted over 22 000 globular clusters, some of which had formed a bridge connecting a pair of well-known interacting galaxies (NGC 4889 and NGC 4874). A globular cluster is a spherical group of stars that usually orbits a galaxy as a self-contained satellite. However, the globular clusters studied here are of a different type, intracluster globular clusters. Specifically, these are globular clusters that are not bound to an individual galaxy, but to a galaxy cluster — in this case, Coma.
While globular clusters orbiting our Milky Way reveal themselves as sparkling spherical assemblies of densely packed stars, at the distance of the Comla cluster, they only appear as tiny dots of light, even to Hubble's advanced vision. However, a characteristic feature of globular clusters is their colour; since the stars in any given cluster all formed at around the same time and from the same “stuff”, they usually have a consistent colour. In this way, the astronomers were able to identify the clusters — and rule out background galaxies lying in the same region of sky — by analysing their colour and size, painting a beautiful family portrait of Coma and its clusters.
With the help of the identified globular clusters astronomers can map the distribution of matter and — even more important — of dark matter in the Coma cluster. The Coma Cluster was one of the first places where observed gravitational anomalies indicated the existence of dark matter.
Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Mack, and J. Madrid et al., CC BY 4.0
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was used to observe the planet on 6 June 2018, when Saturn was approximately 1.4 billion kilometres from Earth. Visible in this Hubble image are the classic rings as recorded by the very first astronomers to observe the planet with telescopes. From the outside in are the A ring with the Encke Gap, the Cassini Division, the B ring, and the C ring with the Maxwell Gap.
Data from NASA’s Cassini mission suggest that the rings formed about 200 million years ago, roughly around the time of the dinosaurs during the Jurassic period. The gravitational disintegration of one of Saturn’s small moons created myriad icy debris particles and collisions lasting until today; it is likely that they continually replenish the rings.
The planet’s banded structure, clearly visible in the new image, is caused by the winds and the clouds at different altitudes.
Credits:
NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC) and the OPAL Team, and J. DePasquale (STScI), CC BY 4.0
The first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 13 December at 21:30 CET.
From geostationary orbit, 36,000 km above the equator, this all-new weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level. The satellite carries two completely new instruments: Europe’s first Lightning Imager and a Flexible Combined Imager.
MTG-I1 is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical data for weather forecasting over the next 20 years. In full operations, the mission will comprise two MTG-I satellites and one MTG Sounding (MTG-S) satellites working in tandem.
Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut
Nestled within this field of bright foreground stars lies ESO 495-21, a tiny galaxy with a big heart. ESO 495-21 may be just 3000 light-years across, but that is not stopping the galaxy from furiously forming huge numbers of stars. It may also host a supermassive black hole; this is unusual for a galaxy of its size, and may provide intriguing hints as to how galaxies form and evolve.
Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA; CC BY 4.0
Two years ago, children from all over the world were invited to create a piece of art inspired by ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice). Last week, a dream came true for nine-year-old Yaryna as her winning artwork was pasted onto the nose of the mighty Ariane 5 rocket that will carry Juice into space next month.
“The drawing was selected out of more than 2600 entries from 63 different countries,” says Monica Talevi, head of ESA’s Education programme. “This astonishing number shows how much the very young generation can be excited and inspired by space and science. These children are our future... if life is one day discovered on one of Jupiter’s icy moons, it will be them who discover it! This is why offering inspirational learning through this competition and many more initiatives is so important for us.”
The ‘Juice Up Your Rocket’ competition gave the scientists and engineers working on Juice the opportunity to discover how the mission is seen through the eyes of children. The winning artwork is now the logo of the mission.
Juice engineer Manuela Baroni explains why they chose this particular artwork: “It is so cute, cheerful and genuine. It contains the main elements of the mission – Jupiter, the icy moons, and Juice itself, but we love that it also contains Earth, highlighting the huge amount of effort that we are all putting in. We also chose it because of the clear lines and colours that would show up well at the top of the rocket. We can now see that it was definitely the right choice.”
The artwork will be clearly visible as Juice launches into space on 13 April from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. This launch kicks off an eight-year journey to the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. The spacecraft will explore Jupiter’s stormy atmosphere and giant magnetic field, and discover the secrets hiding in the moons’ icy oceans.
“Many children dream of being explorers when they grow up, and what a fantastic explorer Juice will be,” concludes Manuela.
Discover more about the idea and results of the ‘Juice Up Your Rocket’ competition in episode 6 of ‘The Making of Juice’.
Credits: 2023 ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE / Optique vidéo du CSG - S MARTIN
The asteroid 6478 Gault is seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showing two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that tell us that the asteroid is slowly undergoing self-destruction. The bright streaks surrounding the asteroid are background stars. The Gault asteroid is located 214 million miles from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Learn more about this image here
Credits: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory); CC BY 4.0
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over of the green algae blooms swirling around the Baltic Sea.
'Algae bloom' is the term used to describe the rapid multiplying of phytoplankton – microscopic marine plants that drift on or near the surface of the sea. The chlorophyll that phytoplankton use for photosynthesis collectively tints the surrounding ocean waters, providing a way of detecting these tiny organisms from space.
In most of the Baltic Sea, there are two annual blooms – the spring bloom and the cyanobacterial (also called blue-green algae) bloom in late summer. The Baltic Sea faces many serious challenges, including toxic pollutants, deep-water oxygen deficiencies, and toxic blooms of cyanobacteria affecting the ecosystem, aquaculture and tourism.
Cyanobacteria have qualities similar to algae and thrive on phosphorus in the water. High water temperatures and sunny, calm weather often lead to particularly large blooms that pose problems to the ecosystem.
In this image captured on 20 July 2019, the streaks, eddies and whirls of the late summer blooms, mixed by winds and currents, are clearly visible. Without in situ measurements, it is difficult to distinguish the type of algae that covers the sea as many different types of algae grow in these waters.
The highest concentrations of algal blooms are said to occur in the Central Baltic and around the island of Gotland, visible to the left in the image.
Although algal blooms are a natural and essential part of life in the sea, human activity is also said to increase the number of annual blooms. Agricultural and industrial run-off pours fertilisers into the sea, providing additional nutrients algae need to form large blooms.
The bacteria that consume the decaying plants suck oxygen out of the water, creating dead zones where fish cannot survive. Large summer blooms can contain toxic algae that are dangerous for both humans and other animals.
Satellite data can track the growth and spread of harmful algae blooms in order to alert and mitigate against damaging impacts for tourism and fishing industries.
This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The hollow cell structure of this 1.5 tonne block, 3D printed from simulated lunar dust, let it combine strength with low weight, like bird bones.
The building block is on show in the laboratory corridor of ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, visited during public tours from neighbouring Space Expo.
Produced using a binding salt as ‘ink’, the structure was made during an initial feasibility project on lunar 3D printing.
ESA has subsequently investigated other types of lunar 3D printing, including solar sintering and ceramics.
Credits: ESA–G. Porter
Vega-C VV21 with LARES-2 ready for launch as the gantry is being retracted on 13 July 2022 at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Vega-C brings a new level of performance to ESA's launch family. With new first and second stages and an uprated fourth stage, Vega-C increases performance to about 2.3 t in a reference 700 km polar orbit, from the 1.5 t capability of its predecessor, Vega.
Vega-C features a new, more powerful first stage, P120C, based on Vega’s P80. Atop that is a new second stage, Zefiro-40, and then the same Zefiro-9 third stage as used on Vega.
The re-ignitable upper stage is also improved. AVUM+ has increased liquid propellant capacity, to deliver payloads to multiple orbits depending on mission requirements and to allow for longer operational time in space, to enable extended missions.
The P120C motor will do double service, with either two or four units acting as strap-on boosters for Ariane 6. Sharing this component streamlines industrial efficiency and improves cost-effectiveness of both launchers.
With its larger main stages and bigger fairing – which doubles the payload volume compared to Vega – Vega-C measures 34.8 m high, nearly 5 m taller than Vega.
The new launcher configuration delivers a significant improvement in launch system flexibility. Vega-C can orbit larger satellites, two main payloads or can accommodate various arrangements for rideshare missions. ESA’s upcoming Space Rider return-to-Earth vehicle will be launched to orbit on Vega-C.
Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut
If the orientation of this image is a little disorienting, then you know how astronauts feel in their first few hours in space. in weightlessness, the human body loses its cues for up and down and requires adjustments in over to move and manipulate objects.
Researchers are studying extent of this adjustment through the Grip experiment, being set up in this image by NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins on board the International Space Station. ESA Kids’ mascot Paxi is on standby to help.
When you lift a cup of coffee, you are moving it against gravity. The amount of force you use to lift that cup or move any other object is something you learn as a child but, in the weightlessness of space, it is something astronauts must relearn.
The Grip experiment studies how the central nervous system controls movement and the force astronauts use to manipulate objects with their hands.
Commissioned by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet in 2016, Grip was performed by both Alexander Gerst (2018) and Luca Parmitano (2019) during their Horizons and Beyond missions. Mike and his fellow NASA astronaut Victor Glover are next to participate.
During each session, Mike and Victor will hold an object equipped with measuring instruments between their right thumb and index finger and carry out a range of prescribed movements.
Prior to running on the Space Station, the Grip experiment flew on 20 parabolic flight campaigns. Results indicate that short-term exposure to microgravity induces subtle changes in how the forces used in gripping an object are coordinated. Our brains anticipate the effects of Earth’s gravity even when it is not there. On the Space Station, researchers can now observe the long-term effects.
The results will help researchers understand potential hazards for astronauts as they move between different gravitational environments and improve the design of haptic interfaces used during deep space missions to the Moon and Mars.
Of course, findings from space-flown experiments land back on Earth. Results from Grip will deepen our understanding of human physiology and disease diagnosis on Earth. They are also helpful to engineers designing prosthetic limbs and will be used to help design robot-human interfaces so astronauts can command robots on other planets, allowing us explore farther in our Solar System.
Learn more about Grip in this video produced by Principle Investigator Jean-Louis Thonnard and his team.
Credits: ESA/NASA
Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice, start of rollout on Tuesday 11 April.
Juice is being prepared to launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 13 April 2023.
Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Following launch, Juice will embark on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, arriving in July 2031 with the aid of momentum and direction gained from four gravity-assist fly-bys of the Earth-Moon system, Venus and, twice, Earth.
Flight VA260 will be the final Ariane 5 flight to carry an ESA mission to space.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This image shows a feature on Mars’ surface named Moreux crater. It comprises data gathered on 30 October 2019 during orbit 20014. The ground resolution is approximately 16 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 44°E/42°N.
The 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
The image taken on 5 May 2020 shows a part of the floor of the Ius Chasma canyon, part of the Valles Marines system of canyons that stretches nearly a quarter of the circumference of Mars south of the planet's equator. The Ius Chasma canyon, which can be seen in the image rising up to a ridge on the right side, is about 1000 km long and up to 8 km deep, which makes it more than twice as long and four times as deep as the famous Grand Canyon in the US state of Arizona. The centre of this image is located at 8.8°S, 282.5°E.
The beautiful colour variations across the floor of Ius Chasma are caused by changes in rock composition. Scientists theorise that the light rocks are salts left behind after an ancient lake evaporated. The information about the rock's composition is useful to scientists as it allows them to retrace the formation history of the canyon.
Credits: ESA/ExoMars/CaSSIS
This image from ESA’s Planck satellite appears to show something quite ethereal and fantastical: a sprite-like figure emerging from scorching flames and walking towards the left of the frame, its silhouette a blaze of warm-hued colours.
This fiery illusion is actually a celestial feature named the Polaris Flare. This name is somewhat misleading; despite its moniker, the Polaris Flare is not a flare but a 10 light-year-wide bundle of dusty filaments in the constellation of Ursa Minor (The Little Bear), some 500 light-years away.
The Polaris Flare is located near the North Celestial Pole, a perceived point in the sky aligned with Earth’s spin axis. Extended into the skies of the northern and southern hemispheres, this imaginary line points to the two celestial poles. To find the North Celestial Pole, an observer need only locate the nearby Polaris (otherwise known as the North Star or Pole Star), the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor.
Some of the secrets of the Polaris Flare were uncovered when it was observed by ESA’s Herschel some years ago. Using a combination of such Herschel observations and a computer simulation, scientists think that the Polaris Flare filaments could have been formed as a result of slow shockwaves pushing their way through a dense interstellar cloud, an accumulation of cold cosmic dust and gas sitting between the stars of our Galaxy.
These shockwaves, reminiscent of the sonic booms formed by fast sound waves here on Earth, would have been themselves triggered by nearby exploding stars that disrupted their surroundings as they died, triggering cloud-wide waves of turbulence
These shockwaves, reminiscent of the sonic booms formed by fast sound waves here on Earth, were themselves triggered by nearby exploding stars that disrupted their surroundings as they died, triggering cloud-wide waves of turbulence. These waves swept up the gas and dust in their path, sculpting the material into the snaking filaments we see.
This image is not a true-colour view, nor is it an artistic impression of the Flare, rather it comprises observations from Planck, which operated between 2009 and 2013. Planck scanned and mapped the entire sky, including the plane of the Milky Way, looking for signs of ancient light (known as the cosmic microwave background) and cosmic dust emission. This dust emission allowed Planck to create this unique map of the sky – a magnetic map.
The relief lines laced across this image show the average direction of our Galaxy’s magnetic field in the region containing the Polaris Flare. This was created using the observed emission from cosmic dust, which was polarised (constrained to one direction). Dust grains in and around the Milky Way are affected by and interlaced with the Galaxy’s magnetic field, causing them to align preferentially in space. This carries through to the dust’s emission, which also displays a preferential orientation that Planck could detect.
The emission from dust is computed from a combination of Planck observations at 353, 545 and 857 GHz, whereas the direction of the magnetic field is based on Planck polarisation data at 353 GHz. This frame has an area of 30 x 30º on the sky, and the colours represent the intensity of dust emission.
Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration
The DC14 crew on the staircase of Concordia at night against the backdrop of the Milky Way.
Concordia research station in Antarctica is located on a plateau 3200 m above sea level. A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to –80°C in the winter, with a yearly average temperature of –50°C.
As Concordia lies at the very southern tip of Earth, the Sun does not rise above the horizon in the winter and does not set in the summer. The crew must live without sunlight for four months of the year.
The station is a collaboration between the French Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) and Italian Programma Nazionale di Richerche Antartide (PNRA).
Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–M. Buttu
ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, lifts off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The Soyuz-Fregat launcher will also deliver the Italian space agency’s Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation satellite, and three CubeSats – including ESA’s OPS-SAT – into space on 18 December 2019.
Cheops is ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. It will observe bright stars that are already known to host planets, measuring minuscule brightness changes due to the planet’s transit across the star’s disc.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Exactly two decades ago, on 2 June 2003, ESA’s Mars Express orbiter launched and began its journey to the Red Planet – Europe’s first ever mission to Mars.
The spacecraft aimed to enter orbit around Mars (something it did in December of that year) and use its vantage point to study the martian atmosphere and climate, unravel the planet’s structure, mineralogy and geology, and search for traces of water across its surface. The mission carried a state-of-the-art package of eight instruments to achieve this, enabling it to probe surface, subsurface, atmosphere and more.
Mars Express has now been in space for two decades, despite a planned initial lifetime of just 687 Earth days. It has achieved its aforementioned aims and revealed a wealth of knowledge about Mars in that time, making it undeniably one of the most successful missions ever sent to the Red Planet. This graphic highlights some of the mission’s most impressive numbers to date, from the 1.1 billion km travelled over 24 000+ Mars orbits to the 170+ PhD students trained and 1800+ scientific papers published using Mars Express data. More record-breaking milestones were highlighted in an infographic released in 2019 to mark the mission’s 15-year anniversary.
The past 20 years of observations from Mars Express have solidified our picture of Mars as a once-habitable planet, with warmer and wetter epochs that may have been oases for ancient life. This is a monumental shift from our previous view of the planet, which characterised it as an eternally cold and arid world.
Mars Express has identified and mapped signs of past water across Mars – from minerals that only form in the presence of water to water-carved valleys, groundwater systems, and ponds lurking below ground – and traced its influence and prevalence through martian history. It has peered deep into the martian atmosphere, mapping how gases (water, ozone, methane) are distributed and escape to space, and watching as dust is whipped up from the surface into the air. The mission has seen giant dust storms engulf the planet, creating familiar clouds like those we see on Earth, and tracked rare ultraviolet auroras.
The orbiter has seen signs of recent and episodic volcanism and tectonics, and explored the planet’s unique surface features, mapping 98.8% of Mars and creating thousands of 3D images of impact craters, canyons (including the Valles Marineris system), the planet’s icy poles, immense volcanoes and more. It has studied Mars’ innermost moon Phobos in unprecedented detail – passing as close as 45 km from the mysterious moon – and watched Mars’ smaller moon, Deimos, as it travels through the Solar System.
Alongside its focus on Mars’ science, Mars Express has supported many other missions as they either hunt for a suitable landing site, travel to the planet, communicate with ground stations back on Earth, or touch down on the martian surface. Its data continues to support significant scientific research and discovery, including the training of new and early career researchers who will reveal the secrets of the cosmos in the decades to come. And the mission’s support of martian exploration is far from over; Mars Express’s latest extension enables it to support the JAXA-led Mars Moons eXploration (MMX) mission when it arrives in 2025.
Read more about Mars Express’s science highlights, or explore the latest news and images from the mission.
Notes:
- Mars Express launched on 2 June 2003, and entered orbit around Mars on 25 December 2003
- The mission was originally designed to last 1 Mars year (1.88 Earth years, or 687 Earth days), but has been granted repeated extensions to continue its operations at Mars for 10.3 Mars years (and counting). The spacecraft celebrated 10 martian years in orbit on 16 October 2022
- The orbiter will continue its study of Mars until at least the end of 2026, with an indicative extension from 1 January 2027 to 31 December 2028 to support the JAXA-led Mars Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, followed by two years of post-operations. More information
- Mars Express has conducted data relay for seven rovers and landing platforms (more information), and enabled scientific collaboration with a further five orbiters
- The Visual Monitoring Camera was 'upgraded' to a scientific camera in 2016; there are seven other instruments that together make up the scientific payload.
More about ESA's Mars Express mission
Read more: 15 years of Mars Express; Infographic marking 15 years of Mars Express
Read more: 10 years of Mars Express
Credits: ESA
Torrential downpours have battered many parts of Italy this month, with extreme flooding wreaking havoc across northern Italy. The province of Alessandria is said to be one of the worst-affected areas according to Italian media, with around 200 people evacuated and 600 said to be left stranded.
This multi-temporal image uses two separate images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission on 13 November and 25 November. The flooded areas can be seen depicted in red, the Po River in black, and urban areas in white.
Copernicus Sentinel-1’s radar ability to ‘see’ through clouds and rain, and in darkness, makes it particularly useful for monitoring floods. It can even easily differentiate water bodies, highlighting the difference between the Po River in black, and the extent of the flooding in red.
Around 500 people were evacuated further north in the Aosta Valley, where many roads were closed in fear of potential avalanches. Part of a viaduct serving the A6 motorway near Savona, in the northern region of Liguria, was washed away by a mudslide – leaving a 30 m gap in the road.
Images acquired before and after flooding offer immediate information on the extent of inundation and support assessments of property and environmental damage.
Earlier this month, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service was activated to help respond to the floods in northeast Italy, where Venice saw record-breaking water levels and the worst flooding in 50 years.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest mountain standing at 3776 metres tall. In this spring image, the mountain can be seen coated in pure white snow.
This snow-capped mountain is often shrouded in cloud and fog, but this image was captured on a clear day, by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite - flying 800 km above.
Mount Fuji is near the Pacific coast of central Honshu, straddling the prefectures of Yamanashi and Shizuoka. On a clear day, the mountain can be seen from Yokohama and Tokyo - both over 120 km drive away.
The majestic stratovolcano is a composite of three successive volcanoes. Generations of volcanic activity have turned it into the Mount Fuji as we know it today. This volcanic activity is a result of the geological process of plate tectonics. Mount Fuji is a product of the subduction zone that straddles Japan, with the Pacific Plate and the Philippine Plate being subducted under the Eurasian plate.
The last explosive activity occurred in 1707, creating the Hoei crater – a vent visible on the mountain’s southeast flank, as well as the volcanic ash field which can be seen on the east side.
Mount Fuji is a symbol of Japan, and a popular tourist destination. Around 300 000 people climb the mountain every year – and in the image several hiking trails can be seen leading to the base of the mountain. The city of Fujinomiya, visible in the bottom left of the image, is the traditional starting point for hikers.
Many golf courses, a popular sport in Japan, can be seen dotted around the image.
Worshipped as a sacred mountain, Mount Fuji is of great cultural importance for the Shinto religion. Pilgrims have climbed the mountain for centuries and many shrines and temples dot the landscape surrounding the volcano.
This image, captured on 8 May 2019, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Faroe Islands, located halfway between Iceland and Norway in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Faroe Islands are an archipelago made up of 18 jagged islands and are a self-governing nation under the external sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark.
The archipelago is around 80 km wide and has a total area of approximately 1400 sq km. The official language of the Faroe Islands is Faroese, a Nordic language which derives from the language of the Norsemen who settled the islands over 1000 years ago.
The islands have a population of around 50 000 inhabitants – as well as 70 000 sheep. Around 40% of the population reside in the capital and largest city of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn, visible on the island of Streymoy, slightly above the centre of the image.
The islands are a popular destination for birdwatchers, particularly on the island of Mykines, the westernmost island of the Faroese Archipelago. The island provides a breeding and feeding habitat for thousands of birds, including the Atlantic Puffins.
Several inland water bodies can be seen dotted around the islands. Lake Sørvágsvatn, the largest lake of the Faroe Islands, is visible at the bottom of Vágar Island to the right of Mykines. Vágar Airport, the only airport in the Faroe Islands, can be seen left of the lake.
In this image, captured on 21 June 2018, several clouds can be seen over the Northern Isles, top right of the image. Low vegetation is visible in bright green.
The unique landscape of the Faroe Islands was shaped by volcanic activity approximately 50 to 60 million years ago. The original plateau was later restructured by the glaciers of the ice age and the landscape eroded into an archipelago characterised by steep cliffs, deep valleys and narrow fjords.
The official language of the Faroe Islands is Faroese, a Nordic language which derives from the language of the Norsemen who settled the islands over 1000 years ago.
The islands are particularly known for their dramatic landscape, grass-roofed houses and treeless moorlands. The Faroe Islands boast over 1000 km of coastline and because of their elongated shape, one can never be more than five km to the ocean from any point of the islands.
This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Like a sprinkle of powdered sugar on a rich red velvet cake, this scene from the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter captures the contrasting colours of bright white water-ice against the rusty red martian soil.
This delightful image was taken 5 July 2021 and soaks in the view of a 4 km-wide crater in Mars’ north polar region of Vastitas Borealis, centred at 70.6 °N/230.3°E.
The crater is partially filled with water ice, which is also particularly predominant on its north-facing slopes that receive fewer hours of sunlight on average throughout the year.
The dark material clearly visible on the crater rim – giving it a somewhat scorched appearance – likely consists of volcanic materials such as basalt.
Most of the surrounding terrain is ice free, but has been shaped by ongoing aeolian processes. The streaks at the bottom right of the image are formed by winds that have removed the brighter iron oxide dust from the surface, exposing a slightly darker underlying substrate.
TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planet’s atmospheric gases, and mapping the planet’s surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023.
Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Chilean capital Santiago – among the largest conurbations in South America – viewed in false colour from ESA’s Proba-V minisatellite, with vegetation in red.
This December, Santiago will help set humankind’s future hosting the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference, the 25th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 25).
Sitting in a valley between the Chilean Coastal Range and the Andes Mountains, Santiago experienced explosive growth over the course of the last century. Today it is the fifth-largest city in South America, with a population of more than five million, and seven million people living within its overall metropolitan area.
In such a densely populated area, open space becomes all the more valuable. Note the hilly Santiago Metropolitan Park, seen as a dark mark running northeast of the centre. The double red patch just below and left of the city centre is the rectangular O'Higgins Park, right, with the Club Hípico de Santiago racecourse to its left.
Santiago Airport, the largest in Chile, is visible to the northwest of the city centre.
Launched on 7 May 2013, Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.
Its main camera’s continent-spanning 2250 km swath width collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands at a 300 m pixel size, down to 100 m in its central field of view.
VITO Remote Sensing in Belgium processes and then distributes Proba-V data to users worldwide. An online image gallery highlights some of the mission’s most striking images so far, including views of storms, fires and deforestation.
This 100 m spatial resolution image was acquired on 5 April 2017.
Credits: ESA/Belspo – produced by VITO
The Egg Nebula is a preplanetary nebula, created by a dying star in the process of becoming a planetary nebula. Planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets – the name arose when 18th century astronomers spotted them in their telescopes and thought they looked like planets. Instead, they are the remnants of material expelled by Sun-like stars in the later stages of their lives.
The preplanetary nebula phase is extremely short-lived in astronomical terms – only a few thousand years. This makes them rare objects and, combined with the fact that they are quite faint, rather difficult to spot. The Egg Nebula, located around 3000 light years from us, was the first of its kind to be discovered in the 1970s. This image is based on observations performed in the mid 1990s by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
During the preplanetary nebula phase, the central star periodically sheds its outer layers, which are then illuminated by the dying star at the centre. Eventually the star stops shedding material and the core remnant heats up, exciting the expelled gas so that it glows brightly and becomes a planetary nebula.
The dark band, sweeping beams, and criss-crossing arcs in this image can reveal a lot about the complex environment of a dying star. The central band is a cocoon of dust hiding the star from view.
Beams of light emanate from the obscured star, and it is thought that they are due to starlight escaping from the ring-shaped holes in the dusty cocoon that surrounds the star. The holes are possibly carved by a high-speed stream of matter, although the cause of these jets are unknown. The spoke-like features are shadows cast by blobs of material within the region of the holes in the cocoon.
Numerous bright arcs intersect the beams: these are shells of matter ejected by the star. The arcs are like tree rings, and can tell us something about the object's age as they reveal that the rate of mass ejection has varied between 100 and 500 years throughout its 10 000 year history. The gas is expanding at a rate of 20 km/s and matter has been detected out to a radius of 0.6 light years, providing an estimate of the amount of matter in the nebula.
This image was previously published on NASA's and ESA's Hubble websites.
Credit: Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, and NASA/ESA
Teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center moved the Orion spacecraft for the uncrewed Artemis I mission into the Vehicle Assembly Building.
The first Orion spacecraft will be integrated on top of the Space Launch System rocket in its final preparations. The spacecraft’s European-built service module is fixed under the pressurized Orion crew compartment.
The European Service Module will take the spacecraft more than 64 000 km beyond the Moon in a test flight to demonstrate its capabilities.
Credits: ESA–M. Cowan
Maps produced by <a href="http://cci.esa.int/" rel="nofollow"ESA’s Climate Change Initiative are providing new insights into thawing permafrost in the northern hemisphere. This image shows permafrost extent in 2003 compared to 2017. Continuous permafrost is defined as a continuous area with frozen material beneath the land surface, except for large bodies of water. None-continuous permafrost is broken up into separate areas and can either be discontinuous, isolated or sporadic. It is considered isolated if less than 10% of the surface has permafrost below, while sporadic means 10%-50% of the surface has permafrost below, while discontinuous is considered 50%-90%.
<a href="http://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Space_for_our_climate/Picturing_permafrost_in_the_Arctic" rel="nofollow"Learn more.
Credits: Permafrost CCI, Obu et al, 2019 via the CEDA archive
Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is a technicolour landscape when viewed in mid-infrared light by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Compared to Webb’s near-infrared image at right, the galaxies and stars are awash in new colours.
Start by comparing the largest bright blue star. At right, it has very long diffraction spikes, but in mid-infrared at left, its smaller points appear more like a snowflake’s. Find more stars by looking for these telltale – if tiny – spikes. Stars also appear yellow, sometimes with green diffraction spikes.
If an object is blue and lacks spikes, it’s a galaxy. These galaxies contain stars, but very little dust. This means that their stars are older – there is less gas and dust available to condense to form new stars. It also means their stars are ageing.
The red objects in this field are enshrouded in thick layers of dust, and may very well be distant galaxies. Some may be stars, but research is needed to fully identify each object in the mid-infrared image.
The prominent arcs at the centre of the galaxy cluster, which are galaxies that are stretched and magnified by gravitational lensing, appear blue in the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) image at left and orange in the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) image at right. These galaxies are older and have much less dust.
Galaxies’ sizes in both images offer clues as to how distant they may be – the smaller the object, the more distant it is. In mid-infrared light, galaxies that are closer appear whiter.
Among this kaleidoscope of colours in the MIRI image, green is the most tantalising. Green indicates a galaxy’s dust includes a mix of hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds.
The differences in Webb’s images are owed to the technical capabilities of the MIRI and NIRCam instruments. MIRI captures mid-infrared light, which highlights where the dust is. Dust is a major ingredient for star formation. Stars are brighter at shorter wavelengths, which is why they appear with prominent diffraction spikes in the NIRCam image.
With Webb’s mid-infrared data, researchers will soon be able to add much more precise calculations of dust quantities in stars and galaxies to their models, and begin to more clearly understand how galaxies at any distance form and change over time.
NIRCam was built by a team at the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center.
MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.
Get the full array of Webb’s first images and spectra, including downloadable files, here.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
The cork heat shield of ESA’s Qarman CubeSat burning away in simulated atmospheric reentry conditions, during ground testing.
Due to be deployed next week from the International Space Station, Qarman (QubeSat for Aerothermodynamic Research and Measurements on Ablation) will gather data on atmospheric reentry using inbuilt temperature and pressure sensors and a spectrometer.
Qarman’s nose is made from aerospace-quality cork. As seen in the image here, it burns up then flakes away – but this is as intended by its designers. The loss of burnt material carries away unwanted heat with it. This ‘ablation’ process is a tried and tested thermal protection method that ESA and Belgium’s Von Karman Institute, the CubeSat’s builder, want to investigate further.
Read more about Qarman and its deployment here.
Credits: VKI
Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is performing the first combined test in preparation for the inaugural flight of Ariane 6, Europe’s new generation launch vehicle.
This test confirms the operations and electrical and mechanical equipment required for integration of the upper part of the launch vehicle. The procedures are carried out in conditions representative of a launch campaign. A major step of this test involves the closure of the Ariane 6 fairing around the payload.
Preparations started in May 2021 with a de-risking campaign of the mechanical operations.
The fairing, built by Ruag Space in Switzerland, stands 20 m high and 5.4 m in diameter. It protects payloads from the thermal, acoustic and aerodynamic stresses on the ascent to space.
This combined test was performed using a new integration dock, composed of a large white frame, with two mobile platforms adjustable to any level and accessible by fixed stairs and platforms, developed by the French space agency, CNES.
The assembly building has two halls: one for integration of the fairing and another where the payload is stowed in the fairing. This encapsulation area is a spacious clean room for Ariane 6.
These activities are part of extensive ‘combined tests’ at the Spaceport by ESA, CNES, ArianeGroup and other industry partners. They will prove the systems and procedures to prepare Europe's new Ariane 6 launch vehicle for flight.
ESA oversees the implementation and management of verification and qualification activities up to and including the first flight of Ariane 6 before handing over to the exploitation authority.
Ariane 6 is designed to extend guaranteed access to space for Europe and will be capable of carrying out all types of missions to all orbits. It features a modular design with two versions: Ariane 62, fitted with two strap-on boosters, and Ariane 64, with four.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace / Optique vidéo du CSG - P. Baudon
The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard lifted off at 07:47 CEST from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 16 November 2022.
The most powerful rocket ever built sent NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module (ESM) to 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.
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.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The latest Dragon cargo vehicle was launched to the International Space Station on 2 April, taking with it ESA’s Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor.
Mounted in Dragon’s cargo bay, this suite of instruments will search for high-altitude electrical discharges associated with stormy weather. It is the first time that such a set of sensitive cameras, light sensors and X- and gamma-ray detectors are flying together to study the inner anatomy of luminous phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere and the link with bursts of high-energy radiation. Read more about the monitor here.
Dragon will dock with the Space Station on 4 April, with installation of the monitor expected on 13 April on the outside of Europe’s Columbus laboratory. Once it has been switched on and thoroughly checked for about a month, then the fascinating observations can begin.
Credits: ESA
Many craters in the polar regions of Mars hold permanent ice deposits year-round.
In this image, taken by the CaSSIS camera onboard ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, the south-eastern wall of a 35 km-wide crater is seen. The image captures its permanent deposits of water ice, which survive the summer months due to the low average sunlight at high latitudes.
The image is centred at 192.99ºE/70.4ºN. It was taken on 29 October 2019. The scale is indicated on the image.
Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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.
This 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
One of the largest wildfires recorded in Arizona, US, has been burning since 8 June, destroying vast swathes of vegetation across the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. Efforts to contain the fire include spraying flame retardant from aircraft. Coloured red so that firefighters can see it, the retardant is dropped ahead of the path of the fire to act as a break – and remarkably these red lines can be seen from space. This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image from 24 June not only captures the extent of the fire and burn scars, but also the red lines of the retardant.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This image shows an irregular galaxy named IC 10, a member of the Local Group — a collectiongrouping of over 50 galaxies inwithin our cosmic neighbourhood that includes the Milky Way.
IC 10 is a remarkable object. It is the closest-known starburst galaxy to us, meaning that it is undergoing a furious bout of star formation fueled by ample supplies of cool hydrogen gas. This gas condensescongeals into vast molecular clouds, which then formcondense into dense knots where pressures and temperatures reach a point sufficient to ignite nuclear fusion, thus giving rise to new generations of stars.
As an irregular galaxy, IC 10 lacks the majestic shape of spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way, or the rounded, ethereal appearance of elliptical galaxies. It is a faint object, despite its relative proximity to us — justof 2.2 million light-years. In fact, IC 10 only became known to humankind in 1887, when American astronomer Lewis Swift spotted it during an observing campaign. The small galaxy remains difficult to study even today, because it is located along a line -of -sight which is chock-full of cosmic dust and stars.
A version of this image was entered into the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Nikolaus Sulzenauer, and went on to win tenth prize.
Credits: NASA, ESA and F. Bauer; CC BY 4.0
A part of the White Nile state in Sudan is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
White Nile is one of the 18 states of Sudan. Covering an area of around 40 000 sq km, the state is divided into four districts: Ad Douiem, Al Gutaina, Kosti and Al Jabalian. The area pictured here is located just north of Kosti, also spelled Kūstī, which lies on the west bank of the White Nile River (not visible).
This false-colour image, captured on 25 August 2021, was processed in a way that also includes information from the near-infrared channel and shows vegetation in tones of red. This band combination is routinely used to monitor vegetation health. Although the area lies within an arid climatic region, low vegetation covering the valley floors between the sand dunes can be seen in bright shades of red.
Many agricultural plots can also be seen in red, particularly in the far-right and far-bottom of the image. Agriculture plays an important role in Sudan’s economy. The country’s main crops include cotton, peanuts, sesame and sugarcane, while the main subsistence crops include wheat, corn, sorghum and millet. Several small villages can also be spotted in the image, with many of them visible near artificial water reservoirs (easily spotted with their rectangular shape) and are most likely utilised during the dry season.
Owing to seasonal rainfall, many ephemeral bodies of water can be spotted in shades of turquoise and blue in the image.
Flooding is common in Sudan in August and September. During these months each year, monsoon rains pour into the Ethiopian Highlands and flow down to the Blue and White Nile and can often lead to floodwaters swamping nearby communities. Starting in August 2021, a series of torrential downpours overwhelmed streams and rivers and unleashed floods in the area, with the White Nile being one of the hardest hit areas.
Copernicus Sentinel-2 has two satellites, each carrying a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. The type of band combination from Copernicus Sentinel-2 used to process this image is commonly utilised to assess plant density and health, as plants reflect near-infrared and green light, while absorbing red. Since they reflect more near-infrared than green, dense, plant-covered land appears in bright red.
This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The first Orion spacecraft that will fly around the Moon as part of Artemis to return humans to the lunar surface has finished its space-environment tests at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio, USA. The vehicle – that can transport up to four astronauts – consists of the European Service Module, the Crew Module and connecting adapter and all elements have now been given the stamp of approval for spaceflight after being subjected to the vacuum, extreme temperatures and electro-magnetic interference it will encounter during its trip to the Moon.
Orion arrived at Plum Brook Station – the only centre large enough to test the spacecraft – on 26 November and passed two months of thermal-vacuum tests subjecting the spacecraft to temperatures ranging from –175°C to 75°C in vacuum.
After passing the trial by temperature, Orion went through electromagnetic interference testing to ensure the electronics worked well together – the European Service Module has over 11 km over wiring to gather information and send commands to its 31 engines, propellant tanks, solar wings and more.
Orion is a key component of Artemis 1, an uncrewed test flight around the Moon that paves the way for the Artemis 3 mission which will land the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024. ESA is designing and supplying the European Service Module for Orion – the bottom part of the spacecraft in the picture – that provides electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen as well as keeping the spacecraft at the right temperature and on course.
Orion will now ship to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where it will be further prepared for launch, including assembling the solar panels and more individual tests.
Credits: NASA–Marvin Smith
The island of Mauritius has declared a ‘state of environmental emergency’ after a grounded vessel began leaking tonnes of oil into the Indian Ocean. Satellite images, which show the dark slick spreading in the nearby waters, are being used to monitor the ongoing spill.
The MV Wakashio vessel, reported to be carrying nearly 4000 tonnes of oil, ran aground on a coral reef on Mauritius’s southeast coast on 25 July. According to media reports, more than 1000 tonnes of fuel have leaked from the cracked vessel into the ocean – polluting the nearby coral reefs, as well as the surrounding beaches and lagoons.
In this image, captured on 11 August by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, the MV Wakashio, visible in the bottom of the image, is stranded close to Pointe d’Esny, an important wetland area. The oil slick can be seen as a thin, black line surrounded by the bright turquoise colours of the Indian Ocean. Oil is visible near the boat, as well as other locations around the lagoon.
In response to the spill, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters was activated on 8 August. The charter is an international collaboration that gives rescue and aid workers rapid access to satellite data in the event of a disaster. A full report that provides a preliminary assessment of the oil spill, using imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, is available here.
Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus programme. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution allow changes in water bodies to be closely monitored.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
If placed in the middle of our solar system, the star VY Canis Majoris would engulf all the planets out to Saturn's orbit. This monster, appropriately called a red hypergiant, is as bright as 300,000 Suns. Yet it is so far away that, 200 years ago, it could be seen only as a faint star in the winter constellation of the Great Dog. Since then, it has faded and is no longer visible to the naked eye. Astronomers used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to get a close-up look at the star and discovered the reason for the dimming. The star is expelling huge clouds of dust in the final stages of its life. Eventually, the bloated star may explode as a supernova, or may simply collapse and form a black hole.
This zoom into VY Canis Majoris is a combination of Hubble imaging and an artist's impression. The left panel is a multicolor Hubble image of the huge nebula of material cast off by the hypergiant star. This nebula is approximately 300 billion kilometres across.
The middle panel is a close-up Hubble view of the region around the star. This image reveals close-in knots, arcs, and filaments of material ejected from the star as it goes through its violent process of casting off material into space. VY Canis Majoris is not seen in this view, but the tiny red square marks the location of the hypergiant, and represents the diameter of the solar system out to the orbit of Neptune, which is 5.5 billion miles across.
The final panel is an artist's impression of the hypergiant star with vast convection cells and undergoing violent ejections. VY Canis Majoris is so large that if it replaced the Sun, the star would extend for hundreds of millions of miles, to between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and R. Humphreys (University of Minnesota), and J. Olmsted (STScI); CC BY 4.0