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Scheduled for launch in late 2015, ESA’s LISA Pathfinder will test key technologies for space-based observation of gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime that are predicted by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Produced by massive accelerating bodies, these perturbations are expected to be abundant across the Universe, but they are yet to be detected directly.
Although not aiming at detecting gravitational waves, LISA Pathfinder will test the approach that could be used for this daunting endeavour. In particular, the goal is to achieve the best free-fall ever, reducing all the non-gravitational forces acting on two test masses and controlling any residual effect with unprecedented accuracy.
LISA Pathfinder will operate from a special location in the Sun–Earth system: the Lagrange point L1, 1.5 million km from Earth towards the Sun. After launch, it will take the spacecraft about eight weeks to cruise towards its operational orbit around L1.
First, it will lift off on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, as shown in the left frame of this illustrated sequence. The Vega rocket, which is specially designed to take small payloads into low Earth orbit, will place LISA Pathfinder into an elliptical orbit.
The upper right frame shows the spacecraft riding the final stage of the Vega rocket, while the fairing is being released.
After the final stage of the Vega rocket is jettisoned, LISA Pathfinder will continue on its own, as shown in the lower right frame of the sequence. During this phase, the spacecraft will use its separable propulsion module to perform six manoeuvres, gradually raising the apogee of the initial orbit.
Eventually, LISA Pathfinder will cruise towards its final orbiting location, discarding the propulsion system along the way, one month after the last burn. Once orbiting L1, LISA Pathfinder will begin six months of demonstrating the technology for future gravitational-wave observatories in space.
Full animated sequence: LISA Pathfinder's journey to L1
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
This colour-coded topographic image of Medusae Fossae was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 14 May 2021. 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 19 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 192°E/2°N.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows a valley network on Mars. This oblique perspective view was generated using a digital terrain model and Mars Express data gathered on 19 November 2018 during Mars Express orbit 18831. The ground resolution is approximately 14 m/pixel and the images are centered at 66°E/17°S. 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 view of the Seth region of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from a distance of 5.5 km. It illustrates the transition between fractured, consolidated material and finer dust.
The spacecraft’s trajectory around the comet changed progressively during the final two months, bringing it closer and closer to the comet at its nearest point along elliptical orbits. This image was taken on 15 August 2016 by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on the third of these ellipses. The image scale is about 10 cm/pixel at the centre of the image.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured this image of the powerful Cyclone Mocha on 13 May 2023 as it made its way across the Bay of Bengal heading northeast towards Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Cyclone Mocha originated in the Indian Ocean, and it gradually intensified while moving towards the Bay of Bengal. Winds topped 280 km per hour, making it one the strongest storms on record in the North Indian Ocean, similar to Cyclone Fani, which hit the same area in May 2019.
Although the storm weakened slightly as it approached Myanmar and Bangladesh, it caused widespread destruction as it made landfall on 14 May.
With thousands of people losing their houses, infrastructure seriously damaged and croplands inundated, both the International Charter Space and Major Disasters and the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service were triggered to supply maps based on satellite data to help civil protection authorities and the international humanitarian community with their emergency response efforts.
Satellites orbiting Earth can provide indispensable up-to-date information to observe such events, as shown here from Copernicus Sentinel-3. The mission is designed to measure, monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics and provides essential information in near-real time for ocean and weather forecasting.
Acquired with the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument, this wide view covers an area of over 2000 km from north to south. The storm is estimated to be more than 1000 km across.
In the cloud-free portion on top of the image we can see parts of India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar and the entire country of Bhutan. The white snow-capped mountains of the eastern part of the Himalayas, including Mount Everest, the highest mountain on the planet, are clearly visible. The Tibetan Plateau – part of China – appear in brownish colours owing to the absence of vegetation.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This luminous orb is the galaxy NGC 4621, better known as Messier 59. As this latter moniker indicates, the galaxy was listed in the famous catalogue of deep-sky objects compiled by French comet-hunter Charles Messier in 1779. However, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Koehler is credited with discovering the galaxy just days before Messier added it to his collection.
Modern observations show that Messier 59 is an elliptical galaxy, one of the three main kinds of galaxies along with spirals and irregulars. Ellipticals tend to be the most evolved of the trio, full of old, red stars and exhibiting little or no new star formation. Messier 59, however, bucks this trend somewhat; the galaxy does show signs of star formation, with some newborn stars residing within a disc near the core.
Located in the 2000-strong Virgo Cluster of galaxies within the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), Messier 59 lies approximately 50 million light-years away from us. This image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, P. Cote; CC BY 4.0
Inside one of the containers of this 40-cm-across miniature laboratory in orbit, a battle is set to start between asteroid-like fragments and rock-hungry microbes, to probe their use for space mining in the future.
The University of Edinburgh’s ‘BioAsteroid’ payload is one of multiple experiments running simultaneously aboard ESA’s Kubik – Russian for cube – facility aboard Europe's Columbus module of the International Space Station. It found its way to orbit via the new commercial Bioreactor Express Service.
The experimenters want to see how BioAsteroid’s combination of bacteria and fungi interact with the rock in reduced gravity, including to observe whether characteristic ‘biofilms’ will be grown on rock surfaces, comparable to dental plaque on teeth.
The microbes could in the future be cultivated to help mine resources. So-called bio-mining has potential on Earth and in space exploration to recover economically useful elements from rock, as well as creating fertile soil from lunar dust.
Credits: NASA
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury lifts off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG – JM Guillon
The narrow galaxy elegantly curving around its spherical companion in this image is a fantastic example of a truly strange and very rare phenomenon. This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, depicts GAL-CLUS-022058s, located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax (The Furnace). GAL-CLUS-022058s is the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings ever discovered in our Universe. The object has been nicknamed by the Principal Investigator and his team who are studying this Einstein ring as the "Molten Ring", which alludes to its appearance and host constellation.
First theorised to exist by Einstein in his general theory of relativity, this object’s unusual shape can be explained by a process called gravitational lensing, which causes light shining from far away to be bent and pulled by the gravity of an object between its source and the observer. In this case, the light from the background galaxy has been distorted into the curve we see by the gravity of the galaxy cluster sitting in front of it. The near exact alignment of the background galaxy with the central elliptical galaxy of the cluster, seen in the middle of this image, has warped and magnified the image of the background galaxy around itself into an almost perfect ring. The gravity from other galaxies in the cluster is soon to cause additional distortions.
Objects like these are the ideal laboratory in which to research galaxies too faint and distant to otherwise see.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Jha; CC BY 4.0 Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
Artist’s impression (left to right): Ariane 5, Vega, Vega-C, Ariane 62, Ariane 64, Space Rider.
Europe’s Ariane 5 and Vega launch vehicles currently operate from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, in the northeast of South America providing Europe with continued independent and autonomous access to space.
New space transportation vehicles are being developed.
Vega-C is capable of a wide range of missions and through a range of payload carriers it can place one or multiple payloads up to 2.3 tonnes into orbit on a single flight. It replaces Vega, one of the most reliable rockets in the world.
Ariane 6 is Europe’s next-generation launch vehicle capable of delivering payloads of around 21 tonnes into low-Earth orbit. Ariane 6 has two versions – A62 and A64 – combining strength and versatility to place one or multiple satellites into any orbit. It is Europe's largest rocket yet at over 60 metres tall.
Space Rider is a reusable lifting body. Launched unmanned on Vega-C, it can stay in low-Earth orbit for more than two months, providing a platform for a range of experiments and demonstrations in microgravity. After each mission it will return to Earth to land on ground to return its cargo before minimal refurbishment for its next mission.
Credits: ESA
Deadly wildfires continue to rage in south-central Chile destroying hundreds of thousands of hectares of land across the country. Satellite images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on 4 February show the ongoing fires and heatwave in South America.
The fires in Chile have consumed approximately 270 000 hectares of land, killing over 20 and injuring more than 1000 people. The government has declared a state of emergency in the Biobío, Ñuble and Araucania regions and is seeking international assistance to battle the fires from neighbouring countries.
The map generated using data from Sentinel-3’s SLSTR instrument, shows the temperature of the land surface. The data show that ground temperatures in Neuquén reached 49°C, Sierra Colorada reached 45°C and Malargüe 38°C.
While weather forecasts use predicted air temperatures, this satellite instrument measures the real amount of energy radiating from Earth. Therefore, the map shows the actual temperature of the land’s surface pictured here on 4 February (11:00 local time), which is usually significantly hotter than air temperatures reported.
Chile is suffering through a decade-long period of dry weather. The searing heatwave and strong winds have caused the flames to spread and has complicated efforts to extinguish the flames, with air temperatures exceeding 40°C in some of the most affected areas. According to the Global Drought Observatory report, the current drought event in the Parana-La Plata Basin is the worst since 1944.
The blazes impact air quality as they release large quantities of aerosol into the atmosphere. The Copernicus Atmosphere Service reported forecasts of particulate matter 2.5 levels in the atmosphere up until 8 February.
In response to the wildfires, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service has been activated. Chile had requested support from the Member and Participating States to help limit the consequences of the destructive fires. The service uses observations from multiple satellites to provide on-demand mapping to help civil protection authorities and the international humanitarian community in the face of major emergencies.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
At ESA’s mission control, before the launch comes the pre-launch briefing – and the all-important group photo. This is the team that will fly Juice to Jupiter with four planetary flybys of Earth and Venus, then switching orbit from Jupiter to its largest moon, Ganymede, followed by a tour of the icy, complex Jovian system comprising a whopping 35 lunar flybys.
Never before has a mission switched orbit from a planet other than our own to one of its moons. Radiation at Jupiter will be extreme. Light at the edge of the solar system will be just 3% of what powers us on Earth. It will be cold. Time delays of up to two hours mean teams are only ever communicating with a spacecraft in the past. Ten science instruments need to be oriented precisely, without interference, from hundreds of millions of kilometres away.
Juice was made for this extreme environment, and mission control is ready to navigate it. Back-to-back critical operations over the next decade will make this possible. We are GREEN for Juice launch.
Credits: ESA
The lower and upper stage of ESA’s new generation Ariane 6 launch vehicle arrived in French Guiana from Europe on 17 January 2022. Packed in separate containers they were transported to the new Ariane 6 launch vehicle assembly building at Europe’s Spaceport. This enables combined tests at Europe’s Spaceport where Ariane 6 parts will come together on the launch pad for the first time.
Credits: ESA-CNES-Arianespace/Optique video du CSG - JM Guillon
Gaia’s all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. The map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by the ESA satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016.
Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of especially bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer bright stars are observed. The colour representation is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky.
The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the Galactic plane, the flattened disc that hosts most of the stars in our home Galaxy. In the middle of the image, the Galactic centre appears vivid and teeming with stars.
Darker regions across the Galactic plane correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which absorb the light of stars located further away, behind the clouds. Many of these conceal stellar nurseries where new generations of stars are being born.
Sprinkled across the image are also many globular and open clusters – groupings of stars held together by their mutual gravity, as well as entire galaxies beyond our own.
The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.
In small areas of the image where no colour information was available – to the lower left of the Galactic centre, to the upper left of the Small Magellanic Cloud, and in the top portion of the map – an equivalent greyscale value was assigned.
The second Gaia data release was made public on 25 April 2018 and includes the position and brightness of almost 1.7 billion stars, and the parallax, proper motion and colour of more than 1.3 billion stars. It also includes the radial velocity of more than seven million stars, the surface temperature of more than 100 million stars, and the amount of dust intervening between us and of 87 million stars. There are also more than 500 000 variable sources, and the position of 14 099 known Solar System objects – most of them asteroids – included in the release.
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
The forecast for Jupiter is for stormy weather at low northern latitudes. A prominent string of alternating storms is visible, forming a ‘vortex street’ as some planetary astronomers call it. This is a wave pattern of nested cyclones and anticyclones, locked together like the alternating gears of a machine moving clockwise and counterclockwise. If the storms get close enough to each other and merge together, they could build an even larger storm, potentially rivalling the current size of the Great Red Spot. The staggered pattern of cyclones and anticyclones prevents individual storms from merging. Activity is also seen interior to these storms; in the 1990s Hubble didn’t see any cyclones or anticyclones with built-in thunderstorms, but these storms have sprung up in the last decade. Strong colour differences indicate that Hubble is seeing different cloud heights and depths as well.
The orange moon Io photobombs this view of Jupiter’s multicoloured cloud tops, casting a shadow toward the planet’s western limb. Hubble’s resolution is so sharp that it can see Io’s mottled-orange appearance, the result of its numerous active volcanoes. These volcanoes were first discovered when the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by in 1979. The moon’s molten interior is overlaid by a thin crust through which the volcanoes eject material. Sulphur takes on various hues at different temperatures, which is why Io’s surface is so colourful. This photo was taken on 12 November 2022.
[Image description: Jupiter looms large in this image. Set against a black background, the planet is banded in stripes of brownish orange, light gray, soft yellow, and shades of cream. White and cream colored ovals punctuate the planet at all latitudes.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0
ESA’s new Sun exploring spacecraft Solar Orbiter launched atop the US Atlas V 411 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 04:03 GMT (05:03 CET) on 10 February 2020. An ESA-led mission with strong NASA participation, Solar Orbiter will look at some of the never-before-seen regions of the Sun, such as the poles, and attempt to shed more light on the origins of solar wind, which can knock out power grids on the ground and disrupt operations of satellites orbiting the Earth. The spacecraft will take advantage of the gravitational pull of Venus to adjust its orbit to obtain unprecedented views of the solar surface.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft with its European Service Module, at Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, on 12 November, 2022. The Artemis I mission will be the first test of SLS, Orion and the European Service Module.
The Orion spacecraft with European Service Module will fly farther from Earth than any human-rated vehicle has ever flown before.
The spacecraft will perform a flyby of the Moon, using lunar gravity to gain speed and propel itself 70 000 km beyond the Moon, almost half a million km from Earth – further than any human has ever travelled, where it will inject itself in a Distant Retrograde Orbit around the Moon.
On its return journey, Orion will do another flyby of the Moon before heading back to Earth.
The total trip will take around 20 days, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean without the European Service Module – it separates and burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
While snow continues to cause chaos in Austria and Germany, the cold snap has also reached Turkey as shown in this Copernicus Sentinel-3 image from 9 January. The snow, which started falling in Turkey on Sunday 6 January, has led to villages in remote areas being cut off and the authorities having to close offices and schools. The snowfall mainly affected eastern and northern provinces, but big cities in the west, including Ankara, have not been spared a thick covering of snow. The weather is also causing serious problems further west, in particular in Germany and Austria which are on red alert.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over Lake Disappointment in northwest Australia. Found in one of the most remote areas of the country, it is believed to have been discovered by an early explorer called Frank Hann in 1897. He was convinced that the series of creeks that he had been following in the east Pilbara area would lead to a freshwater lake and drinking water supply. Such was his disappointment to find a salt lake at the end of his journey, he gave the lake its memorable name.
Although the lake is dry most of the time, it is home to many species of water birds. When it is full, primarily during very wet periods, the lake retains water and allows no outflow and is hence classified as an endorheic basin.
In this false-colour image, the differences in the shades of blue in the lake reflect the depth of the water. The darker the blue, the deeper the water is. A higher concentration of salt might also explain the different colours of the water round the edges of the lake.
It is likely that the red lines spread across the top part of the image represent some form of vegetation in this predominantly arid area on the edge of the Gibson Desert. Karlamilyi National Park, Western Australia's largest and most remote national park, can be found north of the lake. The park spans over 1.3 million hectares between the Great Sandy Desert and the Little Sandy Desert.
Covering an area of almost 380 000 sq km, the Shire of East Pilbara, also to the north of the lake, is the third largest municipality in the world. The population was registered as only around 11 000 in 2017, with mining constituting the backbone of the local economy.
The Sentinel-2 mission for Europe’s Copernicus programme is tasked with monitoring our changing lands. Designed specifically to monitor vegetation, it can also detect differences in sparsely vegetated areas, as well as the mineral composition of soil.
This image, which was captured on 1 April 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
This image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), both installed on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the peculiar galaxy NGC 3256. The galaxy is about 100 million light-years from Earth and is the result of a past galactic merger, which created its distorted appearance. As such, NGC 3256 provides an ideal target to investigate starbursts that have been triggered by galaxy mergers.
Another image of NGC 3256 was already released in 2008, as part of a collection of interacting galaxies, created for Hubble’s 18th birthday.
Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA; CC BY 4.0
June marks the start of winter in Australia, but this year strong winds and bitter temperatures have hit the east coast, bringing unexpected snowfall. This image, captured on 4 June by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, shows the unusual layer of snow over the Southern Tablelands, southwest of Sydney.
Several centimetres fell across the Goulburn area, which is in the bottom right corner of the image. Snow also fell in the Yass Valley, the Blue Mountains, as well as in the subtropical region of Queensland. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology described the weather as rare considering the ‘sunshine state’ hadn’t received snowfall since 2015.
The unexpected weather led to road closures and travel warnings. Further weather alerts have been issued across the east coast, including Sydney.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Crash test dummies are used for testing spacecraft, not just cars. This example is a veteran of an ambitious past project to develop a small spaceplane.
The X-38 Crew Return Vehicle was a joint ESA-NASA plan to create a small lifting body glider, like a mini Space Shuttle, that could bring astronauts home from the International Space Station in an emergency. A series of flight tests ended in 2001 when an X-38 was dropped from a NASA B-52 aircraft at 13 715 m.
The project did not proceed further however and what is formally known as an ‘anthropomorphic test dummy’ never got a chance to fly. Instead ESA applied its experience from the X-38 programme to develop its own lifting-body glider programme. The uncrewed Intermediate Experimental Vehicle IXV proved the concept in 2015, when it was launched atop a Vega launcher then recovered after controlled flight to a Pacific Ocean splashdown.
ESA’s IXV experience in turn has been applied to the reusable Space Rider spaceplane, set to make its first launch next year.
The ATD is part of the first selection of items on the 99 Objects of ESA ESTEC website, a set of intriguing, often surprising artefacts helping tell the story of more than half a century of activity at ESA’s technical heart.
Credits: ESA-Remedia
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, after being unpacked from its shipping container in the Hydra clean room at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC in the Netherlands on 30 April, is moved to the Rosetta clean room on a trolley.
Juice will undergo environmental testing in ESTEC’s Large Space Simulator to replicate the extreme heating and cooling cycles that the spacecraft will experience on its way to Jupiter.
Once in the Jovian system the mission will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
Credits: ESA
On 4 April, Juice was encapsulated inside the Ariane 5’s fairing, meaning that the nose of the rocket was installed over the spacecraft. Here we see the two engineers working where the fairing meets the lower part of the rocket. This operation followed the placement of Juice atop the Ariane 5 on 1 April. Juice will remain inside the fairing during launch. Shortly after launch, the fairing will open up and Juice will separate from the rocket.
Juice is being prepared to launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 13 April 2023. After an eight-year journey to Jupiter, the mission will make detailed observations of the gas giant and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of instruments. The mission will characterise these moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats, explore Jupiter’s complex environment in depth, and study the wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the Universe.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut
This sparkling burst of stars is Messier 75. It is a globular cluster: a spherical collection of stars bound together by gravity. Clusters like this orbit around galaxies and typically reside in their outer and less-crowded areas, gathering to form dense communities in the galactic suburbs.
Messier 75 lies in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), around 67 000 light-years away from Earth. The majority of the cluster’s stars, about 400 000 in total, are found in its core; it is one of the most densely populated clusters ever found, with a phenomenal luminosity of some 180 000 times that of the Sun. No wonder it photographs so well!
Discovered in 1780 by Pierre Méchain, Messier 75 was also observed by Charles Messier and added to his catalogue later that year. This image of Messier 75 was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Ferraro et al.; CC BY 4.0
The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the Lena River Delta, the largest delta in the Arctic.
At nearly 4500 km long, the Lena River is one of the longest rivers in the world. The river stems from a small mountain lake in southern Russia, and flows northwards before emptying into the Arctic Ocean, via the Laptev Sea.
The river is visible in bright yellow, as it splits and divides into many different channels before meandering towards the sea. Sediments carried by the waters flow through a flat plain, creating the Lena River Delta. Hundreds of small lakes and ponds are visible dotted around the tundra.
This false-colour image was captured on 14 January 2019, the peak of the Arctic winter, and shows a large amount of ice in the waters surrounding the delta. Cracks can be seen in the turquoise-coloured ice at the top of the image, and several icebergs can also be seen floating in the Arctic waters to the right. Snow can also be seen in yellow on the mountains at the bottom of the image.
The delta’s snow-covered tundra is frozen for most of the year, before thawing and blossoming into a fertile wetland during the brief polar summer – a 32 000 sq km haven for Arctic wildlife. Swans, geese and ducks are some of the migratory birds that breed in the productive wetland, which also supports fish and marine mammals.
In 1995, the Lena Delta Reserve was expanded, making it the largest protected area in Russia.
The two identical Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments, which can see through clouds and rain, and in the dark, to image Earth’s surface below. This is particularly useful for providing imagery for emergency response during extreme weather conditions, or monitoring areas prone to long periods of darkness, in this case, the Arctic.
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
On 21 November, the Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite lifted off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, US. The Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite is the first of two identical satellites to provide critical measurements of sea-level change. Since sea-level rise is a key indicator of climate change, accurately monitoring the changing height of the sea surface over decades is essential for climate science, for policy-making and, ultimately, for protecting the lives of those in low-lying regions at risk. Once in orbit and commissioned, this new mission will take the role of radar altimetry reference mission, continuing the long-term record of measurements of sea-surface height started in 1992 by the French–US Topex Poseidon and then the Jason series of satellite missions.
The Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission is a true example of international cooperation. While Sentinel-6 is one of the European Union’s family of Copernicus missions, its implementation is the result of the unique collaboration between ESA, NASA, Eumetsat and NOAA, with contribution from the French space agency CNES.
Read more about the Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Artist's impression of Heracles landing on the Moon.
ESA is working with the Canadian and Japanese space agencies to prepare the Heracles robotic mission to the Moon in the mid-to-late-2020s. Using the Gateway as a halfway point, a robotic rover will scout the terrain in preparation for the future arrival of astronauts, and deliver lunar samples to Earth.
This mission offers the best and earliest chance to deliver Moon samples to Earth on NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
Goals also include testing new hardware, demonstrating technology and gaining experience in operations while strengthening international partnerships in exploration.
A small lander with a rover inside weighing around 1800 kg in total will land and be monitored by astronauts from the space gateway. An ascent module will take off from the surface and return to the gateway with samples taken by the rover.
Heracles will demonstrate these technologies and prove their value for humans. Later missions will include a pressurised rover driven by astronauts and an ascent module for the crew to return home.
Communications are key, with satellites providing high-speed networks to operate rovers from orbit, including feeding visuals from cameras, control signals to move the cameras, arms and wheels, and transmitting scientific data.
When the ascent module carrying the sample container arrives, the Gateway’s robotic arm will capture and berth it with the outpost’s airlock for unpacking and transfer of the container to Orion and subsequent flight to Earth with returning astronauts.
Heracles is an international programme to use the Gateway to the fullest and deliver samples to scientists on Earth using new technology that is more capable and lighter than previous missions.
Credits: ESA/ATG Medialab
This highly compact beam forming network has been designed for multi-beam satellite payload antennas. Generating a total of 64 signal beams outputted from a single antenna, this novel design could cover the entire Earth with multiple spot beams from geostationary orbit.
“The traditional solution for a multibeam telecommunications satellite payload would be a single feed per signal beam, but only a limited number of feeds are able to be accommodated in front of the satellite antenna, with each feed requiring a dedicated amplifier,” explains Petar Jankovic of ESA’s Radio Frequency Equipment and Technology section.
“This is a highly integrated, lower mass alternative, developed with Airbus in Italy.”
What looks like a sunburst design is actually a ‘Rotman’ lens, laid down on a printed circuit board, used to direct and focus microwaves. These are commonly employed in terrestrial radar systems, for instance aboard high-end drones or in-car radar, and are also being looked at for future 5G base stations.
A single flat Rotman lens allows beam scanning along a single axis. For this design, eight of these Rotman lenses are stacked horizontally, and eight more are arranged vertically. The result is a two-dimensional array of 64 pencil-shaped signal beams – and this architecture can be leveraged up as desired.
“Testing of our prototype demonstrator shows high performance, demonstrating low insertion loss and with the measured worst-case return loss for the beam ports and array ports always better than 15 decibels throughout the full Ka- operative band,” adds Petar. “For all our measured beams very regular pointing has been achieved.”
Almost perfect alignment between simulation and measurement results have been achieved, guided by ESA in-house software that converts mathematical models of the lenses into geometric structures, combined with commercial software used to simulate the prototype in advance of its manufacture and testing.
Developed through ESA’s long-running Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) programme, this beam forming network demonstrator was designed and built using space-qualified solutions, materials and processes. The next step would be to manufacture a qualification model to qualify the design at equipment level for flight.
Credits: ESA-P. Jankovic
ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, Juice, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French 09:14 local time/14:14CEST on 14 April 2023 to begin its eight-year journey to Jupiter, where it will study in detail the gas giant planet’s three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
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 is 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
On 21 November, the Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite lifted off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, US. The Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite is the first of two identical satellites to provide critical measurements of sea-level change. Since sea-level rise is a key indicator of climate change, accurately monitoring the changing height of the sea surface over decades is essential for climate science, for policy-making and, ultimately, for protecting the lives of those in low-lying regions at risk. Once in orbit and commissioned, this new mission will take the role of radar altimetry reference mission, continuing the long-term record of measurements of sea-surface height started in 1992 by the French–US Topex Poseidon and then the Jason series of satellite missions.
The Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission is a true example of international cooperation. While Sentinel-6 is one of the European Union’s family of Copernicus missions, its implementation is the result of the unique collaboration between ESA, NASA, Eumetsat and NOAA, with contribution from the French space agency CNES.
Read more about the Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Lights, camera, action for NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins and Victor Glover. The duo will install European payloads outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk on 27 January, guided by the know-how of their colleagues.
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen is seen in this image installing the Columbus Ka-band or ColKa terminal that will enable faster communication with Europe during a ‘dress rehearsal’ in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas in 2018.
Andrea will serve as ground IV, directing Mike and Victor through the installation of the small fridge-sized device by radio from NASA’s mission control.
ColKa will connect the Columbus module to the European Data Relay System, satellites in geostationary orbit that transfer data via European ground stations. This will enable faster uplink and downlink speeds between the European segment of the Space Station and European researchers on the ground.
In addition to installing ColKa, the pair will also complete cable and antenna rigging for the Bartolomeo science platform outside Columbus.
The Bartolomeo service will provide end-to-end access for external payloads on the Space Station. A new community of start-ups and space entrepreneurs will benefit from an unobstructed view of Earth, direct control of experiments from the ground and the possibility of retrieving samples.
Tomorrow’s spacewalk will begin at 13:00 CET and will be streamed live via NASA TV. Follow live updates on the spacewalk on social media via @esaspaceflight.
Credits: NASA EVA NBL
The International Space Station has been orbiting Earth for over two decades, and the first European astronaut to arrive was Umberto Guidoni on 21 April 2001. Time is one of the Space Station’s main assets for running experiments in micro-gravity, as it is the only laboratory that can offer long-term exposure to a weightless world. But how do astronauts themselves perceive time when in space, and could this influence their operational ability when docking spacecraft or controlling robotic arms far from home?
This picture shows NASA astronaut Victor Glover as test subject for ESA’s Time experiment on 26 March 2021. This experiment uses virtual reality to chart whether our perception of time changes when living on the International Space Station.
Since perceptions of time and space are believed to share the same neural processes, and research on depth perception in weightlessness has shown that astronauts often underestimate distance, scientists speculate that, for astronauts, time also flies in space.
The Time experiment on the International Space Station investigates the claim that time subjectively speeds up in microgravity.
Astronauts gauge how long a visual target appears on a laptop screen and their reaction times to these prompts are recorded to measure speed of response and any changes over time.
Scientists are collecting more than just data on the neurological mechanisms at work here. The relativity of time, after all, implies that it is all in your head. As much as we can objectively measure and plot time, how individual humans perceive it is not just neurological but also psychological.
Time flies, and flying at 28 800 km/h time actually slows down according the theory of relativity. This month is a bumper month of celebrations for ESA and international spaceflight as we celebrate 20 years of Europeans on the International Space Station, 60 years since the first human Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth and the launch of ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet to the International Space Station on a Crew Dragon on 22 April. Thomas will be the first ESA astronaut to fly to space on a different vehicle than the US Space Shuttle or Russian Soyuz.
Thomas set-up the Time experiment during his first mission, Proxima, in 2017. He will now return to the outpost on his Alpha mission and will be the one of the last astronauts to be part of the Time experiment as a test subject. Since Umberto Guidoni arrived on the Space Station all those years ago, 16 ESA astronauts have visited the Station. ESA’s 2009 recruits have cumulatively spent over 7 years in orbit, conducting over 227 experiments in the Europe’s Columbus laboratory module alone. But who is keeping time?
If you would like to follow in the footsteps of these space explorers and float around the Space Station, now is the time as ESA is recruiting new astronauts. Find your way to space. The application process closes 28 May 2021.
Credits: NASA
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover is seen here sitting on top of the Kazachok surface science platform in stowed configuration, rather similar to how it will journey to Mars in 2022.
The duo were mated in a dedicated clean room at Thales Alenia Space (TAS), Cannes, together forming the so-called ‘landing module’. The latest round of tests include electrical, power and data transfer checks between the two elements.
The landing module will later be integrated inside the descent module for mass balancing checks, together with the carrier module that will transport the mission to Mars.
This is not the last time the two flight models will be mated. After completion of the tests in Cannes, the rover will return to the TAS cleanrooms in Turin, Italy, for further functional testing, before being shipped to the launch site in Baikonur.
In this image, the back right solar panel of the landing platform is seen partially deployed. The front of the rover is seen, with its iconic drill stowed in horizontal position. A first in Mars exploration, the drill will extract samples down to a maximum of two metres, where ancient biomarkers may still be preserved from the harsh radiation on the surface, and deliver them to the rover’s sophisticated laboratory for analysis.
The mission is targeting a September 2022 launch window, landing on Mars in June 2023. Its goal is to determine the geological history of the landing site at Oxia Planum, once thought to host an ancient ocean, and to determine if life could ever have existed on Mars.
The ExoMars programme is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Russian State Space Corporation, Roscosmos.
The integration activities at Cannes were carried out by Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space teams.
Credits: Thales Alenia Space
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the algal blooms swirling around the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Japan.
Algae blooms refer to the rapid multiplying of phytoplankton – microscopic marine plants that drift on or near the surface of the sea. Excessive algal growth, or algal blooms, can become visible to the naked eye and collectively tint ocean waters, allowing us to detect these tiny organisms from space.
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. Harmful algal blooms can be stimulated by environmental factors, such as light, warmer water temperatures and excessive nutrients.
In the image pictured here, captured on 14 June 2019, high concentrations of algae can be seen around 130 km off Hokkaido Island, the second largest island of Japan. This particular algal bloom measured more than 500 km across and 200 km wide, with the area pictured here showing just a small portion of the bloom, around 100 km from north to south and around 110 km from east to west.
During the spring bloom season, nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates are more abundant in the surface waters. Without direct in situ measurements, it is difficult to distinguish the type of algae that cover the ocean here. Algae is then usually carried by winds and currents closer to the coast of Japan.
It is in this part of the Pacific Ocean, near Hokkaido, where the colder Oyashio Current converges from the north with the warmer Kuroshio Current, which flows from the south. When two currents with different temperatures and densities collide, they often create eddies – swirls of water drifting along the edge of the two water masses. The phytoplankton growing atop the surface waters become concentrated along the boundaries of these eddies and trace out the motions of the water.
Phytoplankton play an important role in the food chain, but they also have an impact on the global carbon cycle by absorbing carbon dioxide on a scale equivalent to that of terrestrial plants. Primary production is often used to describe the synthesis of organic material from carbon dioxide and water through photosynthesis. Even small variations in primary productivity can affect carbon dioxide concentrations, as well as influencing biodiversity and fisheries.
As ocean surfaces warm in response to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases, phytoplankton productivity will need to be monitored both consistently and systematically.
Satellite data can not only be used to track the growth and spread of harmful algae blooms in order to alert and mitigate against damaging impacts for tourism and fishing industries, but have also recently proven fundamental to providing a global view of phytoplankton and their role in, and response to, climate change.
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 Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, in the cleanroom at ESTEC, in May 2021.
Juice will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. The mission will investigate the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants and the Jupiter system as an archetype for the numerous giant exoplanets now known to orbit other stars.
Credits: ESA
This image, taken on 27 January 2018 during orbit 17813 by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express, shows a portion of the Cerberus Fossae system in Elysium Planitia near the martian equator.
The image was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view which is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. The ground resolution is approximately 16 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 159°E/10°N.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Aeolus in the launch tower ahead of its 21 August liftoff from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. This extraordinary satellite has been at the launch site since early July where it has been tested and prepared for launch. It will be taken into orbit on a Vega rocket.
Aeolus carries one of the most sophisticated instruments ever to be put into orbit. The first of its kind, the Aladin instrument includes revolutionary laser technology to generate pulses of ultraviolet light that are beamed down into the atmosphere to profile the world’s winds – a completely new approach to measuring the wind from space.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Video du CSG - G Barbaste
This image shows four sky maps made with the new ESA Gaia data released on 13 June 2022.
Click on the titles below to download the individual maps.
Click here for a portrait version of this collage.
ESA’s Gaia data release 3 shows us the speed at which more than 30 million objects in the Milky Way (mostly stars) move towards or away from us. This is called ‘radial velocity’. We can now see how the objects move over a large portion of the Milky Way’s disc.
The rotation of the disc, projected along the line-of-sight, is visible from the alternation of bright areas (moving away from us) and dark areas (moving toward us). Several objects whose radial velocity differs from that of their close environment are visible by contrast.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC) appear as bright spots in the lower right corner of the image. The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy is visible as a faint quasi-vertical stripe below the Galactic Centre. Several globular clusters appear as tiny dots in the image, such as 47 Tucanae, the dark dot on the immediate left of the SMC.
2. Radial velocity and proper motion
This sky map shows the velocity field of the Milky Way for ~26 million stars. The colours show the radial velocities of stars along the line-of-sight. Blue shows the parts of the sky where the average motion of stars is towards us and red shows the regions where the average motion is away from us. The lines visible in the figure trace out the motion of stars projected on the sky (proper motion). These lines show how the direction of the speed of stars varies by galactic latitude and longitude. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC) are not visible as only stars with well defined distances were selected to make this image.
Gaia not only maps the stars in our galaxy but tells us what is in between the stars. The space between stars is not empty but instead filled with dust and gas clouds, out of which stars are born.
Through the precise measurements of the stars' positions and their dispersed light, Gaia allows us to map the absorption of the starlight by the interstellar medium. Those maps provide us with essential clues to the physical mechanisms of the formation of stars, galaxies, and the history of our home galaxy.
This map shows the interstellar dust that fills the Milky Way. The dark regions in the centre of the Galactic plane in black are the regions with a lot of interstellar dust fading to the yellow as the amount of dust decreases.The dark blue regions above and below the Galactic plane are regions where there is little dust.
4. Chemical map
What stars are made of can tell us about their birthplace and their journey afterwards, and therefore about the history of the Milky Way. With today’s data release, Gaia is bringing us a chemical map of the galaxy.
With Gaia, we see that some stars in our galaxy are made of primordial material, while others like our Sun are made of matter enriched by previous generations of stars. Stars that are closer to the centre and plane of our galaxy are richer in metals than stars at larger distances.
This all-sky view shows a sample of the Milky Way stars in Gaia’s data release 3. The colour indicates the stellar metallicity. Redder stars are richer in metals.
Read more about Gaia's data release 3 here.
Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Solar Orbiter will address big questions in space science to help us understand how our star creates and controls the giant bubble of plasma – the heliosphere – that surrounds the whole Solar System and influences the planets within it. It will concentrate on four main areas of investigation; very broadly:
- Solar wind: What drives the solar wind and the acceleration of solar wind particles?
- Polar regions: What happens in the polar regions when the solar magnetic field flips polarity?
- Magnetic field: How is magnetic field generated inside the Sun and how does it propagate through the Sun’s atmosphere and outwards into space?
- Space weather: How do sudden events like flares and coronal mass ejections impact the Solar System, and how do solar eruptions produce the energetic particles that lead to extreme space weather at Earth?
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA.
Credits: ESA–S.Poletti
Left - Jupiter (center), and its moons Europa, Thebe, and Metis are seen through the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter.
The Great Red Spot appears yellow because of the way the infrared image was processed.
Right - Jupiter and its moons Europa, Thebe, and Metis are seen through NIRCam’s 3.23 micron filter.
Scientists were especially eager to see these commissioning images because they are proof that Webb can observe the satellites and rings near bright solar system objects such as Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. Scientists will use Webb to explore the tantalizing question of whether we can see plumes of material spewing out of moons like Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Webb may be able to see the signatures of plumes depositing material on the surface on Europa.
Credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows the informally named Holden Basin, which formed part of Mars’ Uzboi-Ladon-Morava (ULM) outflow system.
The area outlined by the bold white box indicates the area imaged by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on 24 April 2022 during orbit 23133.
Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team
ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, Juice, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French 09:14 local time/14:14CEST on 14 April 2023 to begin its eight-year journey to Jupiter, where it will study in detail the gas giant planet’s three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
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 is 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
In this curious view, Saturn looms in the foreground on the left, adorned by shadows cast by the giant planet’s rings. To the right, the rings emerge from behind the planet’s hazy limb, stretching outwards from Cassini’s perspective.
At the time the images in this mosaic were collected, on 28 May 2017, Cassini was looking over the horizon just after its sixth pass through the gap between Saturn and the rings as part of its Grand Finale. The mission would eventually conclude on 15 September 2017, by plunging into the planet’s atmosphere.
The view is of the rings’ unlit face, where sunlight filters through from the other side. The part of the planet seen here is in the southern hemisphere.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency. The image mosaic was first released on 16 October 2017.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy cluster MACS J0416. This is one of six being studied by the Hubble Frontier Fields programme, which together have produced the deepest images of gravitational lensing ever made. Scientists used intracluster light (visible in blue) to study the distribution of dark matter within the cluster.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and M. Montes (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia), CC BY 4.0
Valentine’s Day 2015 and ESA’s Rosetta swooped in towards Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko for a daring close encounter. At just 6 km from the surface, it was the closest the spacecraft had ever been to the comet at that point in the mission.
The 14 February flyby was not only special because of its proximity, Rosetta also passed through a unique observational geometry: for a short time the Sun, craft and comet were exactly aligned. In this position, surface structures cast almost no shadows, allowing the reflection properties of the surface material to be determined.
As a side effect, Rosetta’s shadow could also be seen, cast on the surface of the comet as a fuzzy rectangular dark smudge somewhat larger than Rosetta itself, in this case measuring some 20 x 50 m. The full image measures about 228 m across.
This particular image is the last in a sequence of 12 that captured the spacecraft’s shadow as it tracked over the surface in the Imhotep region on the larger of the comet’s two lobes.
The image was taken by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera and the image resolution is just 11 cm/pixel.
Rosetta subsequently made closer flybys, notably in the final phase of its incredible mission as it drew ever closer to the comet before finally coming to rest on the surface in September 2016.
The image is one of thousands freely available in ESA’s Archive Image Browser.
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
A Falcon 9 Crew Dragon is prepared for the launch of Crew-2 on launch pad 39A on 19 April 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.
French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. Called ‘Alpha’the mission will see a European astronaut launch on a US spacecraft for the first time in over a decade. Thomas is flying alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide on the Crew Dragon. Thomas will be the first ESA astronaut to fly on a vehicle other than the US Space Shuttle or Russian Soyuz.
The Crew-2 launch is scheduled for 22 April at 06:11 EDT/12:11 CEST.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Mirror, mirror, on the Moon, how far away are you?
MoonLIGHT or Moon Laser Instrumentation for General relativity/geophysics High-accuracy Tests is seeking the answer to this and more questions on general relativity, the gravitational dynamics of the Earth-Moon system and the deep lunar interior.
MoonLIGHT is a laser retroreflector, imaged here, which allows laser beams sent from Earth to be reflected back from the Moon to receivers on our planet. This allows very precise measurement of the distances between the reflector and the ground station.
Known as lunar laser ranging, this technique has been in use since the Apollo missions to investigate Einstein’s theory of general relativity, lunar geophysics and the Earth-Moon dynamics, among other fields of study. However, data from retroreflectors of the Apollo era is not as precise due to lunar vibrations, or the perceived lagging and wanning of the Moon when viewed from Earth, caused by its eccentric and tilted orbit of our planet.
The MoonLIGHT retroreflector can reduce this error thanks to its next-generation compact design. The single, larger reflector with a front face 100mm in diameter can improve accuracy to within millimeters.
Developed by the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics and managed by ESA, MoonLIGHT will launch in 2024 on NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative to the Reiner Gamma region of the Moon, which has one of the most distinctive and enigmatic natural features on the Moon, called lunar swirl, characterized by high surface luminosity (albedo) and the very rare presence of a local magnetic field.
Credits: INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), Frascati (Rome), Italy
The snow-covered Alps are featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission.
Heavy snowfall in the Alps has been recorded over the past weeks, with up to 3 m of snow recorded in some parts of the Austrian and Italian Alps. On 14 December, the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument onboard the Sentinel-3 mission acquired this image of snow cover and low cloud coverage around the Alps.
According to Eumetsat, the snow came in two bouts. The first occurred during the weekend of 5-6 December and was stronger, influencing the western part of the Alps, while the second, on 8 and 9 December, brought snow to central and eastern Alps, and was not as abundant as the first. The skies then cleared after 10 December, allowing this image to be captured.
The first bout of snow lead to road blocks, power outages throughout South Tyrol and avalanche warnings, according to Der Spiegel.
Just south of the Alps, the typical winter fog and haze can be seen over the Po Valley. The haze is most likely to be a mix of both fog and smog, trapped at the base of the Alps owing to both its topography and atmospheric conditions. Patches of snow can also be seen on the island of Corsica, Croatia and at the bottom of the Apennines in central Italy.
Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. The mission is based on two identical satellites orbiting in constellation for optimum global coverage and data delivery.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
On 22 April 2021, on Earth Day, Thomas Pesquet is planned to return to the International Space Station for his second mission, Alpha. Ahead of his launch, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Cape Canaveral, USA, in a region known as the Space Coast.
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.
Cape Canaveral is a cape and city in Brevard County, in east-central Florida. The cape is separated from the mainland by the Banana River, Merritt Island and the Indian River from east to west.
The cape area is part of the region known as the Space Coast, and is home to the Kennedy Space Center – including the space shuttle landing facility, a visitor’s centre, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and a space vehicle assembly building. Launch Complex 39A, visible along the coast, is where the Saturn V rocket carrying Apollo 11 began its voyage to the moon in 1969, carrying Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin.
Before the space programme was launched, Cape Canaveral was a stretch of barren, sandy scrubland. The cape was chosen for rocket launches owing to its close proximity to the equator. As the linear velocity of Earth’s surface is greatest towards the equator, the southerly location of the cape allows for rockets to take advantage of this by launching eastward – in the same direction as Earth’s rotation.
The space centre is included in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, visible in the top of the image, which occupies more than 550 sq km of estuaries and marshes. It preserves the habitat of around 1000 plant and 500 wildlife species, included several endangered species. The city of Cape Canaveral lies just south of the space centre and around 8 km north of Cocoa Beach (visible in the bottom of the image).
It is from here where French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will be launched on his second mission to the International Space Station. Thomas will be the first ESA astronaut to fly on a SpaceX Crew Dragon launching on a Falcon 9 rocket, together with NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. He will be the first European to launch from the US since 2011, when Roberto Vittori, from Italy, flew onboard space shuttle Endeavour to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
During his six-month mission, called Alpha, Thomas will spend much of his time on scientific research and will also be carrying out maintenance tasks as part of the station’s crew. Towards the end of his mission, he will serve as commander of the Station. He will be the fourth European to hold the post of commander, after ESA astronauts Frank De Winne, Alexander Gerst and Luca Parmitano.
Watch Thomas Pesquet’s launch live on ESA Web TV.
This image, captured on 2 February 2021, 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