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A ripple of bright blue threads through this galaxy like a misshapen lake system. The foreground of this image is littered with nearby stars with their gleaming diffraction spikes. A keen eye can also spot a few other galaxies that, while masquerading as stars at first glance, reveal their true nature on closer inspection.
The central galaxy streaked with colour, IC 4870, was discovered by DeLisle Stewart in 1900 and is located approximately 28 million light-years away. It contains an active galactic nucleus, or AGN: an extremely luminous central region so alight with radiation that it can outshine the rest of the galaxy put together. AGNs emit radiation across the complete electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma-rays, produced by the action of a central supermassive black hole that is devouring material getting too close to it. IC 4870 is also a Seyfert galaxy, a particular kind of AGN with characteristic emission lines.
IC 4870 has been imaged by Hubble for several studies of nearby active galaxies. By using Hubble to explore the small-scale structures of AGN in nearby galaxies, astronomers can observe the traces of collisions and mergers, central galactic bars, nuclear starbursts, jets or outflows, and other interactions between a galactic nucleus and its surrounding environment. Images such as this can help astronomers understand more about the true nature of the galaxies we see throughout the cosmos.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0
This image was taken on 1 January 2018 by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express, and shows a crater named Ismenia Patera.
This crater lies within Arabia Terra, an intriguing part of Mars’ surface thought to have once hosted significant volcanic activity. Scientists remain unsure of exactly how Ismenia Patera formed; it may be the result of a meteorite smashing into the surface of Mars and forming an impact crater, or the collapsed remnants of a once-massive supervolcano.
This image was created using data from HRSC’s nadir channel, which points directly downwards and offers a field of view aligned perpendicular to the planetary surface, and colour channels. The ground resolution is approximately 17 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 2°E /39°N.
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is ready for fuelling. This image shows the spacecraft leaving the Payload Preparation Facility and being transferred to the Hazardous Processing Facility, where the fuelling operations will take place. This marks a major milestone in the launch campaign. Launch is planned for mid-April.
Juice is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. It will make detailed observations of gas giant Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. This ambitious mission will characterise these moons 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.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG – P. Baudon
The changing activity of our Sun as seen by ESA’s Proba-2 satellite in 2019.
The satellite is continuously monitoring the Sun – one image was selected to represent each day of the year in this montage of 365 Suns. The images were taken by the satellite’s SWAP camera, which works at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to capture the Sun’s hot turbulent atmosphere – the corona, at temperatures of about a million degrees.
Throughout 2019, the Sun showed low levels of activity, as it is currently at the minimum of its 11-year activity cycle. The most energetic flare of the year was observed on 6 May close to the eastern limb of the Sun (the left side of the Sun in the corresponding image). It was classified as a C9.9 class flare that divides solar flares according to their strength. The smallest are A, followed by B, C, M and X, with each letter representing a ten-fold increase in energy output such that an X-class flare is 100 times stronger than a C-class flare.
Proba-2 also performed various scientific campaigns in 2019. One of these campaigns is evident in the images above in early September, where the Sun is positioned to one side of the images. Throughout this period Proba-2 provided extended images of the solar atmosphere to the east of the Sun, in support of a scientific study performed with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission. To make these observations the whole satellite was reoriented to observe more of the solar atmosphere.
Proba-2 will continue to support scientific campaigns and missions throughout 2020, including ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission, which is scheduled for launch on 5 February 2020 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. Proba-2 has already supported Solar Orbiter during the mission’s preparation, as technology heritage has passed from the satellite’s SWAP imager to the Solar Orbiter Extreme Ultraviolet Imager.
With its suite of 10 state-of-the-art instruments, Solar Orbiter will perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high-latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection. The mission will provide unprecedented insight into how our parent star works in terms of the 11-year solar cycle, and how we can better predict periods of stormy space weather.
Credits: ESA/Royal Observatory of Belgium
The stately and inclined spiral galaxy NGC 3511 is the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. The galaxy is located 43 million light-years away in the constellation Crater (The Cup). From Hubble’s vantage point in orbit around Earth, NGC 3511 is tilted by about 70 degrees, intermediate between face-on galaxies that display picture-perfect spiral arms and edge-on galaxies that reveal only their dense, flattened discs.
Astronomers are studying NGC 3511 as part of a survey of the star formation cycle in nearby galaxies. For this observing programme, Hubble will record the appearance of 55 local galaxies using five filters that allow in different wavelengths, or colours, of light.
One of these filters allows only a specific wavelength of red light to pass through. Giant clouds of hydrogen gas glow in this red colour when energised by ultraviolet light from hot young stars. As this image shows, NGC 3511 contains many of these bright red gas clouds, some of which are curled around clusters of brilliant blue stars. Hubble will help astronomers catalogue and measure the ages of these stars, which are typically less than a few million years old and several times more massive than the Sun.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy in space. It is seen tilted at an angle, as a stormy disc filled with clouds of stars and dust. It is coloured more yellowish in the centre, and bluer out to the edge of the disc, where the ends of curved spiral arms break away from the disc. Spots of red light scattered through the galaxy mark where stars are actively forming. The galaxy is on a black background.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0
ESA's astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.
The five candidates are Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois, and Marco Sieber. The group is part of the 17-member astronaut class of 2022, selected from 22 500 applicants from across ESA Member States.
The astronaut candidates will be trained to the highest level for future space missions. Basic training includes learning about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalks and survival training.
The astronaut candidates are joined by Australian Space Agency astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg.
Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot
Preparation activities are on-going in Turin, at Thales Alenia Space for the installation of the thermal protection layers on the payload and service module of ESA Euclid's spacecraft.
Euclid is an ESA mission to map the geometry of the Universe and better understand the mysterious dark matter and dark energy, which make up most of the energy budget of the cosmos. The mission will investigate the distance-redshift relationship and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and redshifts of galaxies and clusters of galaxies out to redshifts ~2, or equivalently to a look-back time of 10 billion years. In this way, Euclid will cover the entire period over which dark energy played a significant role in accelerating the expansion of the Universe.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
ESA - S. Corvaja
This satellite mockup, seen during antenna testing, shows the shape of ESA’s new Proba-V Companion CubeSat, which is due for launch at the end of this year.
The mission is a 12-unit ‘CubeSat’ – a small, low-cost satellite built up from standardised 10-cm boxes. It will fly a cut-down version of the vegetation-monitoring instrument aboard the Earth-observing Proba-V to perform experimental combined observations with its predecessor.
A pair of antennas for the CubeSat, mounted in this ‘structural and thermal model’ underwent testing at ESA’s Compact Antenna Test Range at the ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands.
“The white patch is a directional high-data rate antenna, needed to downlink large amounts of imagery to users,” explains Xavier Collaud of Aerospacelab in Belgium, developing the mission for ESA. “Then the brown patch is an omnidirectional antenna, that – combined with a similar antenna on the other side – allows the reception and transmission of lower-data rate signals in any direction, enabling the control of the mission.
“These antennnas are commercial off the shelf equipment, allowing the building up of small satellites in an affordable, modular manner. They are supplied by Syrlinks, in partnership with ANYWAVES, both in France.
“Testing the antennas in the fully controlled environment of ESA’s CATR gives us the sensitivity we need for top-quality results. We’ve been testing with the antennas mounted within this satellite model because its structure influences the antenna radiation – so for instance we’ve been measuring the signal patterns and strength with the solar panels stowed as well as deployed, to make sure we can communicate with the CubeSat in that configuration.”
Launched in 2013, Proba-V was an innovative a ‘gap filler’ mission between the Vegetation instruments monitoring global plant growth aboard the full-size Spot-4 and -5 satellites and compatible imagery coming from Copernicus Sentinel-3, the first of which flew in 2016.
By combining the views from three adjacent telescopes into one, Proba-V’s Vegetation achieved a continent-spanning swath of 2250 km, allowing to image the entire world’s plant growth in just over a day. But with its operational mission now over, Proba-V has shifted to experimental mode.
As part of that effort, the Proba-V Companion CubeSat will host a single telescope version of the Vegetation imager, left over from Proba-V development. The two missions will perform joint observations, to evaluate how well the instrument performs on a smaller, lower-cost platform.
Aerospacelab will also gain operational experience to be applied to its planned constellation of geospatial-information-gathering small satellites.
“The antenna test campaign took about two weeks,” adds ESA antenna engineer Eric Van Der Houwen. “We obtained spherical near-field patterns of the antennas, both individually and in combination, to measure how much they radiate and in which directions, having begun with a reference antenna in order to determine our setup was optimal.”
Based on the antenna test results, as well as mechanical testing performed with another CubeSat model, the Proba-V Companion CubeSat mission has now entered its detailed qualification and production ‘Phase D’, on track for launch this year. The mission is supported through the Fly in-orbit testing element of ESA’s General Support Technology Programme.
Credits: ESA-P. de Maagt
Launched in 2018, the BepiColombo spacecraft is due to make its flyby of Earth this Friday 10 April, helping it slow down to allow the Sun’s gravity to pull it closer to Mercury. This picture comes from 2014, showing its main Mercury Planetary Orbiter module bathed in simulated sunlight during ground testing, to give an idea of how the spacecraft will be illuminated in space as it passes its homeworld.
BepiColombo is actually made up of three spacecraft modules: ESA’s MPO seen here, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Mercury Magnetosphere Orbiter and the Mercury Transfer Module transporting the other two modules on their way to the innermost planet. They are due to arrive in December 2025 after two Venus flybys and six Mercury flybys.
The full BepiColombo stack was too big for ESA’s Large Space Simulator, so thermal vacuum testing of the three modules took place separately. Within this cavernous 10-m wide, 15-m high chamber, they were subjected to orbital-quality vacuum as well the temperature extremes prevailing in space.
BepiColombo should be visible to astronomers in southern parts of the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere during Friday’s flyby; find out more <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/BepiColombo/Spot_BepiColombo_during_its_goodbye_flyby" rel="nofollow"here. To learn more about the development, testing and heat-proofing of the mission, click <a href="https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/How_we_heat-proofed_ESA_s_Mercury_mission" rel="nofollow"here.
Credits: ESA–A. Le Floch
ESA’s Aeolus satellite within the Vega rocket fairing being joined to the rest of the rocket in the launch tower at 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 - P Baucon
This image shows a region of Mars named Deuteronilus Mensae. It comprises data gathered on 25 February 2018 during orbit 17913. The ground resolution is approximately 13 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 25.5°E/44°N. This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface. North is to the right.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared image of galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207 recalls the iciness of long-dead bones mixed with eerie vapours. Two large luminous ‘eyes’ lie at the galaxies’ cores, and gauzy spiral arms reach out into the vast distances of space.
Webb’s mid-infrared image excels at showing where the cold dust glows throughout these galaxies — and helps pinpoint where stars and star clusters are buried within the dust. Find these regions by looking for the pink dots along the spiral arms. Many of these areas are home to actively forming stars that are still encased in the gas and dust that feeds their growth. Other pink dots may be objects that lie well behind these galaxies, including extremely distant active supermassive black holes known as quasars.
The largest, brightest pink region that glimmers with eight prominent diffraction spikes at the bottom right is a mini starburst — a location where many stars are forming in quick succession. Find the lace-like holes in the spiral arms. These areas are brimming with star formation.
Finally, scan the black background of space, where objects shine brightly in a rainbow of colours. Blue circles with tiny diffraction spikes are foreground stars. Objects without spikes are very distant galaxies.
[Image description: Two spiral galaxies take up almost the entire view and appear to be overlapping. They are angled from top left to bottom right. The galaxy at left, IC 2163, is smaller and more compact than the galaxy at right, NGC 2207. The background of space is black, dotted with tiny foreground stars and extremely distant galaxies.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0
Embedded within these resin discs are vital clues to determine whether future space missions will fail or thrive.
These are microsections taken from printed circuit boards (PCBs) and other parts, being considered for use by coming ESA projects. Such elements are key building blocks of space missions.
As their components become smaller, spacecraft are becoming much smarter and more capable – provided of course that the parts work as they are supposed to.
ESA’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory is tasked with checking if the performance and workmanship of candidate parts meet rigorous space-quality standards. Any defect in the parts (or in the soldering process used to attach components to PCBs) could impair spacecraft, or even lead to the total loss of a mission.
For its role as technical gatekeeper, the Lab is equipped with powerful diagnostic tools, including optical and scanning electron microscopes. The microsections are cast inside resin at ESTEC to make them easier to grind, polish and inspect under a microscope. In some cases, fluorescent dye is added to help detect defects – it fills cracks when the sample is initially cased in resin so that engineers can see that the defects were not caused in the preparation of the sample.
This image is one of 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
This image shows ESA’s next exoplanet mission, Plato, in the Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF). In this room, the noise of a rocket taking off is simulated. The large room measures 11 by 9 metres and is 16.4 metres high. One wall is equipped with multiple noise horns, that have a similar design as ordinary speakers. Nitrogen is shot through the horns and can produce noise up to 156 decibels. During tests, no one is allowed into the room that is surrounded by a 0.5-m-thick layer of concrete to keep the noise in. Plato passed its test with flying colours.
[Image description: An engineer dressed in a blue lab coat and white hairnet looks upon the Plato’s structural model inside the LEAF chamber in ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre. Plato is put on top of a structure of four wheels. The LEAF room is green and has one wall with huge white holes in the wall. These holes are noise horns that can produce up to 156 decibels. The satellite is surrounded by microphones on sticks to measure the acoustic environment.]
Credits: ESA/ G. Porter
Spotted by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, the Conger ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica around 15 March.
Zoom in to explore this image at its full resolution.
The region has experienced unusual high temperatures, with the Concordia station reaching a record of -11.8C on 18 March; the average high temperatures in March are around -48C. While the cause of the collapse of the ice shelf is not clear, global warming is likely a contributing factor.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Copernicus Sentinel-2 brings you some of the jewels of the Maldives for Valentine’s week. Arguably one of the most romantic destinations in the world, the Maldives lie in the Indian Ocean about 700 km southwest of Sri Lanka. The nation is made up of more than 1000 coral islands spread across more than 20 ring-shaped atolls.
A number of these little islands can be seen in the image, with the turquoise colours depicting clear shallow waters dotted by coral reefs and the red colours highlighting vegetation on land. Different cloud formations can also be seen, the difference in appearance is likely to be due to the different height above the surface.
Like many low-lying islands, the Maldives are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise. In fact, the Maldives are reported to be the flattest country on Earth, with no ground higher than 3 m and 80% of the land lying below 1 m. With satellite records showing that over the past five years, the global ocean has risen, on average, 4.8 mm a year, rising seas are a real threat to these island jewels.
With the promise of white sandy beaches, azure ocean waters and coral reefs, this romantic getaway draws more than 600 000 tourists every year. While tourism is extremely important for the national economy, development on these pristine islands create pressures, such as ensuring an adequate supply of freshwater, treating sewage and potential pollution entering the ocean. Other environmental issues facing the Maldives include the loss of habitats of endangered species and the damage to the coral reefs.
The Maldives are undoubtedly fragile but one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and a place to be loved and cherished now and in the future. Valentine’s Day reminds us of love and maybe this year and beyond it’s good to remember to love our planet.
This image, which was captured on 26 August 2015, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Plentiful parked airliners at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, usually the busiest airport in India until the COVID-19 pandemic, as seen by ESA’s oldest operational Earth observation mission, Proba-1.
The cubic-metre-sized satellite has been in orbit for more than 18 years. It left Earth from India: Proba-1 was launched from the country’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre by Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on 22 October 2001.
The first in ESA’s family of ‘Project for On-Board Autonomy’ missions, Proba-1 began life as a technology demonstration satellite, subsequently becoming an Earth observation mission. Its main hyperspectral Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer is accompanied by the monochromatic High Resolution Camera, which took the 5-m spatial resolution image shown here.
Overseen from ESA’s ESEC-Redu centre in Belgium, the highly-automated Proba-1 introduced various then-novel but now mainstream technologies to space, including lithium ion batteries, gallium arsenide solar panels, the use of startrackers for gyro-free attitude control and ESA-developed ERC-32 microprocessors running its flight computer.
Proba-1 continues to deliver imagery to scientific teams around the globe, while also providing useful data on the longevity of space systems and components.
Proba-1 was followed by the Sun-observing Proba-2 in 2009 and vegetation-tracking Proba-V in 2013, with the double-satellite Proba-3 to demonstrate precision formation flying while studying the Sun’s corona planned for launch in 2022.
This 25 sq. km HRC image was acquired on 7 May 2020.
Credits: ESA
Integration of the Orion spacecraft on top of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The European Service Module that will power the first Orion uncrewed flight, ESM-1, was lifted up and mated with the rocket in preparation for launch, together with the crew module. Integration began on 20 October 2021, and the spacecraft was secured atop the powerful rocket six days later.
Artemis I is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions for human deep space exploration. The European Service Module will power Orion's crew module around the Moon and back with over 30 engines. The European Service Module provides electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen as well as keeping the spacecraft at the right temperature and on course.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over the largest island of the Azores: São Miguel. Resting at the intersection of the Eurasian, African and North American tectonic plates, the Azores form a string of volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, some 1500 km west of mainland Portugal. The nine major islands are divided into three groups, with São Miguel falling into the eastern group.
The archipelago is an autonomous region of Portugal and home to just under 250 000 people. We can see the capital of the region, Ponta Delgada, in the bottom left of the image. The main transport hub of the Azores, João Paulo II de Ponta Delgada International Airport, is clearly visible in the same part of the image. Tourism is an important industry for the islands, with visitors flocking to enjoy the unspoilt beaches and breathtaking landscapes, from the geysers of São Miguel to the natural waterfalls of Flores.
Known locally as the Green Island, São Miguel is the most populous of the islands and amidst the lush foliage, volcanic craters, and freshwater lakes, visitors are spoilt for choice when it comes to visual attractions.
The largest freshwater lake in the Azores, Lagoa das Sete Cidades, can be seen in the top left of the image. It lies in a large volcanic crater and consists of two lakes: Lagoa Azul and Lagoa Verde. On the right of the image we can see Furnas Lake, in the Furnas Valley, famous for its volcanic cones. The volcanic landscape of the island has even influenced local cooking methods. Cozido das Furnas, a stew-type dish, is prepared by lowering a pot filled with meat and vegetables into the hot springs dotted around the valley, and leaving it to cook for around five hours.
The Azores islands are rich in terms of flora and fauna, and are home to a large number of resident and migratory bird populations. Efforts are being made to restore and expand the laurel forests typical of the Macaronesian islands (an area covering the archipelagos of Madeira, Azores, Canary Islands and Cape Verde) as only around 2% of the native laurel forest remains on the islands.
ESA, in collaboration with the French Space Agency, CNES, is organising a symposium on 25 years of progress in radar altimetry, which will be held in Ponta Delgada from 24–29 September. With global sea-level rise a global concern, the symposium will focus on the advances made in our understanding of the open ocean, the cryosphere, and coastal and land processes. The annual meeting of the Ocean Surface Topography Science Team and the International DORIS Service Workshop will also be held in the same week.
This image, which was captured on 8 September 2016, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
NGC 4485 has been involved in a dramatic gravitational interplay with its larger galactic neighbour NGC 4490 — out of frame to the bottom right in this image. This ruined the original, ordered spiral structure of the galaxy and transformed it into an irregular one.
The interaction also created a stream of material about 25 000 light-years long, connecting the two galaxies. The stream, visible to the right of the galaxy is made up of bright knots and huge pockets of gassy regions, as well as enormous regions of star formation in which young, massive, blue stars are born.
Below NGC 4485 one can see a bright, orange background galaxy: CXOU J123033.6+414057. This galaxy is the source of X-ray radiation studied by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It’s distance from Earth is about 850 million light-years.
Learn more about this image here
Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA; CC BY 4.0
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The sunny side of the Moon is hotter than boiling water, but the night side is colder than anywhere on Earth. Lunar temperatures vary from 123 degrees Celsius in the day and down to minus 233 degrees Celsius permanently shadowed polar craters.
Image description: Half of the Moon wears a scarf, the other half has sunglasses . Two thermometers show minus 233 degrees Celsius and 123 degrees Celsius.
Credits: ESA
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared image shows four coiled shells of dust around a pair of Wolf-Rayet stars known as Apep for the first time. Previous observations by other telescopes showed only one.
Webb’s data, combined with observations from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, confirmed that the two Wolf-Rayet stars sail past one another approximately every 190 years. Over each orbit, they make a close pass for 25 years, producing and spewing amorphous carbon dust.
Webb’s new data also confirmed that there are three stars gravitationally bound to one another in this system. Holes are “sliced” into these shells by the third star, a massive supergiant.
Learn more about this result here.
[Image description: Four dust shells in Wolf-Rayet Apep expand away from three central stars that appear as a single pinpoint of light. The shells are curved, and the interior shell looks like a backward lowercase e shape.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Y. Han (Caltech), R. White (Macquarie University), A. Pagan (STScI); CC BY 4.0
This fuzzy orb of light is a giant elliptical galaxy filled with an incredible 200 billion stars. Unlike spiral galaxies, which have a well-defined structure and boast picturesque spiral arms, elliptical galaxies appear fairly smooth and featureless. This is likely why this galaxy, named Messier 49, was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. At a distance of 56 million light-years, and measuring 157 000 light-years across, M49 was the first member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies to be discovered, and it is more luminous than any other galaxy at its distance or nearer.
Elliptical galaxies tend to contain a larger portion of older stars than spiral galaxies and also lack young blue stars. Messier 49 itself is very yellow, which indicates that the stars within it are mostly older and redder than the Sun. In fact, the last major episode of star formation was about six billion years ago — before the Sun was even born!
Messier 49 is also rich in globular clusters; it hosts about 6000, a number that dwarfs the 150 found in and around the Milky Way. On average, these clusters are 10 billion years old. Messier 49 is also known to host a supermassive black hole at its centre with the mass of more than 500 million Suns, identifiable by the X-rays pouring out from the heart of the galaxy (as this Hubble image comprises infrared observations, these X-rays are not visible here).
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Blakenslee, P Cote et al.; CC BY 4.0
This image features Arp 72, a very selective galaxy group that only includes two interacting galaxies: NGC 5996 (the large spiral galaxy) and NGC 5994 (its smaller companion, in the lower left of the image). Both galaxies lie approximately 160 million light-years from Earth, and their cores are separated from each other by a distance of around 67 thousand light-years. Moreover, the distance between the galaxies at their closest points is even smaller, closer to 40 thousand light-years. Whilst this might still sound vast, in galactic separation terms it is really very cosy! For comparison, the distance between the Milky Way and its nearest independent galactic neighbour Andromeda is around 2.5 million light-years. Alternatively, the distance between the Milky Way and its largest and brightest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (satellite galaxies are galaxies that are bound in orbit around another galaxy), is about 162 thousand light-years.
Given this, coupled with the fact that NGC 5996 is roughly comparable in size to the Milky Way, it is not surprising that NGC 5996 and NGC 5994 — apparently separated by only 40 thousand light-years or so — are interacting with one another. In fact, the interaction might be what has caused the spiral shape of NGC 5996 to distort and apparently be drawn in the direction of NGC 5994. It also prompted the formation of the very long and faint tail of stars and gas curving away from NGC 5996, up to the top right of the image. This ‘tidal tail’ is a common phenomenon that appears when galaxies get in close together, as can be seen in several Hubble images.
[Image Description: A large spiral galaxy with a smaller neighbouring galaxy. The spiral galaxy is wide and distorted, with colourful dust. Its companion lies close by it at the end of a spiral arm, to the lower left. A long, faint tail of stars reaches up from the right side of the spiral galaxy to the top of the image. Several small, distant galaxies can be seen in the background, as well as one bright star in the foreground.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Galbany, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; CC BY 4.0
The Andromeda galaxy, or M31, the Milky Way’s largest galactic neighbour, as viewed by ESA’s Gaia satellite using information from the mission’s second data release.
This view is not a photograph but was compiled by mapping the total density of stars detected by Gaia in each pixel of the image.
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 context map is based on data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) experiment onboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) mission. It shows the slice of Mars captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft to celebrate the mission’s 15th anniversary: the intriguing and once-active Tharsis province.
Included in this labelled view is the extensive canyon system of Valles Marineris, the web-like system of fissures comprising Noctis Labyrinthus, two out of four volcanoes, the north pole, and the so-called Martian dichotomy: the difference in altitude between the northern and southern regions of Mars. Areas at higher altitudes are shown in red-orange tones, while those at lower ones are displayed in blue-greens (as indicated by the scale to the bottom left).
This map was created by the Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing group at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team, FU Berlin
Space Science image of the week:
Seen here is a Cheops team member reflected in the satellite’s main mirror, and framed by the black internal surface of the telescope tube. The back of the secondary mirror is seen at the centre of the image, held in place by three struts.
Cheops is ESA’s CHaracterising ExoPlanet Satellite mission that will monitor Earth-to-Neptune-sized planets orbiting stars in other star systems.
Light from the host stars will enter the telescope and be reflected by the primary mirror towards the secondary, which in turn will direct the starlight through a hole in the centre of the primary mirror, onto the CCD detector.
It is the same design used for the larger NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESA’s Herschel observatory.
By precisely tracking a star’s brightness, Cheops will detect the transit of a planet as it passes briefly across the star’s face. This allows the radius of the planet to be accurately measured. For those planets of known mass, the density will be revealed, providing an indication of the structure, and ultimately how planets of this size formed and evolved.
The Cheops telescope reached an important milestone at the end of April when it was delivered to the University of Bern by Leonardo-Finmeccanica, on behalf of Italy’s ASI space agency and the INAF Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.
Read more about the telescope and latest tests: CHEOPS telescope arrives at new home
Cheops is an ESA mission in partnership with Switzerland and with important contributions from 10 other member states.
Credit: University of Bern / T. Beck
On Monday 3 July the Ariane 5 launch vehicle for flight VA261 left the final assembly building for roll-out to the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Flight VA261 will carry to space two payloads – the German space agency DLR’s experimental communications satellite Heinrich Hertz and the French communications satellite Syracuse 4b. The flight will be the 117th and final mission for Ariane 5, a series which began in 1996. Flight VA261 will lift off as soon as 5 July at 23:00 BST (6 July at 00:00 CEST), pending suitable conditions for launch.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The 3-stage section of the Soyuz launcher that will lift ESA’s Cheops satellite into space is transferred to the launch pad in a horizontal position and raised vertically in-situ. Launch is scheduled for 18 December from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG/S Martin
This swirling palette of colours portrays the life cycle of stars in a spiral galaxy known as NGC 300.
Located some six million light-years away, NGC 300 is relatively nearby. It is one of the closest galaxies beyond the Local Group – the hub of galaxies to which our own Milky Way galaxy belongs. Due to its proximity, it is a favourite target for astronomers to study stellar processes in spiral galaxies.
The population of stars in their prime is shown in this image in green hues, based on optical observations performed with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile. Red colours indicate the glow of cosmic dust in the interstellar medium that pervades the galaxy: this information derives from infrared observations made with NASA’s Spitzer space telescope, and can be used to trace stellar nurseries and future stellar generations across NGC 300.
A complementary perspective on this galaxy’s composition comes from data collected in X-rays by ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory, shown in blue. These represent the end points of the stellar life cycle, including massive stars on the verge of blasting out as supernovas, remnants of supernova explosions, neutron stars, and black holes. Many of these X-ray sources are located in NGC 300, while others – especially towards the edges of the image – are foreground objects in our own Galaxy, or background galaxies even farther away.
The sizeable blue blob immediately to the left of the galaxy’s centre is especially interesting, featuring two intriguing sources that are part of NGC 300 and shine brightly in X-rays.
One of them, known as NGC 300 X-1, is in fact a binary system, consisting of a Wolf-Rayet star – an ageing hot, massive and luminous type star that drives strong winds into its surroundings – and a black hole, the compact remains of what was once another massive, hot star. As matter from the star flows towards the black hole, it is heated up to temperatures of millions of degrees or more, causing it to shine in X-rays.
The other source, dubbed NGC 300 ULX1, was originally identified as a supernova explosion in 2010. However, later observations prompted astronomers to reconsider this interpretation, indicating that this source also conceals a binary system comprising a very massive star and a compact object – a neutron star or a black hole – feeding on material from its stellar companion.
Data obtained in 2016 with ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR observatories revealed regular variations in the X-ray signal of NGC 300 ULX1, suggesting that the compact object in this binary system is a highly magnetized, rapidly spinning neutron star, or pulsar.
The large blue blob in the upper left corner is a much more distant object: a cluster of galaxies more than one billion light years away, whose X-ray glow is caused by the hot diffuse gas interspersed between the galaxies.
Credits: ESA/XMM-Newton (X-rays); MPG/ESO (optical); NASA/Spitzer (infrared). Acknowledgement: S. Carpano, Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor – ASIM – is performing well outside the European Columbus laboratory module on the International Space Station.
Launched in April 2018, the space storm-hunter is a collection of optical cameras, photometers and an X- and gamma-ray detector designed to look for electrical discharges born in stormy weather conditions that extend above thunderstorms into the upper atmosphere.
These ‘transient luminous events’ sport names such as red sprites, blue jets and elves.
Satellites have probed them and observations have even been made from mountain tops but because they occur above thunderstorms they are difficult to study in greater detail from Earth.
In contrast, the International Space Station’s low orbit covers a large part of Earth along the equator and is ideally placed to capture the sprites and jets.
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen managed to catch the elves and sprites in action during his 2015 mission on board the International Space Station.
Now months into its commissioning, ASIM is performing well. Using data continuously collected by ASIM, researchers are investigating the relationship between terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, lightning and high-altitude electric discharges across all seasons.
Aside from being a little-understood phenomenon and part of our world, these powerful electrical charges can reach high above the stratosphere and have implications for how our atmosphere protects us from radiation from space.
ASIM is keeping researchers busy. Data collected so far have prompted eight presentations so far at the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the largest international gathering of Earth and space scientists.
Learn more about ASIM and electric storms in the upper atmosphere with this infographic.
Credits: ESA
The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Vidéo du CSG - JM Guillon
As Mars exploration prepares for a rebirth, a European rover tunes up its gear for the challenges ahead.
Tomorrow, 23 July, ESA and dozens of industrial partners will assess the readiness of the ExoMars robotic explorer, named Rosalind Franklin, for a trip to the Red Planet in 2022. The European rover will drill down to two metres into the martian surface to sample the soil, analyse its composition and search for evidence of life buried underground.
The rover successfully proved that it is fit to endure the martian conditions during the environmental test campaign earlier this year in Toulouse, France. This laboratory on wheels withstood temperatures as low as –120°C and less than one hundredth of Earth’s atmospheric pressure to simulate the extremes of its journey through space and on the surface of Mars.
By the end of this week a more robust set of solar panels will begin its trip to reunite with the rover after some cracks were detected during those environmental tests. New fasteners are in place and will be on their way from the Airbus facilities in Stevenage, in the UK, to Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, where the rover awaits power up at the beginning of August.
The disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic have added new obstacles for industry across Europe on the road to Mars. Parachute and interface tests are expected to resume in October.
New missions to Mars launch from a broad range of nations – while the United Arab Emirates’ historic first mission to Mars lifted off from Japan last Sunday, China is preparing to launch tomorrow its first rover to Mars, known as Tianwen-1. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is set to take off with the Perseverance rover onboard next week, on July 30.
These missions focus on the search for evidence of life on the Red Planet and a better understanding of how Earth and Mars evolved so differently.
“We hope that ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover will help write a new page in Mars exploration by allowing us to study organic molecules on the spot,” says Jorge Vago, ESA’s ExoMars project scientist.
Dr Rosalind Franklin, the prominent scientist behind the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of life’s most important molecules, would have been 100 years old on 25 July this year. Her niece, also named Rosalind Franklin in her memory, points out that the X-ray diffraction expert “never conceived science as a race of competitors.”
After a visit to ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands last year, Rosalind believes that her aunt would have loved the ExoMars team spirit. “The work of ESA engineers on the rover struck me – they really do it for the results, not for themselves. This what Rosalind Franklin was all about: commitment and dedication to science,” said Rosalind from her home in California, US.
A series of talks and events is taking place around the globe this week to celebrate the centenary of this “woman of integrity who went after scientific discovery for the betterment of humankind”, as her niece describes her. The legacy of the scientist lives on today, and the ExoMars rover will help leave her symbolic footprint on Mars in 2023.
The ExoMars rover is part of the ExoMars programme, a joint endeavour between ESA and the Russian State Space Corporation, Roscosmos.
Credits: Airbus
This image is packed full of galaxies! A keen eye can spot exquisite ellipticals and spectacular spirals, seen at various orientations: edge-on with the plane of the galaxy visible, face-on to show off magnificent spiral arms, and everything in between. The vast majority of these specks are galaxies, but to spot a foreground star from our own galaxy, you can look for a point of light with tell-tale diffraction spikes.
The most alluring subject sits at the centre of the frame. With the charming name of SDSSJ0146-0929, the glowing central bulge is a galaxy cluster — a monstrous collection of hundreds of galaxies all shackled together in the unyielding grip of gravity. The mass of this galaxy cluster is large enough to severely distort the spacetime around it, creating the odd, looping curves that almost encircle the cluster.
These graceful arcs are examples of a cosmic phenomenon known as an Einstein ring. The ring is created as the light from a distant objects, like galaxies, pass by an extremely large mass, like this galaxy cluster. In this image, the light from a background galaxy is diverted and distorted around the massive intervening cluster and forced to travel along many different light paths towards Earth, making it seem as though the galaxy is in several places at once.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
The ExoMars rover has a brand new control centre in one of Europe’s largest Mars yards. The Rover Operations Control Centre (ROCC) was inaugurated on 30 May 2019 in Turin, Italy, ahead of the rover’s exploration adventure on the Red Planet in 2021.
The control centre will be the operational hub that orchestrates the roaming of the European-built laboratory on wheels, named after Rosalind Franklin, upon arrival to the martian surface on Kazachok, the Russian surface platform.
The epicentre of the action for directing Mars surface operations on Earth is at the ALTEC premises in Turin, Italy. From here, engineers and scientists will work shoulder to shoulder at mission control, right next to a very special Mars yard.
Filled with 140 tonnes of soil, the Mars-like terrain has sandy areas and rocks of various sizes that will help rehearse possible mission scenarios.
Credits: ALTEC
The Rosette Nebula is a vast star-forming region, 100 light-years across, that lies at one end of a giant molecular cloud the constellation Monoceros. The nebula is estimated to contain around 10,000 solar masses. The nebula is located about 5,000 light-years away from Earth. Intense radiation from the young stars inside a cluster in the nebula causes the gasses to glow. The background image is from the Digitized Sky Survey, while the inset is a small portion of the nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Dark clouds of hydrogen gas laced with dust are silhouetted across the image. The colours come from the presence of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
[Image description: A square, ground-based observation of the entire Rosette Nebula. A large, diffuse donut shape primarily composed of light brown and gray gas and dust extends to the edges. Several bright blue stars are at its clearer center. There are innumerable small stars throughout the background, most of which are blue. A tiny box at center-left connects to a zoomed-in image of this region at bottom left from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble image shows a dark gray V that extends from just below top left all the way down to the lower right corner and back up toward the top right. It looks like thick, irregular smoke. Behind the dark gray on the left side there are arced lines in light orange and yellow. The background at top left is hazier, the blues covered in semi-transparent orange wisps, making a few sections appear green. In the bottom right, the background is bluer. There are a few bright red and purple stars scattered along the right half.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, DSS; CC BY 4.0
The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over the high, snow-studded Alps under clear skies.
The Alps extend 1200 km through eight different countries: France, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. This mountain range, which is inhabited by some 20 million people, covers an area of approximately 200 000 sq km.
Captured on 16 February 2019, this true-colour image shows little clouds, particularly over the Alps and the surrounding flatter lands in southern France. There is an interesting contrast between this and the haze hanging over the Po valley in Italy, directly south of the Alps. 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 are also visible on the island of Corsica, to the left of mainland Italy, Croatia, to the right, and at the bottom of the Apennines in central Italy. Most of Italy’s rivers find their source in the Apennines, including the Tiber and the Arno.
The Adriatic Sea to the east of Italy is visible in turquoise, particularly the coastal area surrounding the Gargano National Park, jutting out. This light-green colour of the sea along the coast is likely to be caused by sediment carried into the sea by river discharge.
Directly to the right of the Alps, the image shows a pale-green Lake Neusiedl straddling the Austrian-Hungarian border. Neusiedl, meaning ‘swamp’ in Hungarian, is the largest endorheic lake in central Europe, meaning water flows into but not out of the lake, hence its size and level frequently fluctuates. It is a popular area for windsurfing, sailing and spotting the woolly Mangalica pig.
To the right, the freshwater Lake Balaton is visible, and is the largest lake in central Europe. It stretches for over 75 km in the southern foothills of Hungary. Its striking emerald-green colour is probably down to the presence of algae that grow in the shallow waters.
Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. The mission provides critical information for a range of applications from marine observations to large-area vegetation monitoring. The satellite’s instrument package includes an optical sensor to monitor changes in the colour of Earth’s surfaces.
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
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is ready for fuelling. This image shows the spacecraft leaving the Payload Preparation Facility and being transferred to the Hazardous Processing Facility, where the fuelling operations will take place. This marks a major milestone in the launch campaign. Launch is planned for mid-April.
Juice is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. It will make detailed observations of gas giant Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. This ambitious mission will characterise these moons 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.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG – P. Baudon
A three-dimensional rendering of the Nereidum Mountain Range in the southern hemisphere of Mars created from data captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA's Mars Express orbiter in 2015. The rendering shows a dune field and two large craters with a canyon between them viewed from the west. The rendering was generated by the combination of data from the Mars digital terrain model (DTM), the nadir (downward-looking) channel and the colour channels of the HRSC instrument.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
‘Twas the day before launch and all across the globe, people await liftoff for Artemis I with hope.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft with its European Service Module, is seen here on Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, on 12 November.
After much anticipation, NASA launch authorities have given the GO for the first opportunity for launch: tomorrow, 16 November with a two-hour launch window starting at 07:04 CET (06:04 GMT, 1:04 local time).
Artemis I is the first mission in a large programme to send astronauts around and on the Moon sustainably. This uncrewed first launch will see the Orion spacecraft travel to the Moon, enter an elongated orbit around our satellite and then return to Earth, powered by the European-built service module that supplies electricity, propulsion, fuel, water and air as well as keeping the spacecraft operating at the right temperature.
The European Service Modules are made from components supplied by over 20 companies in ten ESA Member States and USA. As the first European Service Module sits atop the SLS rocket on the launchpad, the second is only 8 km away being integrated with the Orion crew capsule for the first crewed mission – Artemis II. The third and fourth European Service Modules – that will power astronauts to a Moon landing – are in production in Bremen, Germany.
With a 16 November launch, the three-week Artemis I mission would end on 11 December with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The European Service Module detaches from the Orion Crew Module before splashdown and burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere, its job complete after taking Orion to the Moon and back safely.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows a dried-up river valley on Mars named Nirgal Vallis. It comprises data gathered on 16 November 2018 during Mars Express Orbit 18818. The ground resolution is approximately 14 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 315°E/27°S. This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera. The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface. North is to the right.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This view was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express. It shows a bird’s-eye view of the Idaeus Fossae region of Mars – a region with layers of dark volcanic minerals, steep rocky outcrops, and an intriguing example of a butterfly crater.
[Image description: A reddish-brown, rocky surface of Mars with a large circular crater dominating the centre. The crater has steep, jagged edges and a shadowed interior, suggesting depth. Surrounding the crater is a flat, dusty plain scattered with smaller impact craters. The terrain appears dry and barren, with subtle ridges and textures across the surface.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This true color image was created from @NASA Cassini's raw images in red, green & blue filters, taken on Oct. 28, 2016.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Mindaugas Macijauskas
Space Science image of the week:
ESA’s Integral space observatory has been orbiting Earth for 15 years, observing the ever-changing, powerful and violent cosmos in gamma rays, X-rays and visible light. Studying stars exploding as supernovas, monster black holes and, more recently, even gamma-rays that were associated with gravitational waves, Integral continues to broaden our understanding of the high-energy Universe.
This image visualises the orbits of the spacecraft since its launch on 17 October 2002, until October of this year.
Integral travels in a highly eccentric orbit. Over time, the closest and furthest points have changed, as has the plane of the orbit. The orbit brought it to within 2756 km of Earth at its closest, on 25 October 2011, to 159 967 km at the furthest, two days later.
This kind of orbit provides long periods of uninterrupted observations with nearly constant background away from the radiation belts around Earth that would otherwise interfere with the satellite’s sensitive measurements.
In 2015, spacecraft operators conducted four thruster burns carefully designed to ensure that the satellite’s eventual entry into the atmosphere in 2029 will meet the Agency’s guidelines for minimising space debris. Making these disposal manoeuvres so early also minimises fuel usage, allowing ESA to exploit the satellite’s lifetime to the fullest.
The orbital changes introduced during these manoeuvres are seen in the wide-spaced orbits to the left of the image, highlighted in white in this annotated version of the image.
Watch a movie showing Integral's orbits
Find out more about Integral in this infographic
Credit: ESA/ScienceOffice.org, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, being installed on a ‘multi-purpose trolley’ in the Rosetta clean room at the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC in the Netherlands on 30 April. The multi-purpose trolley allows the spacecraft to be rotated and titled, providing better access to the engineers for integration operations and preparation for testing, and in general to facilitate the work on the different sides of the spacecraft. The trolley is made of non-magnetic material, to comply to the strict magnetic cleanliness requirements of the spacecraft.
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-SJM Photography
Europe shines brightly at night, as seen in this mosaic created from over 7000 pictures taken by astronauts on the International Space Station. This is the first nighttime mosaic of Europe in colour ever produced with calibrated space images.
The composition uses images from 2017 with a resolution of around 100 metres per pixel. Until 2021, the International Space Station was the only spacecraft suitable for capturing colour images of Earth at night. Resolution is equally important: astronauts were able to capture images at five metres per pixel, exceeding the capabilities that most satellites can currently offer.
Astronaut photography has emerged as the best source for scientists to map artificial light. All space agencies and their crews contribute to the effort, with ESA astronauts playing a vital role since Paolo Nespoli became one of the pioneers of nighttime photography from space in 2010.
“Most of the images that you see of Europe at night are artistic interpretations of black and white images, not real colour,” explains Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel from the Complutense University of Madrid and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain.
By combining citizen science with artificial intelligence, the Cities at Night project created the mosaic by processing thousands of images and time-lapses, and correcting distortions in them. The missing patches at the bottom (north of Africa) and top (Scotland in the UK) of this mosaic are filled with data from NASA’s weather satellite Suomi NPP.
Different colours represent different lighting technologies, with warmer, redder tones generally indicating sodium light sources. The whiter and bluer emissions belong to light-emitting diode lamps, or LED technology, in our streets. The whitening of artificial light can be seen in this comparison between 2017 and 2022.
According to scientists, the transition towards white and blue-rich light radiation is eroding the natural nighttime cycles across the continent. Excessive lighting disrupts the circadian day-and-night rhythm of living organisms, including humans, with negative health effects on species and whole ecosystems.
A scientific study identified three major negative impacts: the suppression of melatonin, the response of insects and bats towards or away from light, and the visibility of stars in the night sky.
“Astronaut photography allows us to look back in time at global light pollution during periods when no colour-sensitive satellites existed,” adds Alejandro.
As part of the Plan-B project to protect our biodiversity and ecosystems, Cities at Night will release an app in 2026 that will allow Europeans to check how light pollution has evolved over time where they live.
Credits: ESA/NASA/Cities at Night
Kiruna, the northernmost town in Sweden, is featured in this snowy image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
Kiruna, visible in darker tones just left of the centre in the image, is located in the county of Norrbotten and is around 145 km north of the Arctic Circle. The city, with a population of around 22 000 inhabitants, is on the eastern shore of Lake Luossa (Luossajärvi), between the iron-ore Kiruna (Kiirunavaara) and Luossa (Luossavaara) mountains.
Around 20 km east of Kiruna, the small town of Jukkasjärvi is visible, and is best known for its annual ice hotel constructed from snow and ice blocks taken from the nearby Torne River. Thin, dark lines cutting across the image are roads that connect the towns with other parts of Sweden.
At a latitude of almost 68°, around 40 km east of Kiruna, lies ESA’s Kiruna ground station, which in September 2020 celebrated 30 years of space excellence. The station is hard to spot, but is located in the centre-right of the image, just above a dark lake.
Ideally positioned to support polar-orbiting missions, the station is a crucial gateway for much of the data enabling us to study our planet’s oceans, water and atmosphere, forecast weather and understand the rapid advance of climate change.
Kiruna ground station is part of the Agency’s tracking station network – Estrack – a worldwide network linking satellites in orbit and across the Solar System with ESA’s Space Operations Centre, ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany. The station features two sophisticated terminals with 15 m and 13 m-diameter antennas to communicate with satellites in Earth’s orbit, including CryoSat, Swarm, Copernicus Sentinel-1 and the recently-launched Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite.
While the North Pole Satellite Station in Alaska caught the spacecraft’s first signals from space after separation from the launcher, the Kiruna ground station tracked the satellite’s first days. Eumetsat then completed the final ‘orbit acquisition,’ taking over responsibility for commissioning, routine operations and distribution of the mission’s vital data.
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.
This image, captured on 27 May 2020, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme
.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA's astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.
The five candidates are Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois, and Marco Sieber. The group is part of the 17-member astronaut class of 2022, selected from 22 500 applicants from across ESA Member States.
The astronaut candidates will be trained to the highest level for future space missions. Basic training includes learning about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalks and survival training.
Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot
Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich atop a Falcon 9 rocket at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US. Once launched, 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.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja