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A camera closes in on a detailed model satellite, to simulate the extreme ‘guidance navigation and control’ (GNC) challenge of rendezvousing with an uncooperative target, such as a derelict satellite or distant asteroid.
This scene takes place in ESA’s GNC Rendezvous, Approach and Landing Simulator, or GRALS, based at the ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, which is used to test vision-based navigation algorithms as well as cameras in development for future space debris removal, as well as the Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence.
GRALS is the Agency’s single longest lab, incorporating a 33-m long railing. Camera-carrying robotic arms can be mounted onto this railing to mimic the entire cycle of closing in upon a rendezvous target.
ESTEC is ESA’s largest establishment, the technical heart of the Agency. The site is devoted to programme management, technology development and satellite testing. This year’s ninth ESA Open Day at ESTEC is taking place on Sunday 4 October on an online basis. To participate you need to register. Registration is open until Friday at midday CEST.
Credits: ESA-M Schwendener/L Pasqualetto-Cassinis
Sławosz Uznański, ESA project astronaut from Poland, gives a “thumbs-up” from the heart of the action inside the Columbus training mockup at ESA's European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.
Sławosz's path to this point started in November 2022 when he was selected as a member of the ESA astronaut reserve after a year-long selection process. The 2022 ESA recruitment campaign received more than 22 500 applications from across its Member States.
As of 1 September 2023, Sławosz joined ESA as a project astronaut. He is currently engaged in an intensive initial training programme, preparing for a future space mission.
Born in Poland in 1984, Sławosz has a background in space systems engineering and has been involved in research related to radiation effects. Before joining ESA, he worked at CERN in Switzerland, overseeing operation Large Hadron Collider.
During his first week at the European Astronaut Centre, Sławosz followed initial International Space Station training, and learned all about the European laboratory module, Columbus. This module serves as the living and working quarters for European astronauts on the International Space Station. Additionally, he received an overview of space systems, vehicles, and operations.
The European Astronaut Centre (EAC) serves as a centre for astronaut selection, training, medical support, and surveillance. It plays a central role in supporting astronauts and their families throughout the preparation and execution of their space missions. EAC serves as a key training centre for astronauts worldwide, preparing them for missions involving European hardware.
Within EAC’s training hall, there are classrooms, payload training booths, an extended reality laboratory, and mockups of European human-rated spacecraft, including the Columbus laboratory. A team of instructors ensures that all astronauts receive training that meets the high standards required for spaceflight.
Ready to embark on his mission duties with the European Astronaut Corps, Sławosz is excited for this adventure to begin.
Credits: ESA
The 11th annual ESA Open Day at ESA’s technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, took place on the weekend of 1 and 2 October 2022. On 1 October, visitors with disabilities had the opportunity to follow the tour at their own pace. On both days visitors were able to meet astronauts, space scientists and engineers and learn all about the work carried out at Europe’s largest space establishment.
Credits: G. Porter
At ESA’s ESOC mission control centre, in Darmstadt, Germany, every launch is preceded by the pre-launch briefing – and the all-important team photos.
The next spacecraft to be flown from ESOC, Hera, is scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this month.
Hera is Europe’s first asteroid mission and will be the first spacecraft to rendezvous with and explore a binary asteroid system. The Didymos system is special one: it is home to humankind’s first attempt at a technique that may one day be used to protect Earth from an asteroid on a collision course – asteroid deflection.
Two years ago, on 26 September 2022, NASA’s 580-kilogram DART spacecraft slammed into the 151-metre Dimorphos asteroid, changing its orbit around the larger, 780-metre Didymos asteroid. Now, Hera is launching on a mission to perform a detailed post-impact survey of Dimorphos. Using a suite of scientific instruments on the main spacecraft and its two CubeSat passengers, Hera will assess the effectiveness of asteroid deflection and help turn this experiment into a well-understood and repeatable technique for planetary defence.
Gathered inside the Press Centre at ESOC, this is the team that will take Hera to Didymos. They will oversee the mission from its crucial first hours in space, through its two-year journey to Didymos, via Mars, and during its exploration of the two target asteroids.
Months of preparations and simulations at mission control culminated in Saturday’s launch dress rehearsal and team photos. This final rehearsal brought together the ESA teams and the mission’s partners to test communication links between ESOC, ground stations and the spacecraft, and complete a final, meticulous run through of the sequence of events that will take place on launch day.
Preparations, rehearsals, briefings and team photos complete, mission control is GO for launch!
Follow @esa, @ESA_Hera and @esaoperations on X for live updates on launch day.
Click here for the latest details on how and when to watch the launch live.
Credits: ESA / J.Mai
Space Science image of the week:
Diffuse, water-ice clouds, a hazy sky and a light breeze. Such might have read a weather forecast for the Tharsis volcanic region on Mars on 22 November 2016, when this image was taken by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
Clouds, most likely of water-ice, and atmospheric haze in the sky are coloured blue/white in this image.
Below, 630 km west of the volcano Arsia Mons, the southernmost of the Tharsis volcanoes, outlines of ancient lava flows dominate the surface. The dark streaks are due to the action of wind on the dark-coloured basaltic sands, while redder patches are wind blown dust. A handful of small impact craters can also be seen.
The Trace Gas Orbiter, a joint effort between ESA and Roscosmos, arrived at Mars on 19 October last year. Since March it has been repeatedly surfing in and out of the atmosphere, generating a tiny amount of drag that will steadily pull it into a near-circular 400 km altitude orbit. It is expected to begin its full science operational phase from this orbit in early 2018.
Prior to this ‘aerobraking’ phase, several test periods were assigned to check the four science instrument suites from orbit and to refine data processing and calibration techniques.
The false-colour composite shown here was made from images taken with the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System, CaSSIS, in the near-infrared, red and blue channels.
The image is centred at 131°W / 8.5°S. The ground resolution is 20.35 m/pixel, and the image is about 58 km across. At the time the image was taken, the altitude was 1791 km, yielding a ground track speed of 1.953 km/s.
Credit: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) of the ESA–JAXA BepiColombo mission is unpacked at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou.
Credits: JAXA/ESA–M. Basile
The Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite takes us over the Italian Alps and down to the low plains that surround the city of Milan.
The image captures the transition between the high snow-capped peaks of the Italian Alps and the flatlands of the northwest Po Valley. This transition cuts a sharp diagonal across the image, with the mountains in the top left triangle and the flat low-lying land in the bottom right.
The southern part of the beautiful Lake Maggiore can also be seen in the image. Although its northern end crosses into Switzerland, Lake Maggiore is Italy’s longest lake and its character changes accordingly. The upper end is completely alpine in nature and the water is cool and clear, the middle region is milder lying between gentle hills and Mediterranean flora, and the lower end advances to the verge of the plain of Lombardy.
The River Ticino, which rises in Switzerland and flows through Lake Maggiore, can be seen emerging from the lake’s southern tip. Here, the land, which is one of the most fertile regions in Italy, gives way to numerous agricultural fields, which are clearly visible to the west of the river. The city of Milan lies to the east of the river.
In May 2019, Milan will host ESA’s Living Planet Symposium. Held every three years, these symposia draw thousands of scientists and data users from around the world to discuss their latest findings on the environment and climate.
This image, which was captured on 9 October 2017, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Our sister planet Venus is a dynamic and unusual place. Strong winds swirl around the planet, dragging thick layers of cloud with them as they go. These fierce winds move so speedily that they display ‘super-rotation’: Earth’s can move at up to a fifth of our planet’s rotation speed, but winds on Venus can travel up to 60 times faster than the planet.
Observations from ESA’s Venus Express, which orbited Venus from 2006 to 2014, and other international spacecraft have probed deeper into this wind and cloud in past years, and uncovered some peculiar behaviour.
The side of the planet facing away from the Sun is somewhat more mysterious than the other side, but what we do know shows it to be quite different, with never-before-seen cloud types, shapes and dynamics – some of which appear to be connected to features on the surface below.
Super-rotation appears to behave more chaotically on the night side than the day side, but climate modellers remain unsure why. Night-side clouds also create different patterns and shapes than those found elsewhere – large, wavy, patchy irregular and filament-like patterns – and are dominated by mysterious ‘stationary waves’. These waves rise up within the atmosphere, do not move with the planet’s rotation, and appear to be concentrated above steep and higher-altitude regions of the surface, suggesting that Venus’ topography may well affect what happens in the cloud layers way up above.
These three images from the visible and infrared camera on Venus Express show these cloud features in detail: stationary waves (left), dynamical instabilities (middle) and mysterious filaments (right).
Venus Express was launched in 2005 and began orbiting Venus in 2006; the mission ended in December 2014. This image is based on the news item Venus' mysterious night side revealed, published in 2017.
Credits: ESA, NASA, J. Peralta & R. Hueso
Description
Colour view across the Margaritifer Terra region in the southern hemisphere of Mars, which incorporates a portion of Erythraeum Chaos to the north (right).
The image mosaic is composed of Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera images from orbit 16648 (22 February 2017), with a ground resolution of 15 m per pixel, and orbit 4090 (13 March 2007), with a ground resolution of 17 m per pixel. The images are centred on 346°E/23°S.
The color image was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view which is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the HRSC colour channels.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
With Christmas almost here, the red and white of this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image bring a festive feel to this week’s image featuring Tromsø – the largest city in northern Norway.
This false-colour image was processed in a way that included the near-infrared channel, which makes vegetation appear bright red. The snow over the surrounding mountains is visible in white, adding to the Christmassy feel of the image.
Most of Tromsø, lies on the island of Tromsøya, visible at the top of the image. Owing to its northerly location, the city is a popular area to experience the majestic phenomenon of the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
Tromsø is over 300 km north of the Arctic Circle. During the winter, it’s shrouded in darkness – the Sun sets in late-November and doesn’t rise again until January. The image was captured on 15 October 2019, which means it is one of the last images that Sentinel-2 could acquire before darkness descended.
During the long winter months, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission is used to monitor this region instead of Sentinel-2. As an advanced radar mission, Copernicus Sentinel-1 can image the surface of Earth through cloud and rain and regardless of whether it is day or night.
In September 2019, the German research icebreaker Polarstern left from Tromsø for a mammoth Arctic expedition. The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition involves the icebreaker spending a year drifting in the Arctic sea ice.
Spearheaded by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), MOSAiC is the biggest shipborne polar expedition of all time. The data gathered during the expedition will be used by scientists around the world to study the Arctic as the epicentre of global warming and gain fundamental insights that are key to better understand global 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
This Copernicus Sentinel-1 image combines two acquisitions over the same area of eastern Iraq, one from 14 November 2018 before heavy rains fell and one from 26 November 2018 after the storms. The image reveals the extent of flash flooding in red, near the town of Kut.
Kut is in the lower-centre of the image. It lies within a sharp ‘U-bend’ of the Tigris River, which can be seen meandering across the full width of the image. The image has been processed to show floods in red, and it is clear to see that much of the area was affected including agricultural fields around the town. Dark patches in the image, including the large patch in the centre , however, indicate that there was no or little change between the satellite acquisitions.
After the searing dry heat of summer, November typically signals the start of Iraq’s ‘rainy season’ –but November 2018 brought heavier rainstorms than usual. Many parts of the country were flooded as a result. Thousands of people had to be evacuated, and infrastructure, agricultural fields and other livelihoods were destroyed, and tragically the floods also claimed lives. Declared an emergency, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters was activated. The Charter takes advantage of observations from a multitude of satellites to aid emergency relief. Images from Copernicus Sentinel-1 contributed to this particular effort.
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 capability is particularly useful for monitoring and mapping floods, as the image shows. Satellite images play an increasingly important role in responding to disaster situations, especially when lives are at risk. Also, after an event, when damage assessments are needed and plans are being made to rebuild, images from satellites are a valuable resource.
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
Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a galaxy whose asymmetric appearance may be the result of a galactic tug of war. Located 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo, the spiral galaxy Messier 96 is the brightest of the galaxies in its group. The gravitational pull of its galactic neighbours may be responsible for Messier 96’s uneven distribution of gas and dust, asymmetric spiral arms, and off-centre galactic core.
This asymmetric appearance is on full display in a new Hubble image, which incorporates observations made in ultraviolet and optical light. Hubble images of Messier 96 have been released previously in 2015 and 2018. Each successive image has added new data, building up a beautiful and scientifically valuable view of the galaxy.
This third version gives an entirely new perspective on Messier 96’s star formation. The bubbles of pink gas in this image surround hot, young, massive stars, illuminating a ring of star formation in the outskirts of the galaxy. These young stars are still embedded within the clouds of gas from which they were born. The new data included for the first time in this image will be used to study how stars are born within giant dusty gas clouds, how dust filters starlight, and how stars affect their environments.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, tilted nearly face-on to us, with a slightly unusual shape. Its spiral arms form an oval-shaped ring around the galaxy’s disc, filled with blue light from stars, as well as pink glowing gas bubbles where new stars are forming. Threads of dark red dust swirl around the brightly glowing core, blocking some of its light. The dust lanes extend into and follow the spiral arms.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, D. Calzetti; CC BY 4.0
In 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) collides with the smaller body of the Didymos binary asteroid system in an attempt to measurably shift its orbit.
ESA’s Hera mission, now under study, will examine the aftermath of this impact to help determine whether humans can deflect threatening asteroids.
Hera will also demonstrate the ability to operate at close proximity around a low-gravity asteroid with some on-board autonomy similar in scope to a self-driving car, going on to deploy Europe’s first deep-space CubeSats, and potentially also a micro-lander, to test out a new multi-point intersatellite link technology.
Hera will be highlighted during Asteroid Day on 30 June, an annual opportunity to raise awareness of the threat and opportunity posed by the numerous rocky bodies traversing space.
As part of the UN-recognised Asteroid Day, hundreds of regional events take place world wide, with 78 countries so far having hosted concerts, community events, lectures and much more.
This year, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and ESA will team up to co-produce a packed webcast, streamed live from the new ESO Supernova Planetarium and Visitor Centre in Munich, from 13:00 CEST.
The programme will highlight some of the most recent activities in the global hunt for risky asteroids, as well as conversations with ESA planetary scientists, asteroid experts and a variety of guest presenters. Fascinating insights into the 2013 Chelyabinsk event will be presented, as well as discussions around the possibility of one day sending humans to asteroids.
Watch live here.
Credits: ESA–ScienceOffice.org
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and her Crew-4 crew mates, NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert “Bob” Hines and Jessica Watkins, run through launch day procedures ahead of their journey to the International Space Station.
This rehearsal takes place in the days before launch to ensure the crew and support teams are well-versed in the roles and processes of launch day.
Crew-4 will be launched to the Station in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. This rocket will lift off from Launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA and Crew-4’s transit to the orbital outpost is expected to take less than 24 hours.
This is the second space mission for Samantha, who first flew to space in 2014 for her Italian Space Agency ASI-sponsored mission Futura. Her second mission, known as Minerva, is an ESA mission and officially begins once Samantha reaches the Station.
Samantha will be welcomed on board by fellow ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and enjoy a short handover in orbit before Matthias returns to Earth in April as part of Crew-3.
Throughout her mission, Samantha will hold the role of US Orbital Segment (USOS) lead, taking responsibility for all operations within the US, European, Japanese and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station. She will support around 35 European and many more international experiments in orbit.
For more about Samantha and her Minerva mission, visit the Minerva mission page.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Space Science image of the week:
While observers in North America will enjoy views of a total solar eclipse later today as the Moon slips between Earth and the Sun, it’s business as usual for our Proba-2 and SOHO satellites.
Proba-2 is expected to capture a series of partial eclipses, while SOHO will provide context images of the Sun and its extended atmosphere, or corona. The corona can only be seen from Earth with the naked eye during an eclipse when the Moon blocks out the bright light from the Sun, but SOHO can observe it all the time using special filters and ‘occulting masks’.
An example can be seen here, which is a composite of two SOHO images and a Proba-2 image taken earlier this morning, and composed using JHelioviewer . The central image shows an extreme-ultraviolet image of the solar disc taken by Proba-2 at 05:39 GMT, while the corona and extended atmospheric features are seen by SOHO in the red image from 2–6 solar radii, and beyond in blue (SOHO can see up to about 32 solar radii) at 00:48 and 00:54 GMT, respectively. The black circular region corresponds to an occulting mask to cut out direct sunlight that would otherwise obscure the details close to the Sun – similar to the effect of the Moon in a total solar eclipse.
Near-realtime images of the Sun from SOHO are always available here, and in the days leading up to today’s total eclipse these frequent images give scientists an idea of how the corona will look during their observations. This enables them to plan specific observations of any special regions of interest, and in the context of the state of the Sun’s activity.
A team of dedicated astronomers from ESA will be studying the eclipse from the path of totality in the USA, hoping for clear skies to capture this celestial spectacular.
In addition, astronauts aboard the International Space Station, including ESA’s Paolo Nespoli, should also be able to see some aspects of the eclipse, such as a partial eclipse and the shadow of the Moon on the surface of our planet.
Follow ESA’s ground-based activities via cesar.esa.int and join the conversation on Twitter with #eclipse2017 and #solareclipse. We’ll keep you posted on our activities – from ground and space – via @esascience.
Remember: never look directly at the Sun, even when partially eclipsed, without proper eye protection such as special solar eclipse glasses, or you risk permanent eye damage.
Credit: SOHO (ESA & NASA); Proba-2: ESA/Royal Observatory of Belgium
This image of a rugged part of Mercury’s surface was captured by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 4 September 2024 as the spacecraft sped by for its fourth of six gravity assist manoeuvres at the planet.
It was taken at 23:51 CEST by the Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 3 (M-CAM 3), just three minutes after closest approach, when the spacecraft was only about 221 km from the planet’s surface. The spacecraft’s closest approach of 165 km took place at 23:48 CEST.
M-CAM 3 was looking straight down towards the surface of Mercury when taking the image. This factor, combined with the very close distance to Mercury, makes this the highest resolution image we’ll ever get from this camera.
The back of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s high-gain antenna and part of the spacecraft’s body are also visible in front of Mercury in this image. Mercury Planetary Orbiter is one of two orbiters that will separate from the carrier spacecraft following arrival in orbit around Mercury.
North is to the upper left.
More about BepiColombo's fourth Mercury flyby
[Image description: Planet Mercury in the background with its grey, cratered, pock-marked surface. In the foreground are some spacecraft parts.]
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Jezero crater, the touchdown site for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, in context of its surroundings. It is situated between highlands, an impact basin, a volcanic province and an ancient river delta. The dark bluish-black areas are layers of ancient volcanic ash that is widely dispersed by the wind, often piling up into impressive dune fields.
This image was created from the red, green and blue channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express, combined with high-resolution data from its nadir channel, which is directed perpendicular to the surface of Mars.
The high resolution of the data processed for this image allows for greater enlargement, enabling a closer look at individual details of the landscape. Small gaps in the image mosaic were interpolated.
Find out more about Jezero crater and its surrounds, here.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
Ariane 5 flight VA254 with the Eutelsat Quantum and Star One D2 satellites is now on the launch par of the ELA-3 (Ensemble de Lancement Ariane) Ariane 5 launch complex, at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guyana on 29 July 2021.
Quantum, the ESA Partnership Project with Eutelsat, Airbus and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, is a pioneering mission preparing the way for the next generation of telecommunications satellites, which will be more flexible by design and so more adaptable to customer needs once in orbit.
Quantum is a shift from custom-designed satellite with one-off payloads to a more generic approach, resulting in unprecedented in-orbit reconfigurability in coverage, frequency and power, allowing complete mission rehaul, including orbital position.
ESA partnered with satellite operator Eutelsat and manufacturer Airbus to design this programme, in response to today's market requiring satellites to be able to respond to changes in geographical or performance demand, either during manufacturing or after launch. This will enable the operator to address emerging business opportunities — even those that appear after it has ordered a satellite.
Such ESA Partnership Projects maximise the benefits to industry thanks to an efficient, co-managed approach that is tailored to commercial best practice.
Credits:
Title :
Eutelsat Quantum on the launch pad
Credit line image :
ESA - S. Corvaja
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 1175, a galaxy with an intriguing and distinctive shape.
Galaxies come in a range of shapes and sizes. Spiral galaxies are characterised by a bright core and vast, pinwheeling arms of gas, dust and stars – NGC 1175 is such a galaxy, and also hosts something known as a ‘bar’ of material that slices through its centre. Bars affect how material circulates throughout a galaxy, and look uniquely intriguing from afar.
And there’s more. When viewed edge-on, galaxies like this one have an even more peculiar morphology: their inner regions appear to be thicker in some directions than others, causing them to adopt a shape that is boxy and resembles an unshelled peanut or giant ‘X’.
NGC 1175 was observed as part of a Hubble proposal named ‘Gems of the Galaxy Zoos’, for which a number of citizen scientists voted on the galaxies they wanted Hubble to observe when the telescope had gaps of time between scheduled projects. Voting took place on the Zooniverse platform. This image comprises infrared data gathered by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys on 18 July 2019.
Despite studies implying that our very own cosmic home, the Milky Way, has an ‘X’-shaped core, it remains unclear how and when these boxy bulges formed. A recent study led by ESA research fellow Sandor Kruk used high-resolution Hubble data to explore galaxies more distant than NGC 1175. They found that these boxy bulges began forming some seven billion years ago, when the Universe was around half its current age. Their formation is related to that of galactic bars, which are thought to have formed about two billion years before the intriguingly shaped bulges began to emerge. The stars within these bars orbit the galactic centre in complex, dynamic ways, with an array of vertical motions that contribute to the galaxies’ observed central boxy morphology.
Hubble has spied a number of boxy/peanut-shaped galaxies, including the beautiful NGC 4710. Further research into these intriguing galaxies will be made possible by ESA’s upcoming Euclid mission, which will be able to survey how often these bulges crop up across a much larger number of galaxies, and by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Hubble’s successor, which will be able to observe incredibly distant galaxies like these in order to better understand their history and formation. JWST is a joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.
Credits: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and William Keel (University of Alabama) and the Galaxy Zoo team; CC BY 4.0
Webb is due to launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at the earliest on 24 December. It will journey on a direct escape trajectory towards its target orbit more than 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Part of ESA’s Estrack cooperative network, the 10-metre antenna in Malindi, Kenya, will make first contact from the ground with the fledgling mission, with the all-important ‘first acquisition of signal’.
About 23 minutes after lift-off, Malindi will locate the Ariane 5 launch vehicle in flight, rising above the Western horizon, still housing its precious cargo. Only five minutes later, Webb will separate from the rocket and begin its solo life in space.
From the moment of separation, Malindi will have three phases of visibility with the mission; at first, the station will be in a ‘private call’ with Webb for the first hour after separation, after which point NASA’s Deep Space Antenna in Canberra will join the call and Malindi will switch to backup. When the spacecraft is no longer visible from Canberra, Malindi will again take over the reins one more time before NASA’s Madrid station joins the call.
Credits: ESA
Jupiter and some of its moons (including Europa on the left) are seen through NIRCam’s 3.23 micron filter in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
Additionally, Webb easily captured some of Jupiter’s rings, which especially stand out in the NIRcam long-wavelength filter image, to the delight of scientists.
Credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Labelled view of Mars highlighting Elysium Planitia, the landing site for NASA's InSight.
The image was taken on 29 February 2016 by the Visual Monitoring Camera onboard ESA's Mars Express.
Credits: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have captured compelling evidence of a planet with a mass similar to Saturn orbiting the young nearby star TWA 7. If confirmed, this would represent Webb’s first direct image discovery of a planet, and the lightest planet ever seen with this technique.
Using the coronagraph on Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on 21 June 2024, the team carefully suppressed the bright glare of the host star to reveal faint nearby objects. This technique, called high-contrast imaging, enables astronomers to directly detect planets that would otherwise be lost in the overwhelming light from their host star. After subtracting residual starlight using advanced image processing, a faint infrared source was revealed near TWA 7, distinguishable from background galaxies or Solar System objects. The source is located in a gap in one of three dust rings that were discovered around TWA 7 by previous ground-based observations. Its brightness, colour, distance from the star, and position within the ring are consistent with theoretical predictions for a young, cold, Saturn-mass planet sculpting the surrounding debris disc.
Initial analysis suggests that the object – referred to as TWA 7b – could be a young, cold planet with a mass around 0.3 times that of Jupiter (~100 Earth masses) and a temperature near 320 Kelvin (roughly 47 degrees Celsius).
In this image from MIRI, light from the star TWA 7 has been subtracted. The location of the star is marked with a circle and a star symbol at the centre of the image. This leaves light from the debris disc around the star, as well as other infrared sources, visible. The bright spot to the upper right of the star is the source identified as TWA 7b, within the debris disc. The more distant orange spot visible in the left of the image is an unrelated background star.
Only a single MIRI band was used in this image (seen here in orange). The blue colour visible in the image results from an additional band taken by the SPHERE instrument of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), which showcases the location of the disc surrounding the host star and the exoplanet creating a gap within the disc that is revealed by MIRI.
[Image Description: An image of a nearby star and its vicinity. The star itself has been blocked out and its bright light has been removed. A dashed circle with a star symbol at the centre of the image marks the star’s location. A fuzzy blue disc surrounds the star. An orange spot, near to the star and inside this disc, is identified as a planet orbiting the star. A fainter orange spot far from the centre marks a distant star.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, A.M. Lagrange, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) ;CC BY 4.0
A close-up view of the centre of the NGC 6505 galaxy, with the bright Einstein ring around its nucleus, captured by ESA’s Euclid space telescope.
The Einstein ring is formed by gravitational lensing, with the mass of galaxy NGC 6505 bending and magnifying the light from a more distant galaxy into a ring. NGC 6505 is a well-known galaxy only around 590 million light-years from Earth, and Euclid’s discovery of a spectacular Einstein ring here was unexpected.
See the Einstein ring image in full-view here
[Image Description: A thin ring of a perfect circular shape and a piercingly bright white disc in its middle are the protagonists of this image. They stand out against a uniformly coloured background of a hazy dark grey. The ring appears as if it was a faint brush stroke, where at four evenly spaced spots more pressure was applied on the brush. These stand out in the ring as four brighter and thicker spots. The white disc within the ring gives the impression of a gaping hole in the image, through its stark contrast to the dark background.]
Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi, T. Li; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
the Week is the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, which sits 76 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. A prominent bar of stars stretches across the centre of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each end of the bar. Because NGC 2566 appears tilted from our perspective, its disc takes on an almond shape, giving the galaxy the appearance of a cosmic eye.
As NGC 2566 gazes at us, astronomers gaze right back, using Hubble to survey the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions. The Hubble data are especially valuable for studying stars that are just a few million years old; these stars are bright at the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to which Hubble is sensitive. Using these data, researchers will measure the ages of NGC 2566’s stars, helping to piece together the timeline of the galaxy’s star formation and the exchange of gas between star-forming clouds and stars themselves.
Several other astronomical observatories have examined NGC 2566, including the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The Webb data complement this Hubble image, adding a view of NGC 2566’s warm, glowing dust to Hubble’s stellar portrait. At the long-wavelength end of the electromagnetic spectrum, NGC 2566 has also been observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA is a network of 66 radio telescopes that work together as one to capture detailed images of the clouds of gas in which stars form. Together, Hubble, Webb and ALMA provide an overview of the formation, lives and deaths of stars in galaxies across the Universe.
[Image Description: An oval-shaped spiral galaxy. Its core is a compact, glowing blue spot. A bright bar of light, lined with dark reddish dust, extends horizontally to the edge of the disc. A spiral arm emerges from each end of the bar and follows the edge of the disc, lined with blue and red glowing patches of stars, to the opposite end and a little off the galaxy. Blue stars are scattered between us and the galaxy.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0
A palm-sized propulsion option for future space missions: each one of these seven emitter arrays etched onto this silicon wafer using micro- and nano-technology possesses more than 500 pinhole-sized emitters that spray out ions, accelerated via an electrostatic field to maximise thrust.
Inherently scalable, this ‘electrospray’ technology is being developed as a cost- and mass-effective method of propelling CubeSats and other small satellites. For the first time in Europe, this ionic-liquid based electrospray propulsion system has achieved more than 400 hours of continuous operation.
“Everyone knows that ‘space is hard’, but we like to say that ‘propulsion is harder’,” comments Daniel Pérez Grande, CEO & Co-founder of IENAI Space in Spain, developing the technology for ESA. “Developing a new technology, which we have built from scratch, has been no easy feat, but we are confident that our propulsion products will stand out in the market for their incredible performance and customisation capabilities; and in fact we have already been approached by a number of interested parties in the industry.”
Known as ATHENA (Adaptable THruster based on Electrospray powered by Nanotechnology), this system is one of three currently being developed by ESA to harness electrospray propulsion for space. ATHENA relies on conductive ionic-liquid salts as a fuel. This liquid flows through nano-textured conical emitters to be accelerated between an emitter and an extractor operating at different electric potentials. The interaction between the surface tension of the liquid and the applied electrostatic field forms ions which can be sprayed out at very high speeds (on the order of 20km/s), creating the force to move the satellite.
The micro-fabricated ATHENA system has the advantage of highly customisable thrust, using non-toxic ‘green’ propellants with no need for pressurised tanks. And the thrusters can be clustered together freely as needed – a total of six would fit onto the 10 cm face of a single CubeSat unit. These units can then be further clustered to deliver thrust for satellites of up to 50kg in mass.
The project has now passed its Preliminary Design Review, targeting a final product by the end of next year. Development has been supported through ESA’s General Support Technology Programme, readying innovative products and services for spaceflight and the open market.
Credits: IENAI Space
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Chalcoporos Rupes, a region on Mars that shows signs of dust and wind activity. This oblique perspective view was generated using a digital terrain model and Mars Express data gathered on 3 January 2019 during Mars Express Orbit 18983. The ground resolution is approximately 13 metres per pixel and the images are centred at about 23° East and 53° South. This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This image shows the Mawrth Vallis region of Mars. The area outlined by the bold white box indicates the area imaged by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on 18 February 2023 during orbit 24164.
Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team
Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera captured this detailed view of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 2 September 2016 from a distance of just 2.1 km from the comet’s surface, giving a resolution of just under 4 cm/pixel at the centre of the image. It captures part of the Nut and Serquet regions on the comet’s smaller lobe and shows a mix of fine dust and boulders.
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 the spacecraft’s ninth ellipse.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A powerful winter storm, with lake-effect snow, brought blizzard conditions to New York last week and buried the area surrounding the Great Lakes under a blanket of snow. Days of strong winds, with speeds of over 90 km/h, blew lake water ashore, encasing several homes in ice.
This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 29 February, shows the extent of the snow in the area surrounding Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie and Lake Huron.
A layer of ice can be seen over both Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie.
Lake-effect snow is a weather phenomenon that occurs when cold, dry air picks up moisture by passing over relatively warmer lake waters. The air rises and forms clouds, generating what is known as lake-effect snow. This lake-effect snow is common in the Great Lakes area – where cold air, usually from Canada, moves in.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Data from two Mars missions have been used to create the first detailed global map of hydrated mineral deposits on Mars. These minerals are predominately clays and salts, and can be used to tell the history of water in the planet’s various regions. For the most part, the clays were created on Mars during its early wet period, whereas many of the salts that are still visible today were produced as the water gradually dried up.
The map has been painstakingly created over the last decade using data from ESA’s Mars Express Observatoire pour la Mineralogie, l’Eau, les Glaces et l’Activité (OMEGA) instrument and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument.
Various landing sites and areas of interest are shown on the map. Mawrth Vallis is an ancient water outflow channel that is rich in clays. Oxia Planum is another clay-rich region and has been selected as the landing site for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover. Meridiani Planum straddles the martian equator and was the landing spot for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2004. Valles Marineris is one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. Gale crater and Jezero crater were the landing sites of NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers in 2012 and 2020 respectively.
The clays shown on the map include iron and magnesium phyllosilicates, zeolites and aluminosilicate clays. The salts shown are carbonates made of carbon and oxygen.
Credits: ESA/Mars Express (OMEGA and HRSC) and NASA/Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (CRISM and HiRISE)
The European Robotic Arm (ERA) successfully made its first moves in orbit during the 250 spacewalk to upgrade the International Space Station.
Two spacewalkers worked outside the orbiting lab for 7 hours and 42 minutes on 28 April 2022. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev removed thermal blankets and then unlocked the robotic arm.
The duo released the launch locks that held the arm in its folded configuration for the journey to space last year. Inside the Space Station, crewmate Sergey Korsakov monitored the first commanded movements of the robotic arm.
One of the robotic arm’s end effectors moved for the first time shortly after 20:00 CEST (18:00 GMT). The European Robotic Arm translated to another base point in a “walkoff” manoeuvre.
The robotic arm brings new ways of operating automated machines to the orbital complex. ERA has the ability to perform many tasks automatically or semi-automatically, can be directed either from inside or outside the Station, and it can be controlled in real time or preprogrammed.
The International Space Station already has two robotic arms – Canadian and Japanese robots play a crucial role in berthing spacecraft and transferring payloads and astronauts.
ERA is the first robot capable of ‘walking’ around the Russian parts of the orbital complex. It can handle components up to 8000 kg with 5 mm precision, and it will transport astronauts from one working site to another.
Additional spacewalks are planned to continue outfitting the European Robotic Arm.
More information about the European Robotic Arm
Credits: ESA/NASA-M. Maurer CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice, start of rollout on Tuesday 11 April.
Juice is being prepared to launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 13 April 2023.
Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Following launch, Juice will embark on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, arriving in July 2031 with the aid of momentum and direction gained from four gravity-assist fly-bys of the Earth-Moon system, Venus and, twice, Earth.
Flight VA260 will be the final Ariane 5 flight to carry an ESA mission to space.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Europe strengthened its connection to space on Wednesday 27 January, as NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins (white suit with red stripes) and Victor Glover (plain white suit) installed the Columbus KA-band antenna (ColKa) outside ESA’s Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station.
This antenna will create an additional bi-directional KA-band data transmission for the Space Station, providing a direct link between the Columbus laboratory and Europe, for researchers and astronauts, at home broadband speeds.
Victor transported the fridge-sized unit from the airlock to the worksite on the Canadarm2 robotic arm, with assistance from NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi inside the Station. There, he and Mike set to work unscrewing and screwing bolts to hold the antenna in place and routing cables for power and data, guided by the voice of ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen from NASA’s mission control centre in Houston.
Mike and Victor also connected power cables for external commercial research platform Bartolomeo, located outside Columbus. This connection will be continued during a future spacewalk.
Credits: NASA
Meet Dione, a 1122 km-diameter icy satellite of Saturn and the 15th largest moon in the Solar System.
This global colour mosaic of the moon’s intriguing surface was produced from images taken by the international Cassini spacecraft during its first 10 years of exploring the Saturn system.
Perhaps the most striking observation is the difference in colour and brightness between the left and right halves of the image. They correspond to the ‘trailing’ and ‘leading’ hemispheres respectively, in terms of the direction that the moon is travelling along its orbit around Saturn every 2.7 days.
The dark coating on the trailing hemisphere is thought to be due to radiation from Saturn’s magnetosphere, which causes organic elements in the moon’s surface to become darker and redder in appearance.
The wispy white streaks that wind through the coloured surface are bright ice cliffs – some several hundred metres high – resulting from tectonic fractures.
Meanwhile the leading hemisphere has been painted with icy dust from Saturn’s E-ring, which itself is fed by tiny particles ejected from nearby moon Enceladus.
While Enceladus continuously spews gas and icy particles into space from fractures near its south pole. Dione appears to be quiet at present, but its fractured surface certainly points to a more geologically active past.
Indeed, a recent theoretical modelling study by independent researchers suggest that there could be an underground ocean surrounding the moon’s rocky core, buried some 100 km beneath its battered shell.
This global mosaic was first released in 2014. The image resolution is 250 m per pixel.
The Cassini–Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency. The mission launched in 1997, and arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, with the Huygens probe landing on Titan in January 2005. In September of this year, the Cassini spacecraft will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere to conclude its incredible mission.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Lunar and Planetary Institute
The galaxy system NGC 1614 has a bright optical centre and two clear inner spiral arms that are fairly symmetrical. It also has a spectacular outer structure that consists principally of a large one-sided curved extension of one of these arms to the lower right, and a long, almost straight tail that emerges from the nucleus and crosses the extended arm to the upper right. The galaxy appears to be the result of a tidal interaction and the resulting merger of two predecessor systems.
The system has a nuclear region of quasar-like luminosity, but shows no direct evidence for an active nucleus. It is heavily and unevenly reddened across its nucleus, while infrared imaging also shows a "ridge" of dust. The linear "tail" to the upper right and extended arms to the lower right are likely the remains of an interacting companion and the tidal plume(s) caused by the collision. NGC 1614 is located about 200 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Eridanus, the River.
This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008.
Credits: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University); CC BY 4.0
The Orion spacecraft with integrated European Service Module sit atop the Space Launch System, imaged at sunrise at historic Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 27 August.
The Flight Readiness Review has deemed the trio GO for launch, marking the dawn of a new era in space exploration.
The first in a series of missions that will return humans to the Moon, including taking the first European, Artemis I is scheduled for launch no earlier than Monday 29 August, at 14:33 CEST.
This mission will put NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module to the test during a journey beyond the Moon and back. No crew will be on board Orion this time, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams on Earth.
The crew module, however, won’t be empty. Two mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, will occupy the passenger seats. Their female-shaped plastic bodies are filled with over 5600 sensors each to measure the radiation load during their trip around the Moon. The specially trained woolly astronaut, Shaun the Sheep, has also been assigned a seat.
The spacecraft will enter lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and propel itself almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled.
The second Artemis mission will see four astronauts travel around the Moon on a flyby voyage around our natural satellite.
Mission duration depends on the launch date and even time. It will last between 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits of the Moon mission designers decide to make.
This flexibility in mission length is necessary to allow the mission to end as intended with a splashdown during daylight hours in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, USA.
Two more dates are available if a launch on 29 August is not possible. The Artemis Moon mission can also be launched on 2 September and 5 September. Check all the possible launch options on ESA’s Orion blog.
Orion is the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight outside Earth orbit and high-speed reentry from the vicinity of the Moon. More than just a crew module, Orion includes the European Service Module (ESM), the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion.
ESM provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.
Watch launch coverage on ESA Web TV starting at 12:30 CEST here. Follow @esaspaceflight for updates and live Twitter coverage.
Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja
Covering 3000 sq km, the Zambezi Delta in Mozambique is one of the most diverse and productive river delta systems in the world. This unique wetland, which is protected under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, features a broad alluvial plain with vast mosaics of grassland, woods, deep swamps and extensive mangroves. Recognised as a global biodiversity conservation hotspot, this remarkable delta is home to a myriad of wildlife, from big mammals such as buffaloes, lions and elephants to water birds such as fish eagles and flamingos, to marine species such as dolphins and freshwater fish. As well as this rich biodiversity, this extraordinary delta not only provides a source of food for Mozambique, but also protects the coast from flooding.
While the Zambezi River Delta is an example of a healthy ecosystem, biological diversity is declining around the world. It is estimated that between 100 and 150 species disappear every day. The International Day for Biological Diversity is held every 22 May to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues such as this. Ratified by 196 nations, the Convention on Biological Diversity is the international legal instrument for the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of its components.
Satellites observing Earth have an important role to play as images can be used to assess the health of important ecosystems and show how they may be changing. This image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite on 28 September 2016.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Utah’s Great Salt Lake and its surroundings are featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
The Great Salt Lake is the largest salt water lake in the western hemisphere, and one of the most saline inland bodies of water in the world. The Great Salt Lake is the largest of the lake remnants of prehistoric freshwater Lake Bonneville, that once covered much of western Utah.
The lake is fed by the Bear, Weber and Jordan rivers which, together, deposit around 1 million tonnes of minerals in the lake each year. As the lake is endorheic, meaning without an outlet, the water evaporates which leads to a very high salt concentration. It greatly fluctuates in size, depending on the rates of evaporation and the flow of the rivers that feed it.
The distinct colour differences in the lake are caused by the Lucin Cutoff, an east-west causeway built to create a shorter route. The railroad line is visible as a sharp line cutting across the top part of the lake. This acts as a dam, preventing the waters to mix, leading to the north basin having a much higher salinity than the southern, freshwater side of the lake.
As the lake’s main tributaries enter from the south, the water level of the southern section is slightly higher than that of the northern part. Several small islands, the largest of which are Antelope and Fremont, lie in the southern part of the lake.
The lake’s varying shoreline consists of beaches, marshes and mudflats. The bright, turquoise colours visible on both sides of the lake are evaporation ponds, from which various salts are collected in commercial operations. Although it is commonly referred to as America’s Dead Sea, the lake is nevertheless an important habitat for millions of native and migratory birds. It is also home to several types of algae, brine shrimp and brine flies.
The lake’s basin is defined by the foothills of the snow-capped Wasatch Range, to the east, and by the Great Salt Lake Desert, a remnant of the bed of Lake Bonneville, to the west. This part of the desert is known as the Bonneville Salt Flats and is used as an automobile raceway, as the flat and smooth salt beds make the area ideally suited for speed trials. Utah’s capital, Salt Lake City, is visible in the bottom right of the image.
This image was processed in a way that included the near-infrared channel, which makes vegetation appear in red, while rocks and bare soil appear in brown. Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution allow changes in inland water bodies to be closely monitored.
This image, which was captured on 17 March 2019, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
In anticipation of the upcoming 35th anniversary of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESA/Hubble is continuing the celebrations with a new view of the Eagle Nebula. This vast stellar nursery displays a towering spire of cosmic gas and dust that incorporates new data processing techniques developed since an image of this region was last released two decades ago.
Does this Hubble image of a sculpted pillar of gas and dust look to you like a curling party streamer, a plume of smoke from a blown-out candle, or an unusual balloon? Regardless of what you see when you gaze at this cosmic cloud, this new portrait is a cause for celebration.
As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, a new image series is being shared to revisit stunning Hubble targets that were previously released. New images of NGC 346 and the Sombrero Galaxy have already been published. Now, ESA/Hubble is revisiting the Eagle Nebula (originally published in 2005 as part of Hubble's 15th anniversary celebrations) with new image processing techniques.
Unfurling along the length of the image is a pillar of cold gas and dust that is 9.5 light-years tall. As enormous as this dusty pillar is, it’s just one small piece of the greater Eagle Nebula, which is also called Messier 16. The name Messier 16 comes from the French astronomer Charles Messier, a comet hunter who compiled a catalogue of deep-sky objects that could be mistaken for comets.
The name Eagle Nebula was inspired by the nebula’s appearance. The edge of this shining nebula is shaped by dark clouds like this one, giving it the appearance of an eagle spreading its wings.
Not too far from the region pictured here are the famous Pillars of Creation, which Hubble has photographed multiple times, with images released in 1995 and 2015.
The heart of the nebula, which is located beyond the edge of this image, is home to a cluster of young stars. These stars have excavated an immense cavity in the centre of the nebula, shaping otherworldly pillars and globules of dusty gas. This particular feature extends like a pointing finger toward the centre of the nebula and the rich young star cluster embedded there.
The Eagle Nebula is one of many nebulae in the Milky Way that are known for their sculpted, dusty clouds. Nebulae take on these fantastic shapes when exposed to powerful radiation and winds from infant stars. Regions with denser gas are more able to withstand the onslaught of radiation and stellar winds from young stars, and these dense areas remain as dusty sculptures like the starry pillar shown here.
This image was developed using data from the Hubble observing programme #10393 (PI: K. Noll).
[Image Description: A tall, thin structure of dark gas clouds. It is darker and broader at the base and broadens out again at the top, with spikes, fingers and wisps of gas protruding in all directions from its head. Some parts are illuminated, but most is dark, lit only at the edges from behind. A wall of colourful gas lies behind it, bluish at the top and redder towards the bottom. Several blue and gold stars are scattered across it.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Noll; CC BY 4.0
The technology-focused extension of the Pangaea geology field course, Pangaea-X, is in full swing this week on Lanzarote, part of the Canary Islands. The test campaign combines geology and space exploration with high-tech equipment to prepare humans for extra-terrestrial terrains.
Over the course of the week ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, scientists, operations experts and engineers will work side-by-side on eight experiments and technology demonstrations to advance European know-how of human and robotic mission operations.
Known as the island of a thousand volcanoes, Lanzarote was chosen because of its geological similarity with Mars such as a volcanic origin, mild sedimentary processes owing to a dry climate, little vegetation and a well-preserved landscape. It is the perfect setting to test the best way for astronauts to take rock samples of the terrain.
Communications delays that are as much a part of space missions as sampling and scientific objectives will also be included in the campaign. Astronauts operating rovers on the surface of the Moon, for example, must contend with low-quality links and delays in space.
One of the experiments taking place this week is called Analog-1 and will test the science, operations and communications aspects of an exploratory mission.
From Lanzarote Matthias will drive a rover located at ESA’s main technology centre in The Netherlands.
A team of scientists will advise Matthias on the most interesting samples from a scientific point of view. He will use a tool that integrates real-time positioning, data sharing, voice chat and much more. This Electronic Field Book is an all-in-one, easy-to-use and plug-and-play device ‘made in ESA’.
The dry-run is a precursor to the same experiment that ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will carry out next year but this time from the International Space Station, taking Moon-targeted operations out into space. Humankinds’s only orbital outpost in space is an excellent stand-in for orbital platforms around the Moon, allowing humans to test the waters for future exploration.
The International Space Station has a long history of being used as a test-bed for exploration techniques and technology. ESA has been running experiments controlling robots on Earth from space for over five years and 20 November 2018 marks 20 years of collaboration on this greatest international project of all time. In celebration, take a look back at 20 of our most memorable moments on the International Space Station. Eager to take part in celebrations online? Share your most memorable Space Station moments, photos or footage using hashtag #SpaceStation20th.
Credits: ESA–A. Romeo
ESA’s Solar Orbiter carries a suite of ten instruments that work together to provide a coherent picture of solar activity and how that propagates into the wider Solar System, including particles that flow out into the Solar System as the solar wind.
To study these phenomena, the instruments are grouped into two families: the in situ instruments and the remote-sensing instruments. This graphic summarises the first images and data gathered by all instruments as the mission completed its commissioning phase. These include some of the instrument first light images, obtained between May and June 2020.
The remote-sensing instruments look directly at the Sun, or slightly to one side to see the Sun’s surface and its outer atmosphere, the corona, while the in situ instruments measure the solar wind as it flows around the spacecraft.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) provides images of the transition from the lower part of the Sun’s atmosphere to the base of the solar corona.
The Metis coronagraph blocks the light from the solar surface, so that the fainter outer atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, can be seen.
The Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) characterises the main properties of the solar wind, including the bulk properties of its particles such as density, velocity, and temperature.
The Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument studies the corona seen in front of the Sun’s disc.
The Energetic Particle Detector (EPD) instrument measures the composition, timing and other properties of energetic particles from solar eruptions.
The Magnetometer (MAG) measures the magnetic field in the solar wind as it flows past the spacecraft.
The Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) measures the magnetic field at the Sun’s surface and allows the investigation of the Sun’s interior via the technique of helioseismology.
The X-ray Spectrometer/Telescope (STIX) studies solar X-ray emissions, which are mainly emitted by accelerated electron particles and solar flares.
The Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) instrument images disturbances in the solar wind allowing giant eruptions known as coronal mass ejections to be tracked as they erupt from the Sun.
The Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW) instrument measures magnetic and electric fields to determine the wave motions and their interactions with the charged particles of the solar wind.
Credits: Solar Orbiter (ESA & NASA)
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 in the near-infrared shows a complex scene of multiple outflows expanding out at different angles from a dying star at the centre of the scene. These outflows push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disc.
Astronomers suspect there is at least one other star interacting with the material cast off by the central dying star, creating the abnormal appearance of this planetary nebula.
In this image, the red areas represent cool molecular gas, for example, molecular hydrogen.
[Image description: colourful mostly red image of near-infrared light from a glowing cloud with a distorted, asymmetrical shape, illuminated from within by a bright central star. The asymmetrical shape resembles paint splattered on the ground. In the centre of this image, a light blue glow casts over areas of dark pockets that appear dark blue and are traced with orange material. It has a clumpy appearance. The shells become a deeper red with distance from the centre. The shells appear as lobes that push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disc. The background of the image is black and speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0
This spectacular image was captured by JWST’s Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam.
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Journey with us through Webb’s breathtaking view of the Pillars of Creation, where scores of newly formed stars glisten like dewdrops among floating, translucent columns of gas and dust.
If this majestic landscape looks familiar, you may recognize the original. Hubble first captured the Pillars of Creation in 1995 and revisited it in 2014. Webb’s latest view was taken in near-infrared light, which is invisible to our eyes. Seeing in infrared allows Webb to pierce through the dust and reveal stars galore. (Find a side-by-side comparison of the Pillars of Creation as seen by Hubble and Webb also on our Flickr!)
Why go back to where we’ve been before? Webb helps us identify far more precise counts of newborn stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust. This will deepen our understanding of how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years. Read more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-takes-star-...
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
[Image description: This Webb image of the “Pillars of Creation” has layers of semi-opaque, rusty red gas and dust that start at the bottom left and go toward the top right. There are three prominent pillars rising toward the top right. The left pillar is the largest and widest. The peaks of the second and third pillars are set off in darker shades of brown and have red outlines. Peeking through the layers of gas and dust is the background, set in shades of blue and littered with tiny yellow and blue stars. Many of the tips of the pillars appear tinged with what looks like lava. There are also tiny red dots at the edges of the pillars, which are newly born stars.]
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NASA Honors University of Arizona Regents Professors, Alumna for Space Exploration, Astronomy.
University of Arizona Regents Professors Marcia and George Rieke and UArizona alumna Jane Rigby have been recognized with NASA Distinguished Public Service Medals for their accomplishments in astronomy and key contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope.
University Communications
University of Arizona Regents Professors Marcia and George Rieke have each been recognized with NASA Distinguished Public Service Medals for their contributions to the field of astronomy and their key roles in the development of cutting-edge instruments for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST.
The medals, awarded this month, are the highest distinction the agency bestows upon nongovernmental personnel.
In addition to the Riekes, UArizona alumna Jane Rigby, who serves as the operations project scientist for JWST, was honored with the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for her scientific contributions and leadership. Rigby, who graduated with a doctorate in astronomy from UArizona in 2006, has played a pivotal role in the successful transition of JWST from commissioning to routine science observations. Her work at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has been crucial to ensuring the seamless operation of the space observatory.
Marcia Rieke – as the principal investigator who led the development of JWST’s Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam – has demonstrated unparalleled dedication and leadership, according to her nomination for the medal. The NIRCam project, considered the most challenging instrument development effort in the JWST program, proved to be 10 times more complex than initially anticipated.
In his capacity as the science team lead for JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, George Rieke has been instrumental in facilitating international collaboration among 10 European countries and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The star-forming region known as the Pillars of Creation was imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope
The infrared instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope enable the space observatory to peer through dense dust that visible light can’t penetrate. This image shows the iconic “Pillars of Creation” – a region where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Over the course of five decades with the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Steward Observatory, the Riekes, a husband-and-wife research team, helped the field of infrared astronomy – once a niche endeavor fraught with extreme technical challenges – flourish into a powerful discipline that has allowed scientists to see the universe in ways that were once deemed impossible.
Marcia Rieke’s unwavering focus, diligence, and hands-on approach in the face of formidable technical and programmatic challenges set a remarkable example for her peers, according to the award notification from NASA. In addition to her work on NIRCam, she has made significant contributions as the deputy principal investigator for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, or NICMOS, on the Hubble Space Telescope and as a co-investigator on the Multiband Imaging Photometer instrument, or MIPS, on the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope. Her influential role in advancing the field of infrared astronomy is widely recognized.
With JWST, Marcia Rieke hopes to discover the most distant and therefore earliest and youngest galaxies in the universe, and trace how they changed over time. She also researches the atmospheres of exoplanets – planets outside of the solar system –to understand what they are made of.
“After so many years of anticipation, finally seeing galaxies at an age of only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang has been the culmination of my career,” she said. “Seeing the happy faces of my team says it all.”
George Rieke played a vital role in coordinating the construction of the MIRI instrument, successfully uniting diverse teams. His award citation highlights his exceptional leadership, visionary approach and willingness to collaborate beyond his official responsibilities, acting as the “U.S. PI (principal investigator) for MIRI.” He has also made significant contributions to infrared astronomy as the principal investigator for Spitzer’s MIPS instrument.
George Rieke says he is excited about JWST’s capabilities to look at the evolution of the central massive black holes in galaxies. By combining previous radio, optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations with those from JWST, his team is looking for elusive, very young black holes that are likely to be deeply shrouded in gas and dust that absorbs nearly all their output and emits it in the infrared where MIRI can find them. His team is also exploring small bodies, such as asteroids, in planetary systems outside of our solar system.
Artist's impression of the James Webb Space Telescope in space
Marcia and George Rieke have played significant roles in developing two critical instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope: Marcia is the principal investigator of the Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, and George serves as the project scientist for MIRI, which stands for Mid-Infrared Instrument. NASA
“It is so exciting not just for me but for our entire research group to see so many aspects of astronomical sources that were completely out of reach to us before the launch of JWST,” George Rieke said. “It took 50 years to make this happen, but what a fantastic reward.”
Rigby is known for her groundbreaking research on using gravitational lensing to study galaxies in the early universe. This work, which originated during her doctoral studies at UArizona, has continued through her leadership of the JWST project TEMPLATES, which stands for Targeting Extremely Magnified Panchromatic Lensed Arcs and their Extended Star Formation. TEMPLATES leverages JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph and MIRI to obtain high-resolution spectral images of gravitationally lensed galaxies. This allows Rigby and her team to construct images of early-universe galaxies that are much more detailed than what would be possible to observe with conventional imaging techniques.
Rigby’s achievements have garnered numerous accolades, including the NASA Robert H. Goddard Award for Exceptional Achievement for Science, Nature’s 10 Ones to Watch in 2022, BBC’s 100 Women and other honors. She also had the honor of presenting and explaining the first JWST results to President Joe Biden.
“All of us at Steward Observatory are incredibly happy that NASA is recognizing Marcia, George, and Jane for their major contributions to JWST,” said Buell T. Jannuzi, director of Steward Observatory and head of the Department of Astronomy. “By recognizing their achievements, NASA is also recognizing the teams these three amazing individuals have formed, developed, and sustained throughout the years it took to develop, launch, and commission JWST. We are looking forward to celebrating with George and Marcia once they receive their medals at Goddard Space Flight Center.”
A view of the Juice thermal development model inside the Large Space Simulator at ESA's technical heart in the Netherlands.
Juice, or the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, is ESA's future mission to explore the Solar System's largest planet and its ocean-bearing moons. Planned for launch in June 2022, it will embark on a seven year cruise that will make use of several flybys – of Earth, Venus, Earth, Mars, and again Earth – before leaving the inner Solar System for Jupiter.
In order to ensure that the spacecraft will survive the extreme temperature variations it will experience along the journey, a thermal verification test was completed in May 2018.
The spacecraft model, wrapped in multi-layer insulation, is visible in the foreground, while the high-energy lamps and mirrors of the Sun simulator can be seen in the upper part of the frame. The Sun simulator was used to heat the Sun-facing side of the spacecraft model to around 200ºC. Meanwhile the internal temperature of the vacuum chamber was lowered to -180ºC by thermal shrouds filled with liquid nitrogen to reproduce the cold conditions of the sides that will face away from the Sun.
This hot phase was followed by the cold phase, which simulated the low-temperature environment at Jupiter by maintaining the frigid conditions inside the chamber and switching off the Sun simulation lamps.
More about the testing campaign: Juice comes in from extreme temperature test
Credits: ESA–M.Cowan
This is a prototype 3D-printed and partly machined version of what might one day become the ‘eye’ of ESA’s Athena X-ray telescope.
An ESA-led project 3D produced this test structure to evaluate a promising method called plasma metal deposition. A hot plasma plume renders metal into molten drops, to be laid down as needed.
A total of six test parts were produced using this method, undertaken by RHP Technology GmbH in Austria, working with AAC Aerospace and Advanced Composites and FOTEC Forschungs- und Technologietransfer GmbH.
“The goal of this project was to assess the ability of the technique for the manufacturing of space hardware and components with size larger than 0.5 m,” explains ESA materials engineer Laurent Pambaguian. “We investigated the entire process chain, including follow-up heat treatment and post-processing machining as well as 3D printing, using titanium alloy as either metal particles or wire feedstock.
“The result demonstrates good mechanical properties and finishing, meaning we are able to take the technology forward, including the investigation of alternative materials. Plasma metal deposition is a candidate method to manufacture large sized components in the future, such as the optical bench of the Athena mission, which will be the most complex part ever printed in titanium.”
Due to launch in 2031, ESA’s Athena mission will probe 10 to 100 times deeper into the cosmos than previous X-ray missions, to observe the very hottest, high-energy celestial objects.
This mission requires entirely new X-ray optics technology, with stacks of ‘mirror modules’ arranged carefully to capture and focus high-energy X-rays.
The optic bench aligns and secures around 750 mirror modules in a complex structure with many deep pockets that tapers out to a maximum height of 30 cm. Its overall shape needs to be precise down to a scale of a few tens of micrometres – or thousandths of a centimetre.
This project has been supported through ESA’s Technology Development Element as part of the Agency’s Advanced Manufacturing initiative, harnessing novel materials and processes for the space sector.
Credits: RHP
The James Webb Space Telescope, configured for flight, was moved from the cleanroom to the payload preparation facility for fuelling at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 11–12 November 2021.
Webb will be loaded with propellants before being mounted on top of the rocket and then encapsulated by the Ariane 5 fairing.
Webb will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. As part of an international collaboration agreement, ESA is providing the telescope’s launch service using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace.
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Find out more about Webb in ESA’s launch kit and interactive brochure.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Vidéo du CSG - P Baudon
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy LRG-3-817, also known as SDSS J090122.37+181432.3. The galaxy, its image distorted by the effects of gravitational lensing, appears as a long arc to the left of the central galaxy cluster. Gravitational lensing occurs when a large distribution of matter, such as a galaxy cluster, sits between Earth and a distant light source. As space is warped by massive objects, the light from the distant object bends as it travels to us and we see a distorted image of it. This effect was first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Strong gravitational lenses provide an opportunity for studying properties of distant galaxies, since Hubble can resolve details within the multiple arcs that are one of the main results of gravitational lensing. An important consequence of lensing distortion is magnification, allowing us to observe objects that would otherwise be too far away and too faint to be seen. Hubble makes use of this magnification effect to study objects beyond the sensitivity of its 2.4-metre-diameter primary mirror, showing us the most distant galaxies humanity has ever encountered. This lensed galaxy was found as part of the Sloan Bright Arcs Survey, which discovered some of the brightest gravitationally lensed high-redshift galaxies in the night sky.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Allam et al.; CC BY 4.0
What do you call three or more space fanatics? Interns.
Imagine landing your dream internship at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC), and then being unable to go into work. A group of excellent young professionals found themselves in this situation during the pandemic.
This week, however, 23 of these interns finally got their opportunity to visit the home of Europe’s Astronaut corps. The interns had been working on a range of projects developing tools to support astronaut training for missions to the Moon and beyond. Upon visiting, they were immediately immersed in the centre’s activities.
The group, imaged here logging data into the Electronic Field Book (EFB), experienced some of the geological training activities the centre provides. In dedicated sessions, armed with spectrometers, drawing booklets, microscopes and the appropriate clothing, the interns had to exercise rock recognition through the EFB, characterise samples, and provide feedback.
This geological experience was modelled off of ESA’s Pangea training course, a balanced mix of theory and field trips designed to hone astronauts’ geology skills. This year’s course with ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson began earlier this month in the Italian Dolomites with lessons on fundamental geology knowledge and skills, and will continue in the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote next month.
However, it wasn’t all work for the interns, who hail from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, the UK and Poland. They also managed to meet three ESA astronauts, Thomas Pesquet, Luca Parmitano and Frank de Winne, and visit various EAC facilities being used for training, development and operations supporting the International Space Station (ISS).
From visiting locations such as the Eurocom console, to taking a trip to the Moon and the International Space Station in virtual reality, they got a feel for the broad range of work conducted at the centre.
During their internships, the students contributed to updates of a planetary mineralogical database, improved machine learning algorithms for recognition of minerals, and worked on the development and future applications of the Electronic Field Book – all of which contribute to the bigger picture of ESA’s role in space.
Read their first-hand account of a memorable two days on the ESA Caves blog.
Credits: ESA–I. Drozdovsky