Ariane 5 parts are coming together in the launch vehicle integration building for the launch of Webb from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

The Ariane 5 core stage is 5.4 m diameter and 30.5 m high. On 6 November it was taken out of its shipping container and raised vertical.

At launch it will contain 175 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants. With its Vulcain 2 engine it provides 140 t of thrust. It also provides roll control during the main propulsion phase. This rolling manoeuvre will ensure that all parts of the payload are equally exposed to the sun which will avoid overheating of any elements of Webb.

Two boosters followed. They are 3 m in diameter and 31 m high. This week they will be positioned on the launch table and then anchored to the core stage. Engineers will then carry out mechanical and electrical checks. Each booster contains 240 t of solid propellant, together they will provide 1200 t of thrust which is 90 percent of the thrust at liftoff.

On the countdown to launch, the Vulcain 2 engine is ignited first. A few seconds later, when it reaches its nominal operating level, the two boosters are fired to achieve a thrust of about 1364 t at liftoff.

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).

These activities mark the beginning of a five-week campaign to prepare the Ariane 5 launch vehicle which runs in parallel with teams preparing Webb, which started three weeks earlier. Soon Webb will meet Ariane 5 and teams will unite for the final integration for launch.

Find out more about Webb in ESA’s launch kit.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG - P.Baudon

Credits: ESA-S.Poletti

Some day in the future, an asteroid might be detected heading toward our home planet. What on Earth happens next?

This infographic shows the flow of actions that would take place between global agencies and organisations, should a risky asteroid be detected.

Observations from around the globe, including from ESA's Optical Ground Station, European observatories and observers – both professional and ‘back-yard’ – and, soon, from ESA's Flyeye and Test-Bed Telescopes, are fed into the US-based Minor Planet Center - the international ‘asteroid sorting hat’.

Using the data aggregated by the Minor Planet Center, ESA's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre and NASA's Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies determine the orbits of hazardous asteroids, and assess the risk they pose.

Finally, if an asteroid is deemed to be potentially dangerous, national civil authorities, the UN and other bodies are informed, and given support and guidance from ESA, NASA and other agencies.

Watch ‘Asteroid Impact 2028: Protecting our planet’, a dramatisation of how ESA might react if a threatening asteroid is ever discovered.

Credits: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Sombrero galaxy is split diagonally in this image: near-infrared observations from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope are at the left, and mid-infrared observations from Webb are at the right. The near-infrared image shows where dust from the outer ring blocks stellar light from the inner portions of the galaxy. Then, the mid-infrared image actually shows that dust glowing.

The powerful resolution of Webb’s NIRCam also allows us to resolve individual stars outside of, but not necessarily at the same distance as, the galaxy, some of which appear red. These are called red giants, which are cooler stars, but their large surface area causes them to glow brightly in this image. These red giants also are detected in the mid-infrared, while the smaller, bluer stars in the near-infrared “disappear” in the longer wavelengths.

This image was created with Webb data from proposal 6565 (PI: M. Garcia Marin). The assigned filters are as follows: NIRCam - F090W, F200W, F212N, F277W, F335M, F444W, MIRI - F770W, F1130W, F1280W.

[Image description: Two observations of the Sombrero galaxy are split diagonally, with Webb’s near-infrared observation at the left and Webb’s mid-infrared observation at the right. The galaxy is a very oblong disk that extends from left to right at an angle (from about 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock). The galaxy’s core is in the center of the image. In the near-infrared image, the galaxy’s center glows white and extends above and below the disk. The outer edge of the disk is mottled brown clumps. In the mid-infrared image, the galaxy is whiteish-blue, and clumpy, like clouds in the sky. There is an inner disk that is clearer, with speckles of stars scattered throughout.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0

To celebrate the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s third year of highly productive science, astronomers used the telescope to scratch beyond the surface of the Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334), a massive, local star-forming region. This area is of great interest to scientists, having been subject to previous study by NASA/ESA’s Hubble and retired NASA Spitzer Space telescopes, as they seek to understand the multiple steps required for a turbulent molecular cloud to transition to stars.

With its near-infrared capabilities and sharp resolution, the telescope 'clawed' back a portion of a singular 'toe bean,' revealing a subset of mini toe bean-reminiscent structures composed of gas, dust, and young stars.

Webb’s view reveals a chaotic scene still in development: massive young stars are carving away at nearby gas and dust, while their bright starlight is producing a bright nebulous glow represented in blue. This is only a single chapter in the region’s larger story. The disruptive young stars, with their relatively short lifespans and luminosity, will eventually quench the local star formation process.

The Cat’s Paw Nebula is located approximately 4000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

[Image description: A section of the Cat’s Paw, a local star-forming region composed of gas, dust, and young stars. Four roughly circular areas are toward the centre of the frame: a small oval toward the top left, a large circle in the top centre, and two ovals at bottom left and right. Each circular area has a luminous blue glow, with the top centre and bottom left areas the brightest. Brown-orange filaments of dust, which vary in density, surround these four bluish patches and stretch toward the frame’s edges. Small zones, such as to the left and right of the blue circular area at top centre, appear darker and seemingly vacant of stars. Toward the centre are small, fiery red clumps scattered amongst the brown dust. Many small, yellow-white stars are spread across the scene, some with eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of Webb. A few larger blue-white stars with diffraction spikes are scattered throughout, mostly toward the top left and bottom right. Toward the top right corner is a bright red-orange oval.]

Read more

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0

This image shows a snippet of the Sun up close, revealing a golden surface marked by a number of dark, blotchy sunspots, curving filaments, and lighter patches known as ‘plages’ – brighter regions often found near sunspots. The width of the image would cover roughly a third of the diameter of the solar disc.

It was captured in 2015 from the site of the European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) in Madrid, Spain, using a Solarmax 90 H-alpha telescope (9 cm in diameter) and a QHY5-II monochromatic camera. A grayscale 283-second video was initially created of the solar surface, and the best 30% of these 8222 frames were then combined and coloured to produce this image.

The part of the Sun shown here is known as the chromosphere (literally ‘sphere of colour’), one of the three main layers comprising our star. This layer sits just above the photosphere, the visible surface of the Sun with which we are most familiar. When viewed using a H-alpha telescope, as seen here, the chromosphere can reveal myriad intriguing features decorating the whole solar disc.

Sunspots are not permanent fixtures on the Sun. They exist for days or weeks at a time, and come about as intense magnetic fields become twisted and concentrated in a given place, stifling the flow of energy from the Sun’s interior to the surface. This leaves sunspots cooler than their surroundings, causing their darker appearance, while gas continues to flow both beneath and around these areas of magnetic disruption.

The ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission, launched in 1995, has probed deeper into these features, characterised the flows in and around the spots themselves, and found that they form as magnetic fields break through the visible surface of the Sun. The work of missions such as SOHO will be continued by ESA’s upcoming Solar Orbiter, the first medium-class mission selected for ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Programme.

Solar Orbiter will explore how the Sun creates and manipulates a patch of space known as the heliosphere – a bubble blown by the solar wind, an ongoing stream of charged particles heading out from the Sun into the Solar System. The mission will also clearly image the solar poles for the first time, and track magnetic activity as it builds up and gives rise to powerful flares and eruptions. Planned for launch in February 2020, Solar Orbiter will make significant breakthroughs in our understanding of how our host star works.

Credits: ESA/ESAC/CESAR – A. de Burgos

SpaceX Crew-2 Walkout from NASA's Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, and departure to launch pad 39A with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet on 23 April 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan MacArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

The Crew-2 launch is scheduled for 23 April 2021 at 05:49 EDT / 11:49 CEST.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The Vega-C Zefiro 40 second stage has now been transferred to and integrated at the Vega Launch Zone (Zone de Lancement Vega) ZLV at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 4 May 2022.

On the wave of Vega’s success, Member States at the ESA Ministerial meeting in December 2014 agreed to develop the more powerful Vega-C to respond to an evolving market and to long-term institutional needs.

Vega-C increases performance from Vega’s current 1.5 t to about 2.2 t in a reference 700 km polar orbit, covering identified European institutional users’ mission needs, with no increase in launch service and operating costs.

The participating states in this development are: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

The Hubble Space Telescope has a lot to show in this week’s Picture of the Week. Its view here is studded with stars, many of which appear particularly large and bright thanks to their nearby locations in our own galaxy, and which feature the characteristic diffraction patterns caused by Hubble’s optics. Much further away — around 240 million light-years distant, in fact, in the southern constellation Telescopium — is the spiral galaxy IC 4709. Its swirling disc filled with stars and dust bands is beautifully captured, as is the faint halo surrounding it. The compact region at its core might be the most remarkable sight, however: this is an active galactic nucleus (AGN).

If IC 4709’s core were just filled with stars, it would not be nearly so bright. Instead it hosts a gargantuan black hole, 65 million times the mass of our Sun. A disc of gas spirals around and eventually into this black hole, with the gas crashing together and heating up as it spins. It reaches such high temperatures that it emits vast quantities of electromagnetic radiation, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet light and beyond — in this case including X-rays. The AGN in IC 4709 is obscured by a lane of dark dust, just visible at the centre of the galaxy in this image, which blocks any optical emission from the nucleus itself. Hubble’s spectacular resolution, however, gives astronomers a detailed view of the interaction between the quite small AGN and its host galaxy. This is essential to understanding supermassive black holes in galaxies much more distant than IC 4709, where resolving such fine details is not possible.

This image incorporates data from two Hubble surveys of nearby AGNs that were identified by the Swift X-ray/UV telescope, as does the image from last week. Swift will collect new data on these galaxies — with an X-ray telescope, it’s possible to directly see the X-rays from IC 4709’s AGN breaking through the obscuring dust. ESA’s Euclid telescope — currently surveying the dark Universe in optical and infrared light — will also image IC 4709 and other local AGNs. The complementary use of space telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum is key to fully researching black holes and their impact on their host galaxies.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy is situated right of centre. It has a white, brightly-shining core, a glowing disc which is thick with swirling patterns of dark dust, and a faint halo around the disc. It is on a black background with some small, distant galaxies and some foreground stars around it. Six stars along the left side appear particularly large and bright, with two opposing sets of spikes surrounding each one.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Koss, A, Barth; CC BY 4.0

The hot firing model of the Ariane 6 upper stage has been installed on the P5.2 test bench at the DLR German Aerospace Center in Lampoldshausen, Germany.

After arrival from the ArianeGroup facilities in Bremen, this 5.4 m-diameter upper stage was hoisted out of its container, tilted vertical and installed on the test stand.

The upper stage will now undergo a campaign of tests to simulate all aspects of flight including stage preparation such as fuelling with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and draining its tanks.

In tests lasting about 18 hours each, data will be gathered on non-propulsive ballistic phases, tank pressurisation to increase performance, Vinci engine reignitions, exhaust nozzle manoeuvres, ending with passivation where all remaining internal energy is removed.

Credits: DLR-Fotomedien

For Ariane 5 VA250, ESA invited well-known space launch photographers from the US, John Kraus and Trevor Mahlmann, to join regular ESA and Arianespace photographers, with amazing results: another great shot by John Kraus.

Credits: J.Kraus

This greyscale, mottled image shows a patch of the Moon’s surface, and features an intriguing shape towards the top of the frame. This was actually made by a spacecraft – it marks the final resting place of ESA’s SMART-1 (Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology-1).

Launched in 2003, SMART-1 was a Moon-orbiting probe that observed our cosmic companion for roughly three years. On 3 September 2006 the mission’s operations came to an end and the spacecraft was sent down to deliberately crash into the Moon, bouncing and grazing across the lunar surface at a speed of two kilometres per second and achieving Europe’s first lunar touchdown.

After the impact, a bright flash was seen at the boundary between lunar day and night by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii. However, as no other spacecraft were currently in orbit at the time to watch the event unfurl, it was not possible to pinpoint exactly where SMART-1 crashed. Scientists used orbit tracking, Earth-based simulations, and observations of the bright impact flash to estimate the location of the landing site, but the mission’s precise resting place remained unknown for over a decade.

Last year, high-resolution images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) revealed the whereabouts of SMART-1 – as shown here. The spacecraft carved out a four-metre-wide and 20-metre-long gouge as it crash-landed; it cut across a small crater and sent lunar soil flying outwards from its skidding, ricocheting path, creating the brighter patches of material seen either side of the crater, before coming to a halt at 34.262° south, 46.193° west.

Alongside searching for water ice on the Moon and observing and photographing our nearest celestial neighbour, SMART-1 played a key role in testing ion propulsion – an efficient type of propulsion that uses electrical energy to propel a spacecraft through space.

SMART-1 was ESA’s first mission to travel to deep space using this type of propulsion. Ion propulsion will also be used on the joint ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission when it launches in October of this year towards Mercury.

The field of view in the image is 50 metres wide (north is up), with solar illumination coming from the west. SMART-1 touched down from north to south.

More about ESA’s lunar exploration

More about ESA’s lunar exploration

Credits: P. Stooke/B. Foing et al 2017/ NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Space Science image of the week:

Gaia, ESA’s billion-star surveyor, is detecting stars and measuring their properties in order to build up the most precise 3D map of the Milky Way. By accurately measuring the motion of each star, astronomers will be able to peer back in time to understand the Milky Way’s history, its evolution and its destiny.

In general, as Gaia registers stars, only data covering the object of interest are transmitted to the ground. However, in the densest regions on the sky there are more stars close to each other than the detection and processing system of Gaia can cope with, which could result in a less complete census in these crowded areas.

To help mitigate this, a scientific selection of high-density regions is made to cover them in a special imaging mode, as illustrated here. These types of observations are carried out routinely every time Gaia scans over these regions.

The image, taken on 7 February 2017, covers part of the Sagittarius I Window (Sgr-I) located only two degrees below the Galactic Centre. Sgr-I has a relatively low amount of interstellar dust along the line of sight from Earth, giving a ‘window’ to stars close to the Galactic Centre.

The stellar density here is an incredible 4.6 million stars per square degree. The image covers about 0.6 square degrees, making it conceivable that there are some 2.8 million stars captured in this image sequence alone.

The image appears in strips, each representing a sky mapper CCD (see this animation of how Gaia’s camera works). The image has been lightly processed to bring out the contrast of the bright stars and darker traces of gas and dust. Zooming in reveals some imaging artifacts relating to the CCDs, including some vertical striping, as well as short bright streaks indicating cosmic rays. Analysis of these images will only start once the effort required by the routine data processing allows.

Gaia’s first catalogue of more than a billion stars, based on the first 14 months of data collection, was released in September 2016. The next release is targeting April 2018, with subsequent releases foreseen for 2020 and 2022.

More about Gaia.

Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Combined observations from NASA’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and Hubble’s WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3) show spiral galaxy NGC 5584, which resides 72 million light-years away from Earth. Among NGC 5584’s glowing stars are pulsating stars called Cepheid variables and Type Ia supernova, a special class of exploding stars. Astronomers use Cepheid variables and Type Ia supernovae as reliable distance markers to measure the universe’s expansion rate.

Learn more.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and A. Riess (STScI)

The glittering galaxy in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 6951, which resides about 70 million light-years away in the constellation Cepheus.

As this Hubble image shows, NGC 6951 is a spiral galaxy with plenty of intriguing structures. Most eye-catching are its spiral arms, which are dotted with brilliant red nebulae, bright blue stars and filamentary dust clouds. The spiral arms loop around the galactic centre, which has a golden glow that comes from a population of older stars. The centre of the galaxy is also distinctly elongated, revealing the presence of a slowly rotating bar of stars.

NGC 6951’s bar may be responsible for another remarkable feature: a white-blue ring that encloses the very heart of the galaxy. This is called a circumnuclear starburst ring — essentially, a circle of enhanced star formation around the nucleus of a galaxy. The bar funnels gas toward the centre of the galaxy, where it collects in a ring about 3800 light-years across. Two dark dust lanes that run parallel to the bar mark the points where gas from the bar enters the ring.

The dense gas of a circumnuclear starburst ring is the perfect environment to churn out an impressive number of stars. Using data from Hubble, astronomers have identified more than 80 potential star clusters within NGC 6951’s ring. Many of the stars formed less than 100 million years ago, but the ring itself is longer-lived, potentially having existed for 1–1.5 billion years.

Astronomers have imaged NGC 6951 with Hubble for a wide variety of reasons, including mapping the dust in nearby galaxies, studying the centres of disc galaxies and keeping tabs on recent supernovae (of which NGC 6951 has hosted five or six).

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy with large, open arms. A bar of yellow light, where old stars are gathered, crosses the middle of the disk. The very centre is a white point surrounded by a small, shining ring of star clusters. Thin lanes of dust swirl around this ring, reaching out to follow the spiral arms; also visible across the arms are red, glowing spots where stars are forming. To the right a star shines large and bright.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. C. Ho, G. Brammer, A. Filippenko, C. Kilpatrick; CC BY 4.0

The spiral galaxy NGC 3596 is on display in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week, which incorporates six different wavelengths of light. NGC 3596 is situated 90 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. The galaxy was discovered in 1784 by astronomer William Herschel, the namesake of ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory.

NGC 3596 appears almost perfectly face-on when viewed from Earth, showcasing the galaxy’s neatly wound spiral arms. The bright arms mark where the galaxy’s stars, gas and dust are concentrated. Star formation is also most active in a galaxy’s spiral arms, as shown by the brilliant pink star-forming regions and young blue stars tracing NGC 3596’s arms in this image.

What causes these spiral arms to form? It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, partly because of the remarkable diversity of spiral galaxies. Some have clear spiral arms, while others have patchy, feathery arms. Some have prominent bars across their centres, while others have compact, circular nuclei. Some have close neighbours, while others are isolated.

Early ideas of how spiral arms formed were stumped by what’s called the ‘winding problem’. If a galaxy’s spiral arms are coherent structures, the arms would be wound tighter and tighter as the galaxy spins, until the arms are no longer visible. Now, researchers believe that spiral arms represent a pattern of high-density and low-density areas rather than a physical structure. As stars, gas and dust orbit within a galaxy’s disc, they pass in and out of the spiral arms. Much like cars moving through a traffic jam, these materials slow down and bunch up as they enter a spiral arm, before emerging and continuing their journey through the galaxy.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy viewed face-on, with a slightly oval-shaped disc. The centre is a bright white spot surrounded by a golden glow. Two spiral arms extend out from the centre, wrapping around the galaxy and broadening out to form the thick outer edge of the disc. Thin reddish strands of dust and bright pink spots follow the arms through the disc. Faint strands of stars extend from the arms’ tips, out beyond the disc.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features the galaxy LEDA 22057, which is located about 650 million light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like the subject of last week’s Picture of the Week, LEDA 22057 is the site of a supernova explosion. This particular supernova, named SN 2024PI, was discovered by an automated survey in January 2024. The survey covers the entire northern half of the night sky every two days and has catalogued more than 10 000 supernovae.

The supernova is visible in this image: located just down and to the right of the galactic nucleus, the pale blue dot of SN 2024PI stands out against the galaxy’s ghostly spiral arms. This image was taken about a month and a half after the supernova was discovered, so the supernova is seen here many times fainter than its maximum brilliance.

SN 2024PI is classified as a Type Ia supernova. This type of supernova requires a remarkable object called a white dwarf, the crystallised core of a star with a mass less than about eight times the mass of the Sun. When a star of this size uses up the supply of hydrogen in its core, it balloons into a red giant, becoming cool, puffy and luminous. Over time, pulsations and stellar winds cause the star to shed its outer layers, leaving behind a white dwarf and a colourful planetary nebula. White dwarfs can have surface temperatures higher than 100 000 degrees and are extremely dense, packing roughly the mass of the Sun into a sphere the size of Earth.

While nearly all of the stars in the Milky Way will one day evolve into white dwarfs — this is the fate that awaits the Sun some five billion years in the future — not all of them will explode as Type Ia supernovae. For that to happen, the white dwarf must be a member of a binary star system. When a white dwarf syphons material from a stellar partner, the white dwarf can become too massive to support itself. The resulting burst of runaway nuclear fusion destroys the white dwarf in a supernova explosion that can be seen many galaxies away.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy with two thin, slowly-curving arms, one fainter than the other, coming off the tips of a bright, oval-shaped core region. The disc of the galaxy is also oval-shaped and filled with fuzzy dust under the arms. It has some bright spots where stars are concentrated, especially along the arms. The core has a white glow in the centre and thick bands of gas around it. A supernova is visible as a pale blue dot near the core.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz); CC BY 4.0

A highly autonomous self-driving shuttle has entered service at ESA’s technical heart. Its official inauguration took place on Tuesday, when it was assigned a suitably spacey name – ‘Orbiter’ – chosen through an employee competition.

The Agency’s ESTEC establishment in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, is being used as a testbed for the automated shuttle, to assess its viability as a ‘last mile’ solution for public transport.

ESTEC was selected because it is a controlled private environment but with all common transport found on public roads – cars, bikes, pedestrians and roundabouts – the shuttle is able to operate in mixed traffic.

“We’re very pleased to be involved with testing this project,” said Franco Ongaro, Head of ESTEC and ESA’s Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality, “as it makes practical use of technologies we have been developing here at ESTEC.”

The autonomous vehicle calculates its position using a fusion of satellite navigation, lidar ‘laser radar’, visible cameras and motion sensors. It is being used to transport employees and visitors around the ESTEC complex.

The fully-electric, zero-emission vehicle observes an on-site speed limit of 15km/h (although it has a top speed of 25 km/h). It can seat up to eight people, and is wheelchair accessible. For the first six months of service the vehicle will carry a steward to observe its operation along its programmed 10-minute-long roundtrip.

ESTEC’s Facilities Management team is working with vehicle owner Dutch Automated Mobility, bus company Arriva who operate the vehicle, provincial and municipal governments, vehicle provider Navya and other partners.

Deputy Floor Vermeulen of Province Zuid-Holland spoke at the official opening: “It is important for the province to know whether the technology of self-driving transport can make a real contribution to the objective of making Zuid-Holland the most accessible province in the Netherlands. And whether it fits in with our motto for the coming years: Better every day. "

Project partners and guests including the Mayor of Noordwijk Jon Hermans-Vloedbeld, came to ESTEC’s Erasmus Highbay, filled with notable human and robotic exploration hardware, to learn more about the project and ride the automated shuttle for themselves.

Credits: ESA_L. Cervantes

Preparatory testing for Ireland’s first space mission, EIRSAT-1, seen taking place at ESA’s Hertz antenna test chamber.

Educational Irish Research Satellite 1, or EIRSAT-1 for short, is being built by students and staff of University College Dublin, who are participating in ESA Education’s Fly Your Satellite! programme.

At just 22 by 10 by 10 cm, the miniature EIRSAT-1 is smaller than a shoebox but is still equivalent in complexity to a standard space mission.

Normally the EIRSAT-1 student team would have joined the test campaign in person, but current Covid-19 restrictions made this impossible. Instead the team delivered their self-made Antenna Deployment Module (ADM) plus a mock-up of the satellite body, along with detailed test preparation procedures.

“Very often when antenna performance is assessed on a stand-alone basis, the results are not necessarily representative,” explains Peter de Maagt, heading ESA’s Antenna & Sub-mm Waves section. “The body of a satellite can make an enormous impact, so it’s really important to verify the antenna performance in this way.”

ESA’s metal-walled Hybrid European Radio Frequency and Antenna Test Zone (Hertz) at the Agency’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, shut off from all external influences for radio testing.

Hertz’s hybrid nature makes it unique: the facility can assess radio signals from antennas either on a local ‘near-field’ basis or as if the signal has crossed thousands of kilometres of space, allowing it to serve all kinds of satellites and antenna systems.

EIRSAT-1 carries a trio of Irish payloads, with platform subsystems coming from AAC Clyde Space in Scotland.

“We thought it was important to have some ambitious science payloads, beyond simply achieving a working satellite,” says David Murphy, systems engineer for the project. “So EIRSAT-1 carries an advanced gamma ray detector. Developed through an ESA-funded project, this GMOD ‘Gamma-ray Module’ detects gamma ray bursts from deep space as well as ‘terrestrial gamma flashes’ originating within the atmosphere, linked to lightning strikes.

“Standard gamma ray detectors still rely on vacuum tubes; by comparison the compact, silicon-based GMOD is the equivalent of updating from a CRT to flatscreen TV.”

The mission will also carry protective oxide coatings developed by Irish company Enbio, already embarked on ESA’s Sun-monitoring Solar Orbiter spacecraft.

“These black and white coatings have already been tested for deep space,” Murphy explains, “but EIRSAT-1 will gather the first data on their effectiveness in the low-Earth orbit environment, including exposure to highly-erosive atomic oxygen.”

EIRSAT-1’s third payload is entirely software-based: a novel ‘wave based control’ algorithm to operate the nanosatellite’s magnetotorquers, used to control EIRSAT-1’s attitude (or pointing direction) by reacting with Earth’s magnetic field.

EIRSAT-1 Chief Engineer Joe Thompson remarks: “This algorithm promises enhanced performance compared to traditional alternatives, which could subsequently be applied to manipulating large, flexible orbital structures.”

The EIRSAT-1 team also developed their own highly compact ADM for antenna deployment. This deploys VHF and UHF antennas from a structure just 7 mm high, positioned on one end of the nanosatellite using a simple ’burn wire’ release mechanism.

“The module behaved well under experimental launch scenarios during its vibration and thermal vacuum testing,” notes Rakhi Rajagopal, working on ADM testing.

Lána Salmon, part of the EIRSAT-1 communications team adds: “Having previously studied the performance of the ADM, both outdoors and in small anechoic chambers, this test campaign is a crucial next step which allows the study of the ADM, with an attached representative structure, in a chamber built to conduct precise measurements of satellite antenna performance.”

ESA antenna engineer Alfredo Catalani was the person following the team’s procedures: “The antennas needed tuning to very precise frequencies, by cutting them to their final lengths. Because the antennas are made to operate in weightlessness, they come with supports to safely extend in Earth gravity – made of plastic to avoid any potential radio interference, for the same reason a wooden support holds the mock-up satellite in place. Similarly, we also used an optical transducer to feed RF signals to the antennas, rather than a metal connector.”

EIRSAT-1’s individual payloads have already been qualified for space at ESA Education’s CubeSat Support Facility at the ESEC-Galaxia facility at Transinne in Belgium. As a next step a prototype ‘Qualification Model’ will be tested there later this year, with a flight model set to follow at the end of the year, ahead of a planned delivery to ESA in the first half of 2021.

Credits: ESA-P. de Maagt

High-resolution near-infrared light captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows extraordinary new detail and structure in Lynds 483 (L483). Two actively forming stars are responsible for the shimmering ejections of gas and dust that gleam in orange, blue, and purple in this representative colour image.

Over tens of thousands of years, the central protostars [1] have periodically ejected some of the gas and dust, spewing it out as tight, fast jets and slightly slower outflows that “trip” across space. When more recent ejections hit older ones, the material can crumple and twirl based on the densities of what is colliding. Over time, chemical reactions within these ejections and the surrounding cloud have produced a range of molecules, like carbon monoxide, methanol, and several other organic compounds.

The two protostars responsible for this scene are at the centre of the hourglass shape, in an opaque horizontal disk of cold gas and dust that fits within a single pixel. Much farther out, above and below the flattened disk where dust is thinner, the bright light from the stars shines through the gas and dust, forming large semi-transparent orange cones.

It’s equally important to notice where the stars’ light is blocked – look for the exceptionally dark, wide V-shapes offset by 90 degrees from the orange cones. These areas may look like there is no material, but it’s actually where the surrounding dust is the densest, and little starlight penetrates it. If you look carefully at these areas, Webb’s sensitive NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) has picked up distant stars as muted orange pinpoints behind this dust. Where the view is free of obscuring dust, stars shine brightly in white and blue.

Some of the stars’ jets and outflows have wound up twisted or warped. To find examples, look toward the top right edge where there’s a prominent orange arc. This is a shock front, where the stars’ ejections were slowed by existing, denser material.

Now, look a little lower, where orange meets pink. Here, the material looks like a tangled mess. These are new, incredibly fine details Webb has revealed, and will require detailed study to explain.

Turn to the lower half. Here, the gas and dust appear thicker. Zoom in to find tiny light purple pillars. They point toward the central stars’ nonstop winds, and formed because the material within them is dense enough that it hasn’t yet been blown away. L483 is too large to fit in a single Webb snapshot, and this image was taken to fully capture the upper section and outflows, which is why the lower section is only partially shown.

All the symmetries and asymmetries in these clouds may eventually be explained as researchers reconstruct the history of the stars’ ejections, in part by updating models to produce the same effects. Astronomers will also eventually calculate how much material the stars have expelled, which molecules were created when material smashed together, and how dense each area is.

Millions of years from now, when the stars are finished forming, they may each be about the mass of our Sun. Their outflows will have cleared the area – sweeping away these semi-transparent ejections. All that may remain is a tiny disk of gas and dust where planets may eventually form.

L483 is named for American astronomer Beverly T. Lynds, who published extensive catalogues of “dark” and “bright” nebulae in the early 1960s. She did this by carefully examining photographic plates (which preceded film) of the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, accurately recording each object’s coordinates and characteristics. These catalogues provided astronomers with detailed maps of dense dust clouds where stars form – critical resources for the astronomical community decades before the first digital files became available and access to the internet was widespread.

Notes

[1] A protostar is a collection of interstellar gas and dust whose gravitational pull is causing it to collapse on itself and form a star.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0

With Easter right around the corner, we take a look at four egg-shaped buildings visible from space as captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Eggs are an ancient symbol of new life, associated with pagan festivals celebrating spring. Decorating eggs for Easter is a tradition that dates back to the 13th century. One explanation suggests that eggs were formerly a forbidden food during Lent, so people would decorate them to mark the end of penance and fasting, and eat them on Easter as a celebration.

The appetite for eggs is also apparent in modern-day architecture and design. In recent years, several egg-shaped structures have popped up in cities across the world. Here are just a few visible from space.

AT&T Stadium, US

In the top-left image, the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Dallas, US, is visible. The stadium serves as the home of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL), but it is also used for a variety of other activities including concerts, basketball and football games. The stadium seats 80 000, making it the fourth largest stadium in the NFL by seating capacity. Once known for its cotton ginning and agriculture, Arlington is primarily an industrial and commercial centre.

Beijing South Train Station, China

In the top-right, the Beijing South Train Station in the Fengtai District, Beijing, can be seen. The station is one of the city’s largest stations, and is one of the largest in Asia. It serves as the terminus for high-speed trains on the Beijing–Tianjin intercity railway and Beijing–Shanghai high-speed Railway which can reach speeds up to 350 km/h.

The station was built from more than 60 000 tonnes of steel and more than 490 000 cubic metres of concrete. To understand the enormity of the station, the main hall in the centre is big enough to accommodate a Boeing 747 aircraft, and the covered surface area of the roof is about the size of 20 football fields.

Taipei Dome, Taiwan

In the bottom-left, the Taipei Dome, also known as the Farglory Dome, can be seen. The stadium is currently under construction in Xinyi, Taipei, Taiwan. Once completed, the stadium will be used mostly for baseball games, as well as other sporting events and commercial facilities.

Sapporo Dome, Japan

In the bottom-right, the Sapporo Dome stadium in Sapporo, Hokkaido Island, Japan, is visible. Primarily used for baseball and football games, the stadium is the home field of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters baseball team and the Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo football club.

The stadium is equipped with a system that switches between two entirely different surfaces depending on which sport is being played. Baseball games are played on an underlying turf field, while football games are held on a grass pitch that slides in and out of the stadium as needed.

The stadium is one of the planned venues for this year’s Summer Olympics and was previously a venue of the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

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 is mostly used to track changes in the way land is being used and to monitor the health of our vegetation.

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

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020/2016/2020/2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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

ESA has backed the creation of this flexible, ultra-thin solar cell to deliver the best power to mass ratio for space missions.

Just about 0.02 mm thick – thinner than a human hair – the prototype solar cells were developed by Azur Space Solar Power in Germany and tf2 in the Netherlands; the cell seen here is from tf2. The project was backed through ESA’s Technology Development Element, investigating novel technologies for space.

Possessing up to 32% ‘end of life’ efficiency, the solar cells were produced using a technique called ‘epitaxial lift-off’, meaning they were peeled off the Germanium substrate layer they were initially laid down on, so the costly material can be reused.

Both triple- and quadruple-junction solar cells were manufactured. This means they consist of three or four different layers of material, optimised to make use of different wavelengths of light making up the solar spectrum.

These thinner-than-paper solar cells could be harnessed for future ESA satellites or else high-altitude pseudo satellites (HAPS) – uncrewed aircraft or balloons to perform satellite-like tasks from the upper atmosphere.

Credits: ESA–SJM Photography

Stephan’s Quintet is a visual grouping of five galaxies located in the constellation Pegasus. Together, they are also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92). Although called a “quintet,” only four of the galaxies are truly close together and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and leftmost galaxy, called NGC 7320, is well in the foreground compared with the other four.

Tight groups like this may have been more common in the early universe when their superheated, infalling material may have fueled very energetic black holes called quasars. Even today, the topmost galaxy in the group – NGC 7319 – harbours an active galactic nucleus, a supermassive black hole 24 million times the mass of the Sun. It is actively pulling in material and puts out light energy equivalent to 40 billion Suns.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope studied the active galactic nucleus in great detail with the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). The instrument’s integral field units (IFUs) – a combination of a camera and spectrograph – provided the Webb team with a “data cube,” or collection of images of the galactic core’s spectral features. Using IFUs, scientists can measure spatial structures, determine the velocity of those structures, and get a full range of spectral data. Much like medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the IFUs allow scientists to “slice and dice” the information into many images for detailed study.

NIRSpec’s IFUs pierced through the shroud of dust to measure the bright emission from outflows of hot gas near the active black hole. The instrument saw the gas near the supermassive black hole in wavelengths never detected before, and it was able to determine its composition.

Some of the key emission lines seen by NIRSpec are shown in this image and represent different phases of gas. Atomic hydrogen, in blue and yellow, allows scientists to discover the structure of the outflow. Iron ions, in teal, trace the places where the hot gas is located. Molecular hydrogen, in red, is very cold and dense, and traces both outflowing gas and the reservoir of fuel for the black hole. The bright, active nucleus itself has been removed from these images to better show the structure of the surrounding gas.

By using NIRSpec, scientists have gained unprecedented information about the black hole and its outflow. Studying these relatively nearby galaxies helps scientists better understand galaxy evolution in the much more distant universe.

NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems.

Get the full array of Webb’s first images and spectra, including downloadable files, here.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

The Artemis II rocket has reached its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States, ready for a historic journey. Over the weekend, engineers slowly and carefully rolled the nearly 100-metre-tall Space Launch System rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B. The 6.5-km journey took around 12 hours and was carried out using NASA’s crawler-transporter, which has been moving rockets to launch pads for over 50 years.

Standing nearly 100 m tall, the Space Launch System will weigh approximately 2.6 million kg once fully fuelled and ready for liftoff. At its top sits the Orion spacecraft, bearing the ESA and NASA logos and designed to carry four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby mission. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight of the Artemis programme and the first time humans have ventured towards the Moon in over 50 years.

Their journey depends on our European Service Module, built by industry from more than 10 countries across Europe. This powerhouse will take over once Orion separates from the rocket, supplying electricity from its four seven-metre long solar arrays, providing air and water for the crew, and performing key propulsion burns during the mission, including the critical trans-lunar injection that sends the spacecraft on its trajectory towards the Moon.

European engineers will be at mission control around the clock, monitoring operations from ESA’s ESTEC site in the Netherlands and alongside NASA teams in the Mision Evaluation Room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The European Service Module’s main engine carries a unique legacy. Originally flown on six Space Shuttle missions between 2000 and 2002, the engine was refurbished and tested after two decades in storage and installed on the second European Service Module at Airbus in Bremen, Germany, giving this historic piece of hardware a new role in deep-space exploration.

The next major milestone is the wet dress rehearsal, during which teams will practise fuelling the rocket and running through the launch countdown, bringing Artemis II one step closer to launch.

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the busy maritime traffic in the Bay of Naples, in southern Italy.

The two identical Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface. Here, three years of Sentinel-1 data over the same area, equal to hundreds of images, have been compressed into a single image.

The sea surface reflects the radar signal away from the satellite, and makes water appear dark in the image. This contrasts with metal objects, in this case the ships in the bay, which appear as bright dots in the dark waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Boats crossing the bay in 2017 appear in blue, those from 2018 appear in green, and those from 2019 can be seen in red.

Many large vessels depart from the Port of Naples, one of the largest Italian seaports visible in the top-centre of the image. From here, and the smaller Port of Pozzuoli in the left of the image, small leisure boats and ferries set sail to the nearby islands. Ischia, renowned for its thermal springs, and Procida are visible in the left of the image, in front of Pozzuoli, while the beautiful island of Capri is visible further south.

Numerous boats are anchored off the island of Capri in the bottom of the image. The island lies opposite the Sorrento peninsula, to which it was joined in prehistoric times. Two indentations can be seen in its cliff-lined coast: the Marina Grande on the north shore and the Marina Piccola on the south shore.

Other vessels are docked off the coast of Sorrento, as well as off of the Amalfi coast in the right of the image.

The Bay of Naples is famous for its scenic beauty, including the steep, volcanic hills surrounding it. The still-active Mount Vesuvius can be seen just inland from the bay, as a circular shape. Cities, such as Naples, as well as the other surrounding towns, are visible in white owing to the strong reflection of the radar signal.

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

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017-19), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A star-studded spiral galaxy shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This galaxy is called NGC 4571, and it’s situated about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. NGC 4571 dominates the scene with its feathery spiral structure and sparkling star clusters.

The galaxy’s dusty spiral arms are dotted with brilliant pink nebulae that contain massive young stars. Though the star-forming clouds that are seen here are heated to roughly 10 000 degrees by searing ultraviolet light from the young stars at their cores, stars get their start in much chillier environments. The sites of star birth are giant molecular clouds tens to hundreds of light-years across, in which the temperature hovers just a few tens of degrees above absolute zero.

The dramatic transformation from freezing gas cloud to fiery young star happens thanks to the immense pull of gravity, which collects gas into dense clumps within a star-forming cloud. As these clumps yield to gravity’s pull and collapse inward, they eventually become hot and dense enough to spark nuclear fusion in their centres and begin to shine. The glowing clouds in this image surround particularly massive stars that are hot enough to ionise the gas of their birthplaces.

A Hubble image of NGC 4571 was previously released in 2022, using data from an observing programme the combines data from leading observatories like Hubble, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to study star formation in nearby spiral galaxies like NGC 4571. The new image released today adds data from a programme that seeks to understand how dust affects our observations of young stars deeply embedded within their natal clouds.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, seen face-on, fills the view. Swirling, patchy and broken spiral arms surround a softly glowing centre. The arms are filled with blue, speckled patches showing star clusters, shining pink and red dots where young stars are lighting up gas clouds, and a web of thin, dark red dust lanes. The glow of the galaxy’s arms extends out into the dark background. Individual tiny stars appear throughout.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; CC BY 4.0

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

The BepiColombo mission to Mercury sits on the launch pad at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, ahead of its scheduled liftoff at 01:45 GMT on 20 October. Watch live

BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This remarkable vessel is home to ESA’s six-week Advanced Ocean Training Course, which involves a transformative journey from Norway to France where next-generation researchers have been immersed in the world of ocean science.

During this intensive voyage, students have been mastering the use of satellite data to drive research, innovation and sustainable development, gaining critical skills to become tomorrow’s leaders and ambassadors for ocean conservation. They have been guided by an international team of leading scientists, enabling a transfer of knowledge and inspiration.

Credits: ESA/Ocean Media Lab

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a galaxy that’s hard to categorise. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775, which lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (The Crab). NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless centre that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy. Which is it, then: spiral or elliptical — or neither?

Because we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it’s difficult to say for sure. Some researchers have classified NGC 2775 as a spiral galaxy because of its feathery ring of stars and dust, while others have classified it as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies have features common to both spiral and elliptical galaxies.

It’s not yet known exactly how lenticular galaxies come to be, and they might form in a variety of ways. Lenticular galaxies might be spiral galaxies that have merged with other galaxies, or that have mostly run out of star-forming gas and lost their prominent spiral arms. They also might have started out more similar to elliptical galaxies, then collected gas into a disk around them.

Some evidence suggests that NGC 2775 has merged with other galaxies in the past. Invisible in this Hubble image, NGC 2775 has a tail of hydrogen gas that stretches almost 100 000 light-years around the galaxy. This faint tail could be the remnant of one or more galaxies that wandered too close to NGC 2775 before being stretched apart and absorbed. If NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past, it could explain the galaxy’s strange appearance today.

A Hubble image of NGC 2775 was previously released in 2020. The new version adds observations of a specific wavelength of red light that is emitted by clouds of hydrogen gas surrounding massive young stars.

[Image Description: A galaxy seen face-on, with a slightly elliptical disc that appears to have a hole in the centre like a doughnut. In the hole, the core is a brightly glowing point that shines light out beyond the edge of the disc. Around the hole is an inner ring of dust, and at the galaxy’s edge is a thicker outer ring of dust, with a swirling web of dust strands in between. Blue stars and red nebulae are visible behind the dust.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; CC BY 4.0

Over the last six months, engineers at Airbus in Stevenage, UK, and teams from Europe and North America have turned a multitude of structural parts and electronic units into a complete satellite: ESA’s Biomass satellite. The photo shows the Biomass instrument open. Now complete, this brand-new satellite has been shipped to Airbus’ testing facility in Toulouse, France, where it will be put through its paces to ensure that it will survive the rigours of liftoff and the harsh environment of space to deliver on its promise, that being to yield new insight into Earth’s precious forests.

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Credits: Airbus

This Hubble Picture of the Week features Arp 122, a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies — NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral — that are in the midst of a collision. This dramatic cosmic encounter is located at the very safe distance of roughly 570 million light-years from Earth. Peeking in at the corner is the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041, a central member of the galaxy cluster that Arp 122 resides in, but otherwise not participating in this monster merger.

Galactic collisions and mergers are monumentally energetic and dramatic events, but they take place on a very slow timescale. For example, the Milky Way is on track to collide with its nearest galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but these two galaxies have a good four billion years to go before they actually meet. The process of colliding and merging will not be a quick one either: it might take hundreds of millions of years to unfold. These collisions take so long because of the truly massive distances involved.

Galaxies are composed of stars and their solar systems, dust and gas. In galactic collisions, therefore, these constituent components may experience enormous changes in the gravitational forces acting on them. In time, this completely changes the structure of the two (or more) colliding galaxies, and sometimes ultimately results in a single, merged galaxy. That may well be what results from the collision pictured in this image. Galaxies that result from mergers are thought to have a regular or elliptical structure, as the merging process disrupts more complex structures (such as those observed in spiral galaxies). It would be fascinating to know what Arp 122 will look like once this collision is complete . . . but that will not happen for a long, long time.

[Image Description: Two spiral galaxies are merging together at the right side of the image. One is seen face-on and is circular in shape. The other seems to lie in front of the first one. This galaxy is seen as a disc tilted away from the viewer and it is partially warped. In the lower-left corner, cut off by the frame, a large elliptical galaxy appears as light radiating from a point. Various small galaxies cover the background.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; CC BY 4.0

Acknowledgement: L. Shatz

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

Once in geostationary orbit, 36,000 km above the equator, the all-new MTG-I1 weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level.

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

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

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

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

Teams from ESA, Airbus, NASA and Lockheed Martin stand before the service module for Artemis III at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Last week, ESA officially handed over its third European Service Module to NASA. The module will power Orion on Artemis III, the mission set to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years.

The handover took place on 10 September during the third quarterly European Service Module project meeting of the year at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US. Each European Service Module is the result of thousands of hours of design, engineering and testing, a testament to the scale of teamwork required to bring astronauts safely to the Moon and back. While largely a formality, the event marks a significant milestone, underlining the acceptance of the module by NASA as well as highlighting the dedication of the many teams across Europe and the United States who are bringing the spacecraft to life.

The third European Service Module was integrated by Airbus in Bremen, Germany, with contributions from industry all over Europe. Sailing across the Atlantic, the module arrived at Kennedy Space Center last summer, where it was joined with Orion’s crew module adapter to form the complete service module. Since then, the module has been through rigorous testing, such as environmental and life support checks, to ensure the overall system is working properly.

Over the coming months, engineers will install the module’s four solar array wings, developed by Airbus in the Netherlands, and continue vital tests, as well as integrate the service module with Orion’s crew module.

As Artemis III moves forward, work on earlier and future missions continues. Final preparations for Artemis II are underway, with the mission launch planned by April next year. Meanwhile, the fourth European Service Module is being finalised in Bremen and will be shipped to the United States later this year.

With the third European Service Module now in NASA’s hands, Europe continues to play a vital role in enabling humankind’s return to deep space exploration.

Credits: NASA-A. Tankersley

ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter image of a region close to the giant Hellas basin in the southern hemisphere of Mars. The 2300 km diameter basin hosted a giant lake in the past, fed by a number of valleys. The crater in this image, located towards the northeast of Hellas, shows the presence of several gullies that point to the region’s wetter past.

The image was taken by the orbiter’s Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System, CaSSIS on 29 May 2018 and captures an approximately 40.2 x 8.7 km segment centred on 33.5ºS/82.8ºE. North is to the right and slightly up in this orientation.

Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Dust devils are whirlwinds of dust that are blown across Mars’s surface. They are one way that dust gets lifted into the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere and transported from one place to another.

The Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) on board ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) captured this dust devil tracking across the martian surface on 3 December 2021. The dust devil was one of 1039 found as part of new research published in Science Advances, which used 20 years of images from European Mars orbiters to trace strong surface winds on the Red Planet.

ExoMars TGO creates a single colour image by combining views from separate channels. By design, there is a delay of about one second between the individual views. This delay causes no problems as long as the surface is static, however it can cause slight ‘colour offsets’ in the final image whenever something is moving, such as clouds and dust devils. The researchers used this delay to measure the dust devil’s speed and direction.

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[Image description: A colour satellite image of Mars showing a flat, dusty landscape with a faint, swirling dust devil – a small tornado-like column of dust – casting a subtle shadow as it moves across the surface. The dust devil appears as a light, vertical streak against the reddish-brown terrain, with nearby shallow craters and ridges visible.]

Credits: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Rich with detail, the spiral galaxy NGC 1309 shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. NGC 1309 is situated about 100 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.

This stunning Hubble image encompasses NGC 1309’s bluish stars, dark brown gas clouds and pearly white centre, as well as hundreds of distant background galaxies. Nearly every smudge, streak and blob of light in this image is an individual galaxy. The only exception to the extragalactic ensemble is a star, which can be identified near the top of the frame by its diffraction spikes. It is positively neighbourly, just a few thousand light-years away in the Milky Way galaxy.

Hubble has turned its attention toward NGC 1309 several times; previous Hubble images of this galaxy were released in 2006 and 2014. Much of NGC 1309’s scientific interest derives from two supernovae, SN 2002fk in 2002 and SN 2012Z in 2012. SN 2002fk was a perfect example of a Type Ia supernova, which happens when the core of a dead star (a white dwarf) explodes.

SN 2012Z, on the other hand, was a bit of a renegade. It was classified as a Type Iax supernova: while its spectrum resembled that of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion wasn’t as bright as expected. Hubble observations showed that in this case, the supernova did not destroy the white dwarf completely, leaving behind a ‘zombie star’ that shone even brighter than it did before the explosion. Hubble observations of NGC 1309 taken across several years also made this the first time the white dwarf progenitor of a supernova has been identified in images taken before the explosion.

[Image Description: A top-down view of a spiral galaxy, showing its brightly shining centre, its broad spiral arms and the faint halo around its disc, as well as distant galaxies and stars on a dark background. Large blue clouds of gas speckled with small stars and strands of dark dust swirl around the galaxy’s disc. A couple of the background galaxies are large enough that their own swirling spiral arms can be seen.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Galbany, S. Jha, K. Noll, A. Riess; CC BY 4.0

This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in 150 times compared to the large mosaic. On the left of the image, Euclid captured two galaxies (called ESO 364-G035 and G036) that are interacting with each other, 420 million light-years from us. On the right of the image, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible, 678 million light-years away from us.

View the full mosaic here.

Read the full story here.

Equatorial sky coordinates RA/DEC: 06:10:01.48 / -33:49:36.85

Galactic sky coordinates GLON/GLAT: 240.54, -22.75

Area: 0.007 sq. deg.

[Image description: Three groups of light sources, as well as a scatter of piercing dots of light with six faint spikes stand out in stark contrast against a black backdrop. The most prominent light sources occupy the centre of the image. They are two hazy white spirals, that appear to be swirling in a cosmic dance with each other, with the lower spiral being larger than the one above it. On the right side of the image, two spots of gleaming yellow light draw attention. The hazy light blobs emit a golden glow from their centre, which fades out in a circular shape into the background. In the bottom left corner of the picture, another spiral shape can be seen. It appears as if it is a thin white bar spinning in a circle and emitting a white spray of paint at its ends, leaving behind a diffuse trace of light.]

Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

SpaceX Crew-2 Walkout and dry dress rehearsal with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet on 18 April 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan MacArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

The Crew-2 launch is scheduled for 22 April at 06:11 EDT/12:11 CEST.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This 1.5 tonne block was 3D printed from simulated lunar dust, to demonstrate the feasibility of constructing a Moon base using local materials.

The building block is on show in the laboratory corridor of ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, visited during public tours from neighbouring Space Expo.

Produced using a binding salt as ‘ink’, its design is based on a hollow closed-cell structure – combining strength with low weight, similar to bird bones. The structure was made during an initial feasibility project on lunar 3D printing.

ESA has subsequently investigated other types of lunar 3D printing, including solar sintering and ceramics.

A recently completed study also looked into all the ways that 3D printing could contribute to the construction and operation of a lunar base, and included a competition asking the public for ideas to 3D print to make the Moon feel like home.

Credits: ESA–G. Porter, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Australia’s northeast state of Queensland, where a large amount of sediment is visible gushing into the Coral Sea, close to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

In early 2019, many areas in Queensland received more than their annual rainfall in less than a week. The downpour led to millions of dollars’ worth of damage, including homes being destroyed and the loss of almost 500 000 cattle.

This image was captured a few days after the torrential rain, and shows the muddy waters flowing from the Burdekin River into the Coral Sea.

The Burdekin River rises on the northern slopes of Boulder Mountain and flows close to 900 km before emptying into the Coral Sea. Burdekin River is one of Australia's larger rivers by discharge volume, and is a major contributor of sediment and freshwater to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef, extends for 2000 km along the northeast coast of Australia and covers almost 350 000 sq km. The reef is an interlinked system of about 3000 reefs and 900 coral islands, divided by narrow passages. An important area of biodiversity, the reef was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.

The sand-colour sediment plume can be seen stretching over 35 km from the coast, dangerously close to the vivid turquoise reef. The blues of the coral contrast with the dark-coloured waters of the Coral Sea.

The reef suffers regular damage, more than half of the reef has disappeared over the last 30 years owing to climate change, coral bleaching and pollution. Large quantities of sediment that flow out from rivers carry chemicals and fertilisers from inland farms. The sediment blankets the coral, and reduces the amount of light, as well as potentially causing harmful algae blooms.

Data from Copernicus Sentinel-2 plays a key role in providing information on pollution in lakes and coastal waters. Frequent coverage is also fundamental to monitoring floods. Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands.

This image, which was captured on 10 February 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

After its arrival in the final assembly building, on 1 April ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) was slowly lifted into the air then carefully lowered onto the top of the Ariane 5 rocket that will carry it into space. Here we see technicians working atop the rocket, bolting down Juice’s launch vehicle adapter to keep it secure during launch.

All around the spacecraft and rocket are movable platforms that enable the operators to work efficiently. The whole process was performed under strict safety and cleanliness regulations to keep Juice in prime condition for launch on 13 April. The technicians wore bright yellow suits; these are used whenever hazardous operations are carried out, for example when a spacecraft is moved.

Following these steps Juice was encapsulated inside Ariane 5’s fairing, where it will remain during the launch. This took place on 4 April. Shortly after launch, the fairing will open up and Juice will separate from the rocket.

Juice is being prepared to launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. After an eight-year journey to Jupiter, the mission will make detailed observations of the gas giant and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of instruments. The mission will characterise these moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats, explore Jupiter’s complex environment in depth, and study the wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the Universe.

Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows the Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) region in mid-infrared light, with warm dust glowing brightly. To the right is one clump of clouds that captured astronomers’ attention. It is redder than the rest of the clouds in the image and corresponds to an area that other telescopes have shown to be one of the most molecularly rich regions known. Additional analysis of this intriguing region could yield important insights into why Sgr B2 is so much more productive in making stars than the rest of the galactic centre.

Only the brightest stars in this region emit mid-infrared light that can be picked up by Webb’s MIRI instrument, which is why this image has so many fewer stars than that captured by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). The darkest areas of the image are not empty space but areas where cosmic dust and gas are so dense that light cannot penetrate them to reach the telescope.

[Image description: Cosmic clouds of pink and purple, some with bright centres, are surrounded by dark areas that appear like black space dotted with bright blue stars. A group of small clouds to the right is more red than any other area of the image.]

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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Ginsburg (University of Florida), N. Budaiev (University of Florida), T. Yoo (University of Florida). Image processing: A. Pagan (STScI); CC BY 4.0

Though interesting to look at, NGC 1511 is one galaxy you might not want for a neighbour. Seen in this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week, NGC 1511 is a peculiar spiral galaxy located roughly 50 million light-years away in the constellation Hydrus.

Like many galaxies, NGC 1511 doesn’t travel through space alone. Instead, it does so with a pair of small galactic companions called NGC 1511A and NGC 1511B, both of which lie outside the frame of this Hubble image. NGC 1511B is situated closest to NGC 1511, and the two galaxies have apparently clashed in the past; a narrow strand of hydrogen gas connects them, and NGC 1511B has been stretched and distorted by the encounter. Researchers have even found evidence that NGC 1511 once had another small companion galaxy that it has disrupted entirely!

These disruptions have an impact on NGC 1511, too. The galaxy is experiencing a burst of star formation, and its disc features strange loops and plumes that could point to past interactions with its neighbouring galaxies. Researchers will use Hubble’s keen observations of NGC 1511 to study star clusters embedded within its dusty gas, seeking to understand how matter is cycled from interstellar clouds to stars and back to clouds once again.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, tilted away so that it is seen mostly from the edge. The disc of the galaxy glows blue from its centre, due to younger stars in the spiral arms. There are large and small patches of gas, glowing in red and pink colours, where new stars are forming. Webs of dark dust are spread over the disc. The glow of the disc fades into a dark background, with a couple of stars.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0

Engineers stand in front of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) with the high-gain antenna in full view, while the medium-gain antenna at top right is inspected from above. The high-gain antenna is covered with a temporary protective sheet that will later be removed.

Juice will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. The mission will investigate the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants and the Jupiter system as an archetype for the numerous giant exoplanets now known to orbit other stars.

Credits: ESA

Measuring the Hubble constant, the rate at which the Universe is expanding, is an active area of research among astronomers around the world who analyze data from both ground- and space-based observatories. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has already contributed to this ongoing discussion. Earlier this year, astronomers used Webb data containing Cepheid variables and Type Ia supernovae, reliable distance markers to measure the Universe’s expansion rate, to confirm the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s previous measurements.

Now, researchers are using an independent method of measurement to further improve the precision of the Hubble constant — gravitationally lensed supernovae. Researchers from different institutions around the world are leading this effort after Webb’s discovery of three points of light in the direction of a distant and densely populated cluster of galaxies.

This is an image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) of the galaxy cluster PLCK G165.7+67.0, also known as G165, on the left shows the magnifying effect a foreground cluster can have on the distant Universe beyond. The foreground cluster is 3.6 billion light-years away from Earth. The zoomed region on the right shows the supernova H0pe triply imaged (labeled with white dashed circles) due to gravitational lensing.

This field was selected for observation due to its high rate of star formation of more than 300 solar masses per year, an attribute that correlates with higher supernova rates. SN H0pe is one of the most distant Type Ia supernovae observed to date. The measured Hubble constant value matches other measurements in the local Universe, and is somewhat in tension with values obtained when the Universe was young. Future Webb observations in Cycle 3 will improve on the uncertainties.

In this image blue represents light at 0.9, 1.15, and 1.5 microns (F090W + F115W + F150W), green is 2.0 and 2.77 microns (F200W + F277W), and red is 3.56, 4.1, and 4.44 microns (F356W + F410M + F444W).

Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.

[Image description: A two-panel image. In the left panel, dozens of small galaxies are scattered on the black background of space. Just to the left of the center, there is a long, red arc. At its left is a cluster of a few white galaxies that look like a glowing orb. To the right of the center, the red arc and glowing orb of galaxies at the left appear to be mirrored. The curved and distorted galaxy image on the right side is highlighted with a white box. Lines extend from the box’s corners to the right panel, which shows an enlarged view of the curved galaxy. Three faint points of light are circled.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, B. Frye (University of Arizona), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), S. Cohen (Arizona State University), J. D’Silva (University of Western Australia, Perth), A. Koekemoer (Space Telescope Science Institute), J. Summers (Arizona State University).

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.

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ESA - S. Corvaja

Major elements of the Ariane 5 rocket to launch the James Webb Space Telescope arrived safely in Kourou, French Guiana from Europe on 3 September 2021.

The rocket’s fairing, upper stage and core stage have been unloaded from the MN Toucan vessel at Pariacabo harbour and transported by special convoy to Europe’s Spaceport about 3 km away from the wharf.

Webb will be stowed folded inside the fairing built by RUAG Space in Emmen, Switzerland. This ogive-shaped fairing at the top of Ariane 5 is 5.4 m in diameter and over 17 m high. Made of carbon fibre-polymer composite, this structure will protect Webb from the thermal, acoustic, and aerodynamic stresses at liftoff on the ascent to space.

Ariane 5’s upper stage is built by ArianeGroup in Bremen, Germany. It gives Ariane 5 the flexibility to deploy scientific payloads to a highly precise second Lagrangian injection orbit. Its HM7B engine burns 14.7 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant to deliver 6.6 t of thrust. It provides attitude control during the ascent and the separation of Webb. The Vehicle Equipment Bay, ‘the brain’, autonomously controls the whole vehicle and transmits all key flight parameters to the ground station network.

The cryogenic core stage, built by ArianeGroup in France, is 5.4 m diameter and 30.5 m long and unfuelled weighs more than 14 tonnes. At liftoff, its Vulcain 2 engine burns 175 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants to provide 140 t of thrust. It also provides roll control during the main propulsion phase.

At Europe’s Spaceport these Ariane 5 parts will be checked and prepared for assembly and integration before the mating of Webb on its top.

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.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer is back in Cologne, Germany, after 177 days in space and 175 days aboard the International Space Station for his first mission ‘Cosmic Kiss’.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying Matthias and his Crew-3 crew mates, NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron, splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, USA, at 06:43 BST/07:43 CEST on Friday 6 May. The journey from Space Station to splashdown took just over 23 hours.

After its water landing, the Crew Dragon capsule was hoisted aboard a recovery boat where the hatch was opened, and the astronauts were welcomed home.

Matthias underwent initial medical checks aboard the boat before being flown by helicopter to shore and boarding a plane to Cologne. He will spend the next weeks participating in debriefings, providing samples for scientific evaluation and readapting to Earth’s gravity at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) and the German Aerospace Centre’s (DLR) ‘Envihab’ facility.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot