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Image: The fairing of the US Atlas V 411 rocket with ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft inside at the Astrotech payload processing facility near Kennedy Space Center in Florida during launch preparations on 21 January 2020. Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led space mission with strong NASA participation to study the Sun, its outer atmosphere and what […]
Wetlands worldwide are vanishing at an alarming rate. New maps produced by ESA’s GlobWetland Africa project show how satellite observations can be used for the effective use and management of wetlands in Africa. To source
After six months on the International Space Station and just over four as commander, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will return to Earth together with US astronaut Christina Koch and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov in the Soyuz-MS13 spacecraft. To source
Video: 00:05:59 In the third episode of our ‘Fit for space’ training series, ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer explains how astronauts learn to survive on their own if ever a spacecraft lands away from its intended landing site. Generally a spacecraft lands within a few kilometers of its landing site, but sometimes they return in a […]
Image: Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana is gearing up for the arrival of Ariane 6, Europe’s next-generation launch vehicle. This aerial view taken in January 2020 shows the main elements of the new launch complex. The 8200 tonne 90 metre-high mobile gantry will house Ariane 6 before launch. First in July then again in […]
Video: 00:03:00 ESA’s new Sun-explorer, Solar Orbiter, will capture close-up images of never before seen regions of our parent star, including the poles, and study the electromagnetic environment in its vicinity. The cutting-edge spacecraft will get as close as 42 million kilometres away from the Sun, about a quarter of the distance between the Sun […]
Week in images: 27-31 January 2020 Discover our week through the lens. To source
Video: 00:03:07 Ahead of World Wetlands Day, celebrated internationally each year on 2 February, this week’s edition of the Earth from Space programme features a Copernicus Sentinel-2 image over Lake George in western Uganda. In 1988, Lake George was designated as Uganda’s first site under the Ramsar Convention – an international treaty for the conservation […]
Image: World Wetlands Day is celebrated internationally each year on 2 February. It marks the anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, known as the Ramsar Convention , in Ramsar, Iran, on 2 February 1971. World Wetlands Day raises global awareness about the vital role of wetlands for our planet, […]
The first European device to land on the Moon this decade will be a drill and sample analysis package, and the teams behind it are one step closer to flight as part of Russia’s Luna-27 mission. To source
ESA is working with Argentina to test telemedicine device Tempus Pro in the harsh conditions of Antarctica as Europe prepares for its next phase of human exploration in space. To source
Image: On 21 January, a foreign body crashed to Earth causing a cascade of bright light to trail through the sky. The fleeting flash was a fireball, defined as a meteor brighter than the planet Venus. Such bright meteors are caused as small asteroids strike the atmosphere, entirely or almost entirely burning up due to […]
Video: 00:04:30 Italian ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will return to Earth 6 February 2020, following his second long-duration mission on the International Space Station (ISS). Luca’s mission – known as ‘Beyond’ – began 20 July 2019, exactly 50 years after the first lunar landing. On this date, Luca was launched to the Space Station in […]