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Press Release N° 28–2020 ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano is returning to Earth after six months on the International Space Station. He will land with Alexander Skvortsov and Christina Koch in Kazakhstan on 6 February 2020 after 201 days in space. Luca will fly directly to ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne for an expected […]

Today, the Solar Orbiter control team is simulating launch for the penultimate time, before the Sun-seeking spacecraft lifts-off for real. To source

Press Release N° 27–2020 ESA’s new Sun explorer will be launched from Cape Canaveral on 6 February. Media are invited to Europe’s mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to follow the launch and moment of signal acquisition. To source

Material falling into a black hole casts X-rays out into space – and now, for the first time, ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has used the reverberating echoes of this radiation to map the dynamic behaviour and surroundings of a black hole itself. To source

Discover our new Solar Orbiter range To source

ESA’s technical heart has begun to produce oxygen out of simulated moondust. To source

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission takes us over the Japanese archipelago – a string of islands that extends about 3000 km into the western Pacific Ocean. While the archipelago is made up of over 6000 islands, this image focuses on Japan’s four main islands. Running from north to south, Hokkaido is visible in the top […]

Video: 00:00:00 In this week’s edition of the Earth from Space programme, the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission takes us over Japan’s four main islands. See also Japanese archipelago to download the image. To source

Ariane 5’s first launch of 2020 has delivered two telecom satellites, Konnect and GSAT-30, into their planned transfer orbits. Arianespace announced liftoff at 21:05 GMT (22:05 CET, 18:05 local time) this evening from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. To source

Image: On 16 January 2020, Ariane 5 flight VA251 lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana and delivered two telecom satellites, Konnect and GSAT-30, into their planned orbits. To source

Image: The Rosalind Franklin rover of the joint ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars mission completed a series of environmental tests at the end of 2019 at Airbus , Toulouse, France. This included final thermal and vacuum tests where the Rover is heated and cooled to simulate the temperatures of its journey through space and on the surface of […]

Astronomers using the combined powers of ESA’s Rosetta mission and the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have traced the journey of phosphorus – one of life’s building blocks – from star-forming regions to comets. To source

Image: Heavy rainfall has triggered flooding in southern Iran, particularly in the Sistan and Baluchestan, Hormozgan and Kerman provinces. The downpour has led to blocked roads and destroyed bridges, crops and houses – displacing thousands of people. This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission , shows the extent of the flooding in the Sistan […]