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Juice cast in gold

Image: In a decade’s time, an exciting new visitor will enter the Jovian system: ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice. As its name suggests, the mission will explore Jupiter and three of its largest moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – to investigate the giant planet’s cosmic family and gas giant planets in general. […]

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A decade probing the Sun

Ten years ago, a small satellite carrying 17 new devices, science instruments and technology experiments was launched into orbit, on a mission to investigate our star and the environment that it rules in space. To source

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Earth from Space: Halloween crack

Video: 00:02:57 In this week’s edition of the Earth from Space programme, the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over cracks in the Brunt ice shelf, which lies in the Weddell Sea sector of Antarctica. See also Halloween crack  to download the image. To source

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Halloween crack

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over cracks in the Brunt ice shelf, which lies in the Weddell Sea sector of Antarctica. Using radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the animation shows the evolution of two ice fractures from September 2016 until mid-October 2019. The large chasm running northwards is called Chasm 1, […]

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Driving into the future

Image: 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 […]

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SMOS 10 years in orbit

Video: 00:04:57 SMOS has been in orbit for a decade. This remarkable satellite has not only exceeded its planned life in orbit, but also surpassed its original scientific goals. It was designed to deliver data on soil moisture and ocean salinity which are both crucial components of Earth’s water cycle. By consistently mapping these variables, […]

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SMOS 10 years in orbit

Video: 00:04:57 SMOS has been in orbit for a decade. This remarkable satellite has not only exceeded its planned life in orbit, but also surpassed its original scientific goals. It was designed to deliver data on soil moisture and ocean salinity which are both crucial components of Earth’s water cycle. By consistently mapping these variables, […]

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Antarctic mist

Image: As the Northern hemisphere tucks into longer nights, Antarctica bursts into its season of sunlight. After four months of night, the crew of Concordia research station, located on Dome C in the Antarctic peninsula, saw first light in August , marking the end of the dreaded winter-over, a period of darkness and isolation. The […]

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Tracking Typhoon Hagibis from space

Hagibis was the biggest typhoon to hit Japan in decades. With extreme events like this likely to increase in number and in severity as a consequence of climate change, satellites are playing an increasingly important role in understanding and tracking huge storms. To source

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This image shows a dark interstellar cloud ravaged by the passage of Merope, one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Just as a torch beam bounces off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light from the surface of pitch-black clouds o

A ghost in the Pleiades

Image: This ghostly image shows what can happen when an interstellar cloud passes too close to a star. Barnard’s Merope Nebula, also known as IC 349, is a cloud of interstellar gas and dust travelling through the Pleiades star cluster at a relative speed of 11 kilometres per second. It is passing close to the […]

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