Archive | Science

Video: 00:01:15 See Mercury in a whole new light, through the ‘eyes’ of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft, as it sped past Mercury during its latest encounter on 4 September 2024. During the flyby, BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) captured detailed images of the planet’s cratered surface. Within these images, Mercury scientists identified various geological features […]

Video: 00:04:11 ESA’s Euclid mission is surveying the sky to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. But how can Euclid see the invisible? Watch this video to learn about the light-bending effect that enables scientists to trace how dark matter is distributed in the Universe. By making use of Euclid’s flagship simulation […]

During its flyby of Earth  on 20 August, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) found ingredients for life in Earth’s atmosphere. To source

Image: During its recent flyby of Earth , ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice ) travelled through the zones of charged particles that surround our planet. These two zones are known as the Van Allen radiation belts . The inner belt is mostly full of energetic protons, and the outer belt is mostly full of energetic electrons. The region between the two belts is mostly empty.  The high levels of radiation in […]

ESA is part of the Big Science Business Forum 2024 event on 1–4 October in Trieste, Italy. This is where industry and Europe’s leading science organisations, research infrastructures and their collaborators will meet to inform, network and discuss business opportunities in a market valued at nearly €10 billion annually. To source

Video: 00:01:02 On 8 September 2024, Salsa (Cluster 2), one of four satellites that make up ESA’s Cluster  mission, will reenter Earth’s atmosphere  over the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area. Salsa’s reentry marks the end of the historic Cluster mission, over 24 years after the quartet was sent into space to measure Earth’s magnetic environment. Though the remaining three satellites will also stop […]

ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft has provided crucial data to answer the decades-long question of where the energy comes from to heat and accelerate the solar wind. Working in tandem with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe , Solar Orbiter reveals that the energy needed to help power this outflow is coming from large fluctuations in the Sun’s […]

During this week’s lunar-Earth flyby, the Navigation Camera (NavCam) of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice ) was tested out in space for the first time. To source

Image: Mermaid on salty Mars To source

Image: XMM-Newton and Euclid image of galaxy cluster Abell 2390 To source

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will return to Earth on 19–20 August, with flight controllers guiding the spacecraft first past the Moon and then past Earth itself. This ‘braking’ manoeuvre will take Juice on a shortcut to Jupiter via Venus. To source

Video: 00:00:48 Several team members wish Euclid a happy first launch anniversary in their own language. ESA’s Euclid satellite launched on 1 July 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, and now resides in an orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. During its mission, Euclid will observe billions of galaxies out to ten billion light-years […]

An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/Webb James Webb Space Telescope to study the disc around a young and very low-mass star. The results reveal the richest hydrocarbon chemistry seen to date in a protoplanetary disc (including the first extrasolar detection of ethane) and contribute to our evolving understanding of the diversity of […]