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Video: 00:00:10 When ESA’s Gaia spacecraft scanned the Scorpius constellation and its ancient globular star cluster Messier 4, it captured something strange: a huge dark blob at the cluster’s centre, 800 times more massive than our Sun. It is normal for globular clusters to have dark centres made up of many dead stars. But the mass […]
Video: 00:04:00 Timelapse of the integration and launch of Juice. ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, Juice, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French 09:14 local time/14:14CEST on 14 April 2023 to begin its eight-year journey to Jupiter, where it will study in detail the gas giant planet’s three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. […]
Help us visualise how much of the Universe we know and don’t know and win a trip to mission control as ESA’s Euclid mission launches into space no earlier than July to unlock the mysteries of the Dark Universe. To source
ESA’s Euclid spacecraft finished its ocean cruise safe and sound on 30 April at Port Canaveral in Florida. Subsequently, the satellite was moved by road to the Astrotech facility near Cape Canaveral. To source
Image: Astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to study a rocky exoplanet known as GJ 486 b. It is too close to its star to be within the habitable zone, with a surface temperature of about 430 degrees Celsius. And yet, their observations using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) show hints of water vapor. […]
Image: The seven galaxies highlighted in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA Telescope have been confirmed to be at a distance that astronomers refer to as redshift 7.9, which correlates to 650 million years after the big bang. This makes them the earliest galaxies yet to be spectroscopically confirmed as part of a developing cluster. The […]
Video: 00:28:00 Watch a replay of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) post-launch briefing, live from ESA’s European Spacecraft Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. ESA’s Juice mission was launched into space on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 13 April 2023, on an eight-year cruise to Jupiter. It will make detailed […]
Image: Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice ready for launch on the ELA-3 launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 12 April 2023. Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical […]
ESA space telescopes have observed the brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen. Data from this rare event could become instrumental in understanding the details of the colossal explosions that create gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). To source
Video: 00:03:03 Explore the fascinating landing site of NASA’s Perseverance rover in this fly-through video, featuring new views of Jezero crater and its surroundings from ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . The video begins by panning around Jezero crater, which can be seen in the centre background surrounded by textured and cratered […]
An impressive 70 mocktail recipes representing a wide range of flavours of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission were submitted to the Agency’s #SpaceJuice competition in January. To source
Video: 00:05:10 Carole Mundell is the new Director of Science, succeeding the current director Günther Hasinger. Professor Mundell is an internationally renowned scientist with extensive experience in inclusive leadership, operational management, strategy and international science policy development. She joined ESA from the University of Bath where she held the Hiroko Sherwin Chair in Extragalactic Astronomy, […]
Image: ESA’s Euclid mission is undergoing the final test before launch in July 2023. Here it is standing in a special room in the Thales Alenia Space test facilities in Cannes, France, where it successfully underwent electromagnetic compatibility testing. This kind of testing is routine for spacecraft. All electronics emit some form of electromagnetic waves […]