Tag Archives | ESA

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Episode 2 – Below the surface

Video: 00:04:29 Watch the second episode of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission – Europe’s ambitious exploration journey to search for past and present signs of life on Mars. This episode starts with Rosalind searching for traces of life below the martian surface using a ground penetrating radar and a set of cameras. The rover […]

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Weak gravitational lensing: how Euclid maps dark matter

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 […]

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The 2024 Global Methane Budget reveals alarming trends

The Global Methane Budget 2024 paints a troubling picture of the current state of global methane emissions. The new report reveals that human activities are now responsible for at least two-thirds of global methane emissions. This marks a significant increase in human-produced methane sources over the past two decades, with emissions rising by 20%, with […]

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Goodnight, Cluster: brilliant end to trailblazing mission

The first satellite in ESA’s Cluster quartet safely came back down to Earth last night in a world-first ‘targeted reentry’, marking a brilliant end to this remarkable mission. The spacecraft, dubbed ‘Salsa’ (Cluster 2), reentered Earth’s atmosphere at 20:47 CEST on 8 September 2024 over the South Pacific Ocean. In this region, any risk of […]

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Cluster reentry explained: world's first targeted reentry

Video: 00:06:50 The first of four satellites that make up ESA’s Cluster  mission is coming safely back down to Earth, marking a brilliant end to this remarkable mission. The satellite’s orbit was tweaked back in January to target a region as far as possible from populated regions. This ensures that any spacecraft parts that survive the […]

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Mars rover trials

Video: 00:01:00 Rover trials in a quarry in the UK showing a four-wheeled rover, known as Codi, using its robotic arm and a powerful computer vision system to pick up sample tubes.  The rover drives to the samples with an accuracy of 10cm, constantly mapping the terrain. Codi uses its arm and four cameras to […]

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Debris from DART impact could reach Earth

In 2022 NASA’s DART spacecraft made history, and changed the Solar System forever, by impacting the Dimorphos asteroid and measurably shifting its orbit around the larger Didymos asteroid. In the process a plume of debris was thrown out into space. The latest modelling, available on the preprint server arXiv  and accepted for publication in the September volume of The […]

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First metal part 3D printed in space

Image: ESA’s Metal 3D Printer has produced the first metal part ever created in space.  The technology demonstrator, built by Airbus and its partners, was launched to the International Space Station at the start of this year, where ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen installed the payload in the European Drawer Rack of ESA’s Columbus module. In […]

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