ESA Top News

The replica ExoMars rover that will be used in the Rover Operations Control Centre to support mission training and operations is fully assembled and has completed its first drive around the Mars Terrain Simulator at ALTEC, in Turin, Italy.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Warsaw – the capital and largest city of Poland.

Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation constellation is set to grow. Later this year the first two out of 12 ‘Batch 3’ Galileo satellites will be launched by Soyuz from French Guiana. Their last step on the way to launch is situated beside sand dunes on the Dutch coast: the ESTEC Test Centre, which is Europe’s largest satellite test facility.

Quiet please, future International Space Station commander in training. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti prepares for her upcoming mission to the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas, USA.

Samantha is a member of Crew-4 and will launch with NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Bob Hines to the Station from Florida, USA, on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2022.

This will be Samantha’s second mission in space after Futura in 2015 and she is expected to serve as Space Station commander for Expedition 68a, a first for her. Her experience will stand her in good stead as Europe’s first female in command of an International Space Station expedition.

Samantha said “I am humbled by my appointment to the position of commander and look forward to drawing on the experience I’ve gained in space and on Earth to lead a very capable team in orbit.”
She will be ESA’s fifth International Space Station commander and the fourth from ESA’s astronaut class of 2009.

Her nomination comes at a significant moment for European nationals of all genders, as ESA issues a rare call for new astronauts. The deadline for applications to ESA’s astronaut selection has just been extended to 18 June 2021, to accommodate the addition of Lithuania as an ESA Associate Member. For more information about ESA’s astronaut selection visit esa.int/yourwaytospace.

In the meantime, Samantha will continue training with all International Space Station partners in a programme that includes Space Station refreshers, science briefings, and Crew-4 launch preparation.

Watch a replay of a recent chat between Samantha and ESA Director of Human and Robotic Exploration, David Parker, in which the pair answer some questions concerning her upcoming mission. 

Eligible companies from Lithuania can now submit applications to ESA’s Global Space Markets Challenge. The competition’s application deadline for all participants has been extended to 30 June 2021 (23:59 CEST).

Download this launch kit to learn more about the international James Webb Space Telescope and the science goals of the mission.

Looking for a space-themed creative project to do at home AND be in for a chance to win some ESA goodies? You’re in the right place!

Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth.

Suitable for kids and adults alike, this episode of ‘The Incredible Adventures of Hera’ takes you on a fun and informative journey to visit Didymos together with Hera. Along the way, you will discover who the main characters are, why this mission is so important, what ESA hopes to achieve with Hera and much more.

Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two briefcase-sized Cubesats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos and Dimorphos, an asteroid pair typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth.

As our climate warms, ice melting from glaciers around the world is one of main causes of sea-level rise. As well as being a major contributor to this worrying trend, the loss of glacier ice also poses a direct threat to hundreds of millions of people relying on glacier runoff for drinking water and irrigation. With monitoring mountain glaciers clearly important for these reasons and more, new research, based on information from ESA’s CryoSat mission, shows how much ice has been lost from mountain glaciers in the Gulf Alaska and in High Mountain Asia since 2010.

It’s time to block your agendas to make sure you don’t miss out on the biggest Earth observation conference in the world – ESA’s next Living Planet Symposium, which is set to take place on 23–27 May 2022 at the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany.

Week in images: 24 - 28 May 2021

Discover our week through the lens

In the midst of COVID restrictions rendering travel close to impossible, ESA had to produce an ambitious video to call for applications to the 2021 astronaut selection.

The challenge of this project was to show locations as varied as a spaceship, a city, a canyon, a forest, ESA's satellite testing or control centres, Europe's space port in Kourou, or even the Moon. 
To create the illusion of immersing the protagonists into these various environments, ESA teamed up with Duck Factory to use a "Virtual Set": a new technology, that has not yet been used to the full extent of its potential

A "Virtual Set" is a regular stage on which previously created 3D images are projected. Thanks to a tracker equipped camera, the background follows the movement of the protagonists, eliminating the usual parallax issues. 

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is expected to serve as International Space Station commander for Expedition 68a, following an in-principle agreement by international partners on 19 May, pending consolidation of the Space Station’s operational plans and launch dates. 

All five of North America’s Great Lakes are pictured in this spectacular image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission: Lake Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario.

Acting on behalf of the European Commission, ESA has signed two contracts for an overall amount of €1.47 billion, to design and build the first batch of the second generation of Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites.

Imagine driving down a road which has more broken cars, bikes and vans lining the street than functioning vehicles. This is the scene our satellites face in Earth orbit. In fact, since the start of the space age there has been more debris, “space junk”, in orbit than operational satellites.

So how do we clean up this mess?

Keeping information secure in today’s interconnected world is becoming ever more important, so ESA is supporting efforts to ensure that future communications are kept confidential.