ESA Top News

Like an infant adjusting to the new world, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is relearning how to move around the weightless environment of space. His cradle is a familiar place though – this is Thomas’s second mission to the International Space Station, the orbiting lab where he where he broke records for science during his first six months in orbit.  

Hundreds of satellite images spanning over 25 years have been compiled to show the evolution of Greece’s ever-changing coastlines.

• First Solar Orbiter movies showing coronal mass ejections (CMEs)
• A pair of CMEs were detected by multiple instruments during February’s close flyby of the Sun
• CMEs are eruptions of particles from the solar atmosphere that blast out into the Solar System and have the potential to trigger space weather at Earth
• Solar Orbiter will begin its main science mission in November this year
• Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA

We need a name for our new spacecraft. Its mission? To spot potentially hazardous solar storms before they reach Earth.

Between them, our greatest minds have come up with ... not very much.

ESA needs you.

Send us your suggestions now.

ESA is forging ahead with advanced developments in two flagship space transportation demonstration projects, Prometheus and Phoebus. This will benefit Europe’s new Ariane 6 launcher in the near-term, and prepare for a new generation of European launch vehicles in the next decade.

Week in images: 10 - 14 May 2021

Discover our week through the lens

The pieces are stacking up for the launch of Artemis 1 mission around the Moon and back. The massive Space Launch Systems (SLS) rocket that will launch the first crewless test flight of the Orion spacecraft, powered by the European Service Module, is being integrated at the Vehicle Assemble Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

Visible in this image are the twin solid fuel rocket boosters, now fully stacked atop the mobile launcher. The boosters will be mated with the rocket’s 65 m tall core stage that recently barged in to Florida aboard the Pegasus barge on 27 April after successful testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. 

Once the rocket stages are ready to go, the Orion spacecraft and additional flight hardware are next up for integration.

Since our last Orion and the European Service Module update for Artemis I, the spacecraft has moved, from the NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout facility, a few kilometres down the road to the Multi Payload Processing Facility. The names of these buildings give the game away. The first Orion spacecraft has been checked out and is ready for the next step on the road to space: processing for launch.

Fuelling was completed on 1 April, after which the system will be serviced in high pressure helium that serves as a pressurisation agent to the European Service Module propellant tanks, ensuring the correct pressure at the engine inlets.

Eventually, the spacecraft will be hoisted to the top of the fully stacked SLS rocket.

Read more updates on the Orion blog. 

The European Service Module is ESA’s contribution to NASA’s Orion spacecraft that will send astronauts, including the first European, to the Moon and beyond. Follow Europe’s role in the mission here.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Qeshm Island – the largest island in Iran.

This video summarises advice given by ESA astronauts during the ESA Astronaut Careers Fair on 22 April 2021. Samantha Cristoforetti, Thomas Reiter and André Kuipers have all flown in space as ESA astronauts and offer their perspectives on the selection process and the work and life of an astronaut. See the astronaut vacancy notice and other opportunities to work at ESA at https://jobs.esa.int

Further information on the astronaut selection may be found in the Astronaut Applicant Handbook and in the astronaut selection FAQs. If your question is not answered in these documents, you have the option to email astronaut.recruitment@esa.int.

Applications will be accepted until 28 May 2021.

The world’s most powerful space science telescope has opened its primary mirror for the last time on Earth.

As part of the international James Webb Space Telescope’s final tests, the 6.5 meter (21 feet 4 inch) mirror was commanded to fully expand and lock itself into place, just like it would in space. The conclusion of this test represents the team’s final checkpoint in a long series of tests designed to ensure Webb’s 18 hexagonal mirrors are prepared for a long journey in space, and a life of profound discovery. After this, all of Webb’s many movable parts will have confirmed in testing that they can perform their intended operations after being exposed to the expected launch environment.

Making the testing conditions close to what Webb will experience in space helps to ensure the observatory is fully prepared for its science mission one million miles away from Earth.

Commands to unlatch and deploy the side panels of the mirror were relayed from Webb’s testing control room at Northrop Grumman, in Redondo Beach, California. The software instructions sent, and the mechanisms that operated are the same as those used in space. Special gravity offsetting equipment was attached to Webb to simulate the zero-gravity environment in which its complex mechanisms will operate. All of the final thermal blanketing and innovative shielding designed to protect its mirrors and instruments from interference were in place during testing.

Read more.

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and CSA. The telescope will launch on an Ariane 5 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.

Spacewalking is a major highlight of any astronaut’s career. But there is a downside: putting on your spacesuit means sharing some previously-worn underlayers. A new ESA study is looking into how best to keep these items clean and hygienic as humans venture on to the Moon and beyond.

Week in images: 03 - 07 May 2021

Discover our week through the lens

To celebrate the premiere of Coldplay's latest single 'Higher Power’, the band linked up for an extraterrestrial video chat with French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who is currently on a six-month mission on board the International Space Station. A specially recorded performance of Higher Power - featuring dancing alien holograms - was beamed up to Thomas, who gave the track its very first play on board the Station. The song’s premiere followed a conversation which took in similarities between life on tour and life on the Space Station, how planet Earth looks from space and its fragility; and how Thomas listens to music in microgravity.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Morbihan – a French department in the south of Brittany.

Researchers take a group photo in front of the Air Zero G aircraft to mark the end of the 75th ESA parabolic flight campaign. The campaign was the third to take place under Covid-19 restrictions, and ran from 21 to 30 April in Bordeaux, France.

Participants and coordinators adjusted to a new way of flying: PCR tests were required to enter France, as well as rapid antigen or RT LAMP tests each day for every participant. Facilities on the ground as well as on board were adapted to allow for social distancing and cleanliness requirements. Surgical masks were worn at all times, and movement was restricted during the flights.

Otherwise, the parabolic flights were business-as-usual. Teams from various research institutes and universities performed experiments and technology demonstrations across many disciplines including complex fluidics, astronomical light scattering, protoplanetary agglomeration, and human physiology in altered states of gravity.

Initially used for training astronauts, parabolic flights are now mostly used for short-duration scientific and technological investigations in reduced gravity. These flights are the only way for humans to run tests in microgravity without going through lengthy astronaut-training and flights to the International Space Station.

To perform each parabola, the refitted A310 Air Zero G aircraft flies close to maximum speed and pulls the nose up to a 45° angle, then cuts the power to fall over the top of the curve. Whilst falling freely the passengers and experiments experience around 20 seconds of microgravity, until the plane is angled 45° nose-down, before pulling out of the dive to level off with normal flight.

These “pull up” and “pull out” manoeuvres before and after the weightless period increase gravity inside the plane up to 2g, but that is just part of the ride, repeated every three minutes for almost two hours.

A typical parabolic flight campaign involves three flights and requires a week of on-site preparation. Each flight offers 31 periods of weightlessness. The aircraft can also fly in arcs that provide lunar or martian gravity levels by adjusting the angle of attack of the wings.

Simplicity of preparation and operations, reduced cost, partial-gravity levels, multiple microgravity phases and opportunity for researchers to work directly on the experiments on board are some of the unique advantages..

Parabolic flights are organised by Novespace, which handles flight and ground operations. ESA, French space agency CNES, and German space agency DLR are the promoters and sponsors of the programme.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, has come ‘home’ to ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands to undergo an extreme environment test in Europe’s largest thermal vacuum chamber to prepare for its journey to the outer Solar System.

An X-ray telescope designed to search for supermassive black holes could be built using a novel 3D-printing technique called plasma metal deposition.