ESA Top News

Director General Josef Aschbacher will present ESA Agenda 2025 at 1400 CEST (1200 GMT) on Wednesday 7 April 2021. ESA Agenda 2025 is a vision for ESA’s future prepared in consultation with the ESA Member States. It sets out strategic priorities and goals for the Agency, such as strengthening the ESA–EU relationship, boosting green and digital commercialisation, developing space for safety and security, addressing critical programme challenges and implementing the ESA transformation.

Watch the presentation and questions from the media on ESA WebTV from 1400 CEST.

Ariane 6 early combined tests at Latesys in Fos-sur-Mer, in France, have simulated the moment of liftoff when the umbilicals separate from the launch vehicle.

Today is 406 Day – the annual campaigning day to spread awareness of the importance of emergency beacons, and the satellites that pick up their signals, including Europe’s Galileo constellation. As well as letting people across the world find their way, Galileo also serves to detect SOS messages and relay them to authorities, contributing to saving many lives.

Week in images: 29 March - 02 April 2021

Discover our week through the lens

With Easter right around the corner, we take a look at four egg-shaped buildings visible from space as captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

ESA is seeking to open the way to a new era of in-space activities such as refuelling, refurbishment, assembly, manufacturing, and recycling. The Agency is now soliciting ideas for In-Orbit Servicing activities from European industry and academia.

The quarterly ESA Impact is out now!

On 31 March 2021, the European Space Agency is opening the application process for its first astronaut selection in over a decade.

If you meet the minimum requirements and want to join Europe’s journey into space, this is your chance to apply.

Website esa.int/YourWayToSpace provides everything you need to know to prepare your application. All applications must be submitted to ESA’s careers website by 28 May 2021.

Applications are open for ESA’s first astronaut selection in over a decade, and all qualified candidates are encouraged to put themselves forward.

The General Observer scientific observations for the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s first year of operation have been selected. Proposals from ESA member states comprise 33% of the total number of selected proposals and correspond to 30% of the available telescope time on Webb.

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti has started training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA. Set to launch for her second mission in spring 2022, Samantha is already getting reacquainted with International Space Station systems in a series of refresher courses.

Samantha was last on the International Space Station in 2014 for her Futura mission. She spent 200 days in space, conducting European and international scientific experiments and Space Station operations.

In the coming months, her schedule will intensify as she trains for the specific experiments and tasks she will perform in space during her second mission.

As a collaborative, international effort between the United States, Europe, Canada, Russia and Japan, Space Station training takes place across the globe. Samantha will be training between Johnson Space Center in the USA, the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia and the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

Samantha and her fellow Class of 2009 astronauts will soon welcome new colleagues. For the first time in over a decade, the European Space Agency is seeking new astronauts and applications are open from 31 March to 28 May 2021. A six-stage selection process will start thereafter. This is expected to be completed in October 2022.

Ready to make #YourWayToSpace? Check out the dedicated website with all the information relating to ESA’s 2021–22 astronaut selection. 

Most importantly, get ready to apply. Perhaps you will find yourself where Samantha is today.

The ESAIL microsatellite for making the seas safer has picked up more than two million messages from 70 000 ships in a single day.

Following the selection of the first Scout satellite mission last December, ESA has also given the greenlight to start negotiations with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in the UK to lead the development of the second Scout mission – HydroGNSS.

The longest corridor in ESA’s largest establishment was turned into a test site for one of the Agency’s most ambitious future missions, Proba-3. The two satellites making up this mission will line up so that one casts a shadow onto the other, revealing inner regions of the Sun’s ghostly atmosphere. But such precision formation flying will only be possible through a vision-based sensor system allowing one satellite to lock onto the other.

Climate change is having an undeniable influence on coastal areas. A substantial proportion of the world’s sandy coastlines are already eroding owing to increased storm surges, flooding and sea level rise. With our coastal environments in constant change, Earth observation satellites are being used to better strengthen our knowledge of changing coastlines.

New observations of asteroid Apophis – thought to pose a slight risk of impacting Earth in 2068 – rule out any chance of impact for at least a century. After 17 years of observations and orbit analysis, ESA is removing the enormous asteroid from its Risk List.

Week in images: 22 - 26 March 2021

Discover our week through the lens

The Gariep Dam, the largest dam in South Africa, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.