Postcards from Rosetta
Packing for Mars
Enabling & Support Packing for Mars 22/10/2014 4076 views 71 likes Like surgeons in an operating room, the technicians work gowned and masked in ESA’s ultraclean microbiology la...
MSG-4 liftoff
The last weather satellite in Europe’s highly successful Meteosat Second Generation (MTG) series lifted off on an Ariane 5 launcher at 21:42 GMT (23:42 CEST) on 15 July from Europe’s...
Magnetic ‘wormhole’ connecting two regions of space created for the first time
In electromagnetism, however, advances in metamaterials and invisibility have allowed researchers to put forward several designs to achieve this. Scientists in the Department of Phys...
Magnetic complexity begins to untangle
Applications Magnetic complexity begins to untangle 22/06/2015 15407 views 120 likes After a year in orbit, the three Swarm satellites have provided a first glimpse inside Earth and...
Lifetime of gravity measurements heralds new beginning
GOCE’s four years in orbit resulted in a series of four gravity models, each more accurate than the last. These models have been used to generate corresponding ‘geoids’ – the surface...
Land cover 2010
This global land-cover map was created using data from the Envisat mission for the 2010 epoch (2008–12). This is the most recent data product from the Climate Change Initiative (CCI)...
iriss mission liftoff
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, commander Sergei Volkov and Aidyn Aimbetov were launched into space this morning 2 September at 04:37:43 GMT (06:37:43 CEST) from Baikonur cosmodrome,...
International Space Station panoramic tour
Node-3 Tranquillity provides life-support for the International Space Station. Previous releases: Explore Zvezda module via Flickr, Facebook or Youtube. Explore Unity module via Fli...
Integral catches dead star exploding in a blaze of glory
The explosions in question are known as Type Ia supernovae, long suspected to be the result of a white dwarf star blowing up because of a disruptive interaction with a companion star...
Hubble 25 (without title)
From planets to planetary nebula, and from star formation to supernova explosions, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a wealth of astronomical objects in its 25-year ca...
How Rosetta arrives at a comet
But how does a spacecraft actually arrive at a comet? Since early May, Rosetta’s controllers have been pacing it through a tightly planned series of manoeuvres designed to slow its s...
Hot water activity on icy moon’s seafloor
Science & Exploration Hot water activity on icy moon’s seafloor 11/03/2015 36338 views 178 likes Tiny grains of rock detected by the international Cassini spacecraft orbiting Sa...
Hot lava flows discovered on Venus
Science & Exploration Hot lava flows discovered on Venus 18/06/2015 56741 views 136 likes ESA’s Venus Express has found the best evidence yet for active volcanism on Earth’s nei...
GOCE helps tap into sustainable energy resources
These energy sites exist underground, but often in remote areas, making them difficult, expensive and time-consuming to explore and measure. Free air gravity anomaly The tool’s maps ...
Giant solar flare
Halloween 2003 will live forever in the annals of solar history. In the space of two weeks centred around the spooky celebration, solar physicists witnessed the most sustained bout o...
Galileo liftoff replay
The liftoff of Soyuz flight VS11 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana took place as scheduled on 21:46:18 GMT (22:46:18 CET) on Friday 27 March 2015. The launcher was carrying Eu...
Galileo launch – replay
On 22 August, at 12:27 GMT/14:27 CEST, a Soyuz rocket launched Europe’s fifth and six Galileo satellites from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Rewatch the moment of launc...
Fogo volcano on Sentinel’s radar
Applications Fogo volcano on Sentinel’s radar 02/12/2014 13462 views 101 likes Radar images from the Sentinel-1A satellite are helping to monitor ground movements of the recently er...
Five years of soil moisture, ocean salinity and beyond
Applications Five years of soil moisture, ocean salinity and beyond 03/11/2014 8318 views 57 likes ESA’s SMOS satellite has clocked up more than one billion kilometres orbiting Eart...
Fast access to CryoSat’s Arctic ice measurements now available
ESA’s ice mission has become the first satellite to provide information on Arctic sea-ice thickness in near-real time to aid maritime activities in the polar region. With specialist ...
Europe secures new generation of weather satellites
Applications Europe secures new generation of weather satellites 16/10/2014 11130 views 66 likes Contracts were signed today to build three pairs of MetOp Second Generation satellit...
ESA’s spaceplane set for flight
Instead of heading north into a polar orbit – as on previous flights – Vega will head eastwards to release the spaceplane into a suborbital path reaching all the way to the Pacific O...
ESA experimental spaceplane completes research flight
IXV opens a new chapter for ESA “ESA and its Member States, together with European space industry, are now ready to take up new challenges in several fields of space transportation, ...
Destination: Moon
This 8-minute film gives an overview of the past, present, and future of Moon Exploration, from the Lunar cataclysm to ESA’s vision of what Lunar exploration could be. Why is the Moo...