ESO Top News

This September saw the completion of a critical milestone for the construction of ESA's new deep space communication antenna in New Norcia, Australia: the lifting of the 122-tonne reflector dish.

New research reveals that dust carried by the wind from southern Africa towards Madagascar triggered the largest phytoplankton bloom in two decades – and, unusually, this occurred at a time of year when such blooms are rarely seen.

Hera asteroid mission

ESA's first planetary defence mission, headed to a binary asteroid

ESA has released its new Earth Observation Science Strategy, Earth Science in Action for Tomorrow’s World. Responding to the escalating threats from climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and extreme weather and the need to take action to address these threats, this forward-looking strategy outlines a bold vision for Earth science through to 2040.

Image: Nearing Hera era in space

The latest edition of ESA Impact is here

Your interactive gateway to the most captivating stories and stunning visuals from ESA

Week in images: 23-27 September 2024

Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:20:48

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), is on an epic eight-year journey to Jupiter. This first episode of ‘The journey of Juice’ tells the story of Juice’s first months in space, from its launch on 14 April 2023 to its lunar-Earth gravity assist (LEGA for short) in August 2024. This flyby was not only the first double gravity assist manoeuvre of its kind, it was also a perfect opportunity to test out the spacecraft’s cameras and science instruments.  

In this episode, Juice’s Mission Manager Nicolas Altobelli explains how the spacecraft will become the first ever human-made machine to orbit a moon of another planet, in this case Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede. 

You’ll also hear from Claire Vallat and Marc Costa at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) near Madrid, Spain. Juice will perform incredibly complex measurements once it reaches Jupiter, and the Science Operations team at ESAC is making sure we get the most out of every instrument. 

Meanwhile, the Flight Control team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, makes sure Juice is and stays on the right path. This episode shows what happened ‘behind the scenes’ before and during the lunar-Earth flyby, and stars Ignacio Tanco, Angela Dietz and members of the Juice Flight Control team as they do what they do best.  

Finally, we highlight the ESA tracking station network (Estrack), another crucial component for Juice. Maintenance and Operations Engineer Belén Goméz gives a tour of the facility at Cebreros.  

Following the very successful lunar-Earth flyby, Juice is now on its way to planet Venus for its next flyby. On 31 August 2025, this flyby will give Juice its second gravity boost. Tune back in next year for episode two of this series!  

This series follows on from ‘The making of Juice’ series, which covered the planning, testing and launch of this once-in-a-generation mission. 

Image: This image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission reveals the impact of severe flooding following heavy rain that hit Australia’s Northern Territory in March 2024.

Image: On 20 September, the Copernicus Sentinel-2C satellite captured its first stunning image of the Moon, achieved by rolling the satellite sideways in a unique manoeuvre. Although Sentinel-2C is primarily designed for Earth observation, this image – intended for calibration and cross-mission comparisons – exceeded expectations.

Video: 00:00:29

Solar wind is a never-ending stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. Rather than a constant breeze, this wind is rather gusty. As solar wind particles travel through space, they interact with the Sun's variable magnetic field, creating chaotic and fluctuating motion known as turbulence.

This video confirms something long suspected: the turbulent motion of solar wind begins very close to the Sun, inside the solar atmosphere known as the corona. Small disturbances affecting solar wind in the corona are carried outward and expand, generating turbulent flow further out in space.

By blocking out direct light coming from the Sun, the Metis coronagraph instrument on Solar Orbiter is able to capture the fainter visible and ultraviolet light coming from the solar corona. Its high-resolution images show the detailed structure and movement within the corona, revealing how solar wind motion already becomes turbulent at its roots.

The red-tinted ring in the video shows Metis observations made on 12 October 2022. At the time, the spacecraft was just 43.4 million km from the Sun, less than a third of the Sun–Earth distance. The video of the Sun in the centre of the video was recorded by Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on the same day. (Read more about Solar Orbiter’s instruments here.)

“This new analysis provides the first-ever evidence for the onset of fully developed turbulence in the Sun’s corona. Solar Orbiter’s Metis coronagraph was able to detect it very close to the Sun, closer than any spacecraft could approach the Sun and make local measurements,” explains Daniel Müller, ESA’s Solar Orbiter Project Scientist.

Turbulence affects how solar wind is heated, how it moves through the Solar System and how it interacts with the magnetic fields of planets and moons it passes through. Understanding solar wind turbulence is crucial for predicting space weather and its effects on Earth.

‘Metis observation of the onset of fully developed turbulence in the solar corona’ by Daniele Telloni et al. was published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Video description: The Sun is shown in the centre, surrounded by a ring of data from Solar Orbiter’s Metis coronagraph. The data show changes in brightness of the solar corona, which directly relates to the density of charged particles. These changes are made visible by subtracting consecutive coronal brightness images taken two minutes apart. Red regions show no change, while white and black regions highlight positive and negative changes in brightness. This reveals how charged solar wind particles within the corona move in a chaotic, turbulent way. The video repeats three times.]

Looking deep into the early Universe with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found something unprecedented: a galaxy with an odd light signature, which they attribute to its gas outshining its stars.

Over the nearly 70 years of spaceflight, about 10 000 intact satellites and rocket bodies have reentered the atmosphere with many more to follow. Yet for such a ubiquitous event, we still lack a clear view on what actually happens to a satellite during its fiery last moments.

ESA is preparing the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object (Draco) mission that will collect unique measurements during an actual reentry and breakup of a satellite from the inside. A capsule especially designed to survive the destruction will transmit the valuable telemetry shortly after.

Video: 00:03:12

There’s a mystery out there in deep space – and solving it will make Earth safer. That’s why the European Space Agency’s Hera mission is taking shape – to go where one particular spacecraft has gone before.

On 26 September 2022, moving at 6.1 km/s, NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into the Dimorphos asteroid. Part of our Solar System changed. The impact shrunk the orbit of the Great Pyramid-sized Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, the mountain-sized Didymos.

This grand experiment was performed to prove we could defend Earth against an incoming asteroid, by striking it with a spacecraft to deflect it. DART succeeded. But that still leaves many things scientists don’t know: What is the precise mass and makeup of Dimorphos? What did the impact do to the asteroid? How big is the crater left by DART’s collision? Or has Dimorphos completely cracked apart, to be held together only by its own weak gravity?

That’s why we’re going back – with ESA’s Hera mission. The spacecraft will revisit Dimorphos to gather vital close-up data about the deflected body, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique.

The mission will also perform the most detailed exploration yet of a binary asteroid system – although binaries make up 15% of all known asteroids, one has never been surveyed in detail.

Hera will also perform technology demonstration experiments, including the deployment ESA’s first deep space ‘CubeSats’ – shoebox-sized spacecraft to venture closer than the main mission then eventually land – and an ambitious test of 'self-driving' for the main spacecraft, based on vision-based navigation.

By the end of Hera’s observations, Dimorphos will become the best studied asteroid in history – which is vital, because if a body of this size ever struck Earth it could destroy a whole city. The dinosaurs had no defence against asteroids, because they never had a space agency. But – through Hera – we are teaching ourselves what we can do to reduce this hazard and make space safer.

The Sentinel-1B satellite, the second satellite of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, completed its disposal process – which included lowering its orbit and passivating its systems to ensure re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere within 25 years.

This careful operation highlights the European Union’s and ESA’s commitment to space safety and sustainability and provides valuable experience for the disposal of current and future spacecraft.

On 18–19 September, Europe’s space industry from start-up companies to large system integrators gathered at ESA–ESTEC in the Netherlands for Industry Space Days 2024.

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has snapped a souvenir of the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert in Nevada.

XRISM revealed the structure, motion and temperature of the material around a supermassive black hole and in a supernova remnant in unprecedented detail. Astronomers presented the first scientific results of the new X-ray telescope today, less than a year after the telescope’s launch.

Just a month after its launch, ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has already delivered its first images, notably capturing Storm Boris, which has been wreaking havoc across central Europe.