ESO Top News

Video: 00:04:54

As we approach the launch of ESA’s EarthCARE mission, we caught up with some of the scientists, engineers and experts behind the mission.

With the climate crisis increasingly tightening its grip, ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer mission (EarthCARE) will shed new light on the complex interactions between clouds, aerosols and radiation in Earth’s atmosphere.

EarthCARE is the largest and most complex Earth Explorer mission. It comes at a critical time in the development of kilometre-scale resolution, global climate models and will provide an important contribution to an improved understanding of cloud convection and its role in Earth’s radiation budget.

EarthCARE is an ESA mission, but it has been developed as a cooperation between ESA and JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency.

This video features interviews with: Pavlos Kollias from Stony Brook University – McGill University, Thorsten Fehr, EarthCARE Mission Scientist at ESA, Robin Hogan, Senior Scientist at ECMWF, Dirk Bernaerts, EarthCARE Project Manager at ESA, Kotska Wallace, Mission and Optical Payload Manager at ESA, Tomomi Nio, EarthCARE Mission Manager at JAXA, Eiichi Tomita, EarthCARE/CPR Project Manager at JAXA, Ulla Wandinger, Senior Scientist at Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research and Bjoern Frommknecht, EarthCARE Mission Manager at ESA.

Follow the EarthCARE launch campaign blog for more updates.

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Week in images: 29 April - 03 May 2024

Discover our week through the lens

Image: This image may resemble the surface of Mars, but it was actually captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, revealing the stunning terrain of northwest Namibia.

ESA is committed to almost halve its greenhouse gas emissions linked to energy consumption by 2025 compared to 2019 levels. But how can ESA keep accelerating the use of space for the sustainable development of society while reducing its emissions?

A few weeks ago, a team of engineers carefully extracted ESA's EarthCARE satellite from its protective transport container, initiating a meticulous process of inspection, testing and preparation for its liftoff later this month from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Amidst an extensive checklist of tasks, was a rigorous effort to guarantee that the satellite is in pristine condition, underscoring the thorough attention to detail essential to making the satellite ready for launch.

Europe’s newest rocket soon launches, taking with it many space missions each with a unique objective, destination and team at home, cheering them on. Whether launching new satellites to look back and study Earth, peer out to deep space or test important new technologies in orbit, Ariane 6’s first flight will showcase the versatility and flexibility of this impressive, heavy-lift launcher. Read on for all about EXOpod Nova, then see who else is flying first.

Video: 00:02:59

Last week, Ariane 6’s central core – the main body of the rocket – was stood tall at the launch zone and connected to its two solid-fuel boosters. This exciting moment means only one thing: it’s the start of the first launch campaign.

The main stage and upper stage make up the core stage, and they were autonomously driven at 3 km/h from the rocket assembly building to the launch pad, 800 m away. Then lifted by a crane, the Ariane 6 core was stood upright on the launch table.

The two boosters were transported to the launch pad on a specially designed truck and then configured with the rocket body, now holding it upright.

Ariane 6 is due to launch in summer 2024. The heavy-lift rocket will inaugurate a new era of autonomous European space transportation, powering Europe into space to realise its ambitions on the world stage. It will lift off from a modern launch complex at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, carrying with it not just a variety of spacecraft, but also European goals for prosperity and autonomy.

Video: 00:05:16

ESA's newly graduated astronauts reach the end of one year of rigorous basic astronaut training. Discover the journey of Sophie Adenot, Rosemary Coogan, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Raphaël Liégeois, Marco Sieber, and Australian Space Agency astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg. Selected in November 2022, the group began their training in April 2023.

Basic astronaut training provides the candidates with an overall familiarisation and training in various areas, such as spacecraft systems, spacewalks, flight engineering, robotics and life support systems as well as survival and medical training. They received astronaut certification at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre on 22 April 2024.

Following certification, the new astronauts will move on to the next phases of pre-assignment and mission-specific training - paving the way for future missions to the International Space Station and beyond.

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Exciting news for young space fans! PaniniPedia Space, the most complete and up-to-date sticker reference album about space, launches in France on 1 May 2024. Created by Panini in collaboration with ESA, PaniniPedia Space takes readers on a journey of discovery through our Solar System and beyond.

ESA ensures a ride into space for its Smile mission, with Arianespace signing up to launch the spacecraft on a Vega-C rocket

The European Galileo navigation system has two more satellites in orbit following their launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in the early morning of Sunday, 28 April, at 01:34 BST/02:34 CEST. With 30 satellites now in orbit, Galileo is expanding its constellation, increasing the reliability, robustness and, ultimately, the precision, benefiting billions of users worldwide.

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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. The observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.

The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure.

Read more about the new Webb observations

This image showcases three views of the Horsehead Nebula, which resides in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, roughly 1300 light-years away.

The first image (left), released in November 2023, features the Horsehead Nebula as seen by ESA’s Euclid telescope. Euclid captured this image of the Horsehead in about one hour, which showcases the mission's ability to very quickly image an unprecedented area of the sky in high detail. You can learn more about this image here.

The second image (middle) shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s infrared view of the Horsehead Nebula, which was featured as the telescope’s 23rd anniversary image in 2013. This image captures plumes of gas in the infrared and reveals a beautiful, delicate structure that is normally obscured by dust. You can learn more about this image here.

The third image (right) features a new view of the Horsehead Nebula from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument. It is the sharpest infrared image of the object to date, showing a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, and capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.

[Image description: A collage of three images of the Horsehead Nebula. In the left image labelled “Euclid (Visible-Infrared)”, the Nebula is seen amongst its surroundings. A small box around it connects to the second image labelled “Hubble (Infrared)”, where the Nebula is zoomed in on. A portion of the Nebula’s head has another box, which leads with a callout to the third image, labelled “Webb (Infrared)”, of that area.]

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The first images captured by the innovative mission were presented at the 7th workshop of the Einstein Probe consortium in Beijing. They illustrate the satellite’s full potential and show that its novel optics, which mimic a lobster’s eyes, are ready to monitor the X-ray sky. The space X-ray telescope zoomed in on a few well-known celestial objects to give us a hint of what the mission is capable of.

Week in images: 22-26 April 2024

Discover our week through the lens

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over part of the Seychelles, an island republic in the western Indian Ocean.

Image: First Ariane 6 booster gets lift to launch zone

Ariane 6 media kit

A centre to innovate the design and manufacture of space hardware has today opened in Vienna. Driving commercialisation in space, it is the first of its kind of ESA-backed disruptive innovation centres outside ESA’s own premises.

ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence will make a swingby of Mars next March, borrowing speed to help reach its target Didymos binary asteroid system.