ESO Top News

ESA has signed two contracts with European industry to develop a commercial service capable of transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station in low Earth orbit by 2030.

Keeping information secure in today’s interconnected world is becoming ever more important. ESA and the EU have amended their security of information agreement, reinforcing their trusted partnership.

ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission is designed to advance our understanding of the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface.

Developed as a cooperation between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), this exciting mission will make a range of different measurements that together will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s delicate temperature balance. 

With global climate change increasingly affecting our planet, EarthCARE is poised to provide data for climate research, improve the accuracy of climate models and support numerical weather prediction. 

The EarthCare pre-launch press briefing featured: Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Observation Programmes, ESA, Dirk Bernaerts, EarthCARE project manager and Acting Head Earth Explorers Division, ESA, Futoshi Takiguchi, Vice President and Director General for the Space Technology Directorate, JAXA, Eiichi Tomita, EarthCARE/CPR Project Manager, JAXA and Maximilian Sauer, EarthCARE Project Manager, Airbus.

ESA's fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain, captured this stunning meteor during the night of 18—19 May 2024 (00:46 CEST 19 May / 22:46 UTC 18 May).

The camera is operated by ESA’s Planetary Defence Office and is part of the AllSky7 fireball network.

ESA’s planetary defenders began investigating the impact shortly after it was first reported. Their analysis of the object’s trajectory has revealed that it is likely to have been a small piece of a comet.

They estimate that it flew over Spain and Portugal travelling at roughly 45 km/s (162 000 km/h) before burning up over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of approximately 60 km.

Using data on the amount of energy released during the impact, they estimate that the object was roughly 1 m in size and had a mass of 500—1000 kg.

The likelihood of any meteorites from this even being discovered is very low.

The object was not detected before impact. This is likely because it approached Earth from a region of the sky that is particularly crowded with stars of the Milky Way galaxy.

Find out more about ESA’s Planetary Defence activities

Week in images: 13-17 May 2024

Discover our week through the lens

A new satellite called EarthCARE launching later this month will provide unprecedented data on clouds and aerosols, contributing to our understanding of climate change. As we approach its launch, join us as we delve into the minds of some of the individuals who have contributed to EarthCARE over the years.

The mission will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s temperature.

This video features interviews with: Dave Donovan, Senior Scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Robin Hogan, Senior Scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Ulla Wandinger, Senior Scientist at Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Alain Lefebvre, Retired Project Manager of EarthCARE at ESA, Hajime Okamoto, Director, Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Bjoern Frommknecht, EarthCARE Mission Manager at ESA, Edward Baudrez, Scientific Assistant at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, Thorsten Fehr, EarthCARE Mission Scientist at ESA, Pavlos Kollias from Stony Brook University – McGill University and Dirk Bernaerts, EarthCARE Project Manager at ESA.

Follow the EarthCARE launch campaign blog for more updates.

This summer marks the ten-year anniversary of the electromagnetic levitation facility on the International Space Station.

Explore this mission kit to learn more about EarthCARE – ESA’s new mission that will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s climate.

Wildfire season has arrived in full force in Canada, prompting evacuation orders and alerts in several towns in British Columbia and Alberta due to the danger of uncontrolled blazes.

Hazardous smoke from the fires has also triggered air quality alerts in Canada and the northern US. Satellite technology, including the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite and ESA’s Fire Atlas, plays a crucial role in monitoring these wildfires.

An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to find evidence for an ongoing merger of two galaxies and their massive black holes when the Universe was only 740 million years old. This marks the most distant detection of a black hole merger ever obtained and the first time that this phenomenon has been detected so early in the Universe.

Over the weekend of 10–12 May 2024, Earth was struck by the largest solar storm in more than a decade. While many of us enjoyed colourful auroras lighting up Earth’s protective atmosphere, spacecraft had to endure being buffeted by incredibly strong solar winds and electromagnetic radiation.  

Positioned between the Sun and Earth, the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) caught the entire solar outburst on camera. The Sun can be seen spewing out clouds of particles, with an extremely large burst sent to Earth on 11 May. The bright spots on the left and right are Jupiter and Venus. 

This video was taken by SOHO’s LASCO instrument, a coronagraph made up of a telescope with a disc blocking the centre of view. By blocking out the direct light coming from the Sun, the instrument can see light from the surrounding corona.  

SOHO is not the only ESA spacecraft studying solar activity and space weather. ESA’s Directorates of Science, Human and Robotic Exploration, Earth Observation, Operations, and Technology, Engineering and Quality all have missions and/or other activities directly connected with this topic. Together, they form the ESA Heliophysics observatory or more musically, ESA’s Heliophysics Orchestra.  

Are you ready for the greatest story ever told? Launched in France on 25 April 2024, Space Odyssey is the first complete history of space in graphic novel form. Drawing on the latest scientific and historical sources, it tells the story of the men and women who pioneered humankind's journey into space.