As part of ESA’s continuing commitment to realise cutting-edge satellite missions to advance scientific understanding of our planet and to show how new technologies can be used in space, three new ideas have been chosen to compete as the tenth Earth Explorer mission.
The International Space Station deployed this small satellite for the NanoRacks-Remove Debris investigation, designed to demonstrate an approach to reduce the risks presented by orbital debris or “space junk.”
These prominent trenches were formed by faults that pulled the planet’s surface apart less than 10 million years ago.
Just over a month into its mission, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has returned first-light data from each of its four instrument suites. These early observations show that each of the instruments is working well.
ESA’s star mapping mission, Gaia, has shown our Milky Way galaxy is still enduring the effects of a near collision that set millions of stars moving like ripples on a pond.
Technology image of the week: Graffiti without Gravity winner Shane Sutton decorates a test facility at ESA’s technical heart
An out-of-this-world mobile observatory, developed in collaboration with Nissan Design Europe in London, UK, was unveiled at the 2018 Hannover Motor Show this week, proving that the sky is never the limit.
Astronauts on a mission to Mars would be exposed to at least 60% of the total radiation dose limit recommended for their career during the journey itself to and from the Red Planet, according to data from the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter being presented at the European Planetary Science Congress, EPSC, in Berlin, Germany, this week.
Astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor examines her eye with a Funduscope.
Last week at the Airbus integration hall in Bremen, Germany, technicians installed the last radiator on the European Service Module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft marking the module’s finished integration.
ESA’s European service module will provide power, water, air and electricity to NASA’s Orion exploration spacecraft that will eventually fly beyond the Moon with astronauts. The European Service Module is now complete for Orion’s first mission that will do a lunar fly-by without astronauts to demonstrate the spacecraft’s capabilities.
Human and robotic exploration image of the week: Field trip to the Dolomites for week two of the Pangaea geology training course
