Category: Science

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Juice solar panels ready to turn into wings

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Animation visualising BepiColombo flying by Venus. The spacecraft will make two gravity assist flybys of Venus to set it on course to Mercury: one on 15 October 2020, and the second in August 2021. It made an Earth flyby 10 April 2020 and will also fly by Mercury six times before entering orbit in December 2025.
The joint ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission comprises the European Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Japan’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. They are transported to the innermost planet by the Mercury Transfer Module. The two orbiters will be able to operate some of their instruments during the planetary flybys, affording unique science opportunities. The monitoring cameras onboard the transfer module will also capture images during the journey to Mercury.
More information: esa.int/bepicolombo

ESA has released its first Solar Orbiter data to the scientific community and the wider public. The instruments contributing to this data release come from the suite of in-situ instruments that measure the conditions surrounding the spacecraft.

ESA’s Rosetta mission has revealed a unique kind of aurora, an exciting phenomenon seen throughout the Solar System, at its target comet, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

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A new view of Enceladus

A new set of images captured this spring by the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter shows a series of interesting geological features on the surface of Mars, captured just as the planet passed its spring equinox.

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The ancient lakeshore of Jezero crater on Mars

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Citizen scientist discovers Sun-watcher SOHO’s 4000th comet

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Candidate precursors of galaxy clusters as observed with the SPIRE instrument on ESA’s Herschel space observatory

The formation of the Sun, the Solar System and the subsequent emergence of life on Earth may be a consequence of a collision between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and a smaller galaxy called Sagittarius, discovered in the 1990s to be orbiting our galactic home.

Kerbal Space Program enthusiasts will receive a free update to their space simulator to build an Ariane 5 rocket and tackle real ESA missions in ‘Shared Horizons’ from 1 July.

Nature is a powerful sculptor – as shown in this image from ESA’s Mars Express, which portrays a heavily scarred, fractured martian landscape. This terrain was formed by intense and prolonged forces that acted upon Mars’ surface for hundreds of millions of years.

Currently crossing the skies above Earth, Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) has the potential to become a more prominent naked eye object by late May or early June. Yet it wasn’t discovered by someone looking up at the night sky. Instead, the person was looking at a computer screen.