ESA plans to track the health of the world’s vegetation by detecting and measuring the faint glow that plants give off as they convert sunlight and the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide into energy.
Tag: ESA
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A witness to a wet early Mars
Vast volumes of water once flooded through this deep chasm on Mars that connects the ‘Grand Canyon’ of the Solar System – Valles Marineris – to the planet’s northern lowlands.
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3D-printed alien
Technology image of the week: materials specialist Tommaso Ghidini showing unearthly-looking 3D-printed part at TEDxESA -
The Right Stuff
Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: ESA’s operations managers are team leaders, motivating people and managing complex systems and situations on the cutting edge of human exploration -
A black hole in action
Space Science Image of the Week: Galaxy Hercules A reveals its spectacular jets -
Call for Media: ExoMars 2016 leaving Europe for launch site
The ESA–Roscosmos ExoMars 2016 spacecraft are ready to depart Europe for the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, to prepare for their launch in March.
Members of the media are invited to join ExoMars scientists and engineers from ESA, Roscosmos and Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France on 25 November for a final glimpse of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli, the entry, descent and landing demonstrator, before they leave.
The spacecraft will be launched on a Russian Proton rocket during the 14–25 March 2016 window, arriving at Mars in October 2016.
TGO will take a detailed inventory of Mars’ atmospheric gases. Of special interest is the origin of methane – its presence implies an active, current source, and TGO will help to determine if it stems from a geological or biological source.
Schiaparelli will demonstrate a range of technologies to enable a controlled landing on Mars in preparation for future missions.
TGO will also serve as a data relay for the second ExoMars mission, comprising a rover and a surface science platform, which is planned for launch in 2018. -
Meet LISA Pathfinder
LISA Pathfinder, launching 2 December, will pave the way for future missions by testing the technology for gravitational wave detection -
International effort reveals Greenland ice loss
One of Greenland’s glaciers is losing five billion tonnes of ice a year to the ocean, according to researchers. While these new findings may be disturbing, they are reinforced by a concerted effort to map changes in ice sheets with different sensors from space agencies around the world.
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Chinese painting
Earth observation image of the week: a Sentinel-2A false-colour image of Qingdao and surroundings, in China, also featured on the Earth from Space video programme -
Earth from Space
Join us Friday, 13 November, at 10:00 CET for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week features a Sentinel-2A image of Qingdao and surroundings, in China -
Thomas Pesquet closer to space with mission name Proxima
Today, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet revealed the name and logo for his six-month mission to the International Space Station starting next November.
Thomas will be the 10th astronaut from France to head into space and his mission name of Proxima continues the French tradition of referring to stars and constellations.
