Copernical Team
Image: ISS Biolab facility
Does this image make you anxious or are you already tracking where all the wires go? If the latter, you might have what it takes to be an astronaut!
It is an exciting time for space. With NASA's latest rover safely on Mars and ESA's call for the next class of astronauts, the space industry is teeming with possibilities.
This image taken in ESA's Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station is a snapshot of the many opportunities in space research and exploration.
In the center is the Biolab facility, a fridge-sized unit that hosts biological experiments on micro-organisms, cells, tissue cultures, small plants and small invertebrates. Performing life science experiments in space identifies the role that weightlessness plays at all levels of an organism, from the effects on a single cell up to a complex organism—including humans.
The facility has enabled researchers to make some remarkable discoveries, most notably that mammalian immune cells required a mere 42 seconds to adapt to weightlessness, prompting more questions but also an overall positive outlook for long-duration human spaceflight.
The pink glow in the image is from the greenhouse that has enabled many studies on plant growth in space.
Meet ESA’s R&D directorate
Our new brochure introduces ESA’s R&D directorate: the engineers charged with inventing the new technologies needed for Europe to push further out into space, and develop the novel services improving our lives here on Earth.
ESA plans mission to explore lunar caves
In a first step towards uncovering the Moon's subterranean secrets, in 2019 we asked for your ideas to detect, map and explore lunar caves. Five ideas were selected to be studied in more detail, each addressing different phases of a potential mission.
DLR conducts ground vibration test on the Dornier 'Seastar' amphibious aircraft
A team of researchers from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in Gottingen have evaluated the Dornier Seastar seaplane in a ground vibration test (GVT) campaign. These tests are part of the certification process that all aircraft must undergo.
The tests were carried out in Oberpfaffenhofen on behalf of Dornier Seawings GmbH. Ground vibration tests Increasing battery and fuel cell power with quantum computing
The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is conducting research into new materials for more powerful batteries and fuel cells. DLR scientists are now using a quantum computer to simulate electrochemical processes within energy storage systems. This makes it possible to design the materials used in such a way that the performance and energy density of batteries Xi lauds China's progress in space missions
President Xi Jinping encouraged Chinese space industry workers on Monday to strive for successes in the nation's future lunar explorations and carry out interplanetary expeditions with a methodical approach.
Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, urged space industry workers to take advantage of C Brand new findings on fire safety in space
For the fifth time, a team of 25 international scientists used the Northrop Grumman CYGNUS supply vehicle for the International Space Station to conduct experiments with large fires in space. This time, amazing data was transmitted from the return journey to Earth that even the combustion researchers could not have predicted: in weightlessness, a flame tends to spread in the opposite direction t Binary stars are all around us, new map of solar neighborhood shows
The latest star data from the Gaia space observatory has for the first time allowed astronomers to generate a massive 3D atlas of widely separated binary stars within about 3,000 light years of Earth - 1.3 million of them.
The one-of-a-kind atlas, created by Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysics Ph.D. student from the University of California, Berkeley, should be a boon for those who study bina Neutrino from shredded star reveals cosmic particle accelerator
Astrophysicists have traced a subatomic particle called a neutrino to its cosmic origins, a tidal disruption event located some 700 million light-years from Earth.
The new research - published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy - suggests the violent destruction of a faraway star by a supermassive black hole was powerful enough to send a tiny, near-frictionless particle racing acr Scientists link star-shredding event to origins of universe's highest-energy particles
A team of scientists has detected the presence of a high-energy neutrino - a particularly elusive particle - in the wake of a star's destruction as it is consumed by a black hole. This discovery, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, sheds new light on the origins of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays - the highest energy particles in the Universe.
The work, which included researchers from m