Video: 00:11:18

Imagine you are singing in a choir. You are doing your best, just like everybody else. Suddenly, somebody turns to you and points out that you are not singing the right note. If you are told off in a harsh way, you may feel bad about it, and if this happens too often you might not only feel upset about the choir but might even leave it for good. Eventually, the whole choir could end if everybody just leaves.

It is the duty of the choir conductor (the ESA team head) to be able to address every single situation in the right way,

Week in images: 05-09 June 2023

Discover our week through the lens

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Cook Strait, which separates New Zealand's North and South Islands.

Beijing (XNA) Jun 09, 2023
China is working on a rocket for its moon landing mission, which will send a manned spaceship and a lander to lunar orbit in two separate flights, chief designer of the country's manned space program Zhou Jianping revealed. The spaceship will send the taikonauts to lunar orbit and dock with the lunar lander. The lander will subsequently carry the taikonauts to the moon's surface. After the

San Francisco CA (SPX) Jun 09, 2023
Capella Space, an American space tech company and the world's leading provider of commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery for a wide range of government, commercial and scientific applications, has been awarded a five year blanket purchase agreement (BPA) by NASA's Earth Science Division for the purchase of its high resolution SAR imagery and data for evaluation to determine their suit

Toulouse, France (SPX) Jun 09, 2023
E-Space has completed a five-month feasibility study, commissioned by the French Space Agency, Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The study aimed at assessing and validating the technical capabilities of the E-Space satellite system (space platform, communication payload, guidance, navigation and control (GNC) and user terminal) as well as the long-term viability of the Company's underly

Herndon VA (SPX) Jun 09, 2023
HawkEye 360 Inc., the world's leading defense technology company for space-based radio frequency (RF) data and analytics, reports that its Cluster 7 satellites have begun operation. This latest satellite trio achieved initial operating capability in record time after successfully launching into orbit on April 15, 2023. A new 300MHz whip antenna provides better coverage in the 270MHz - 330M

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jun 09, 2023
The movement of cosmic ray particles across space, such as electrons and protons, is influenced by the Sun's magnetic field, causing fluctuations in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) reaching Earth in response to the solar cycle. During periods of low solar activity, such as the solar minimum, more GCRs have been observed to reach Earth compared to that for periods of high solar activ

Paris (ESA) Jun 09, 2023
ESA's exoplanet mission Cheops confirmed the existence of four warm exoplanets orbiting four stars in our Milky Way. These exoplanets have sizes between Earth and Neptune and orbit their stars closer than Mercury our Sun. These so-called mini-Neptunes are unlike any planet in our Solar System and provide a 'missing link' between Earth-like and Neptune-like planets that is not yet understoo

Austin TX (SPX) Jun 09, 2023
A team of astronomers has used observations from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory to discover some of the longest tails of gas yet observed escaping a planet. The planet, HAT-P-32b, is nearly twice the size of Jupiter and losing its atmosphere through dramatic jets of helium unfurling before and behind it as it travels through spa