NASA moving ahead with Europa Clipper launch in October
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 10:17
Vega for ESA: the story
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 09:00
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Vega joined the family of launch vehicles at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in 2012. At 30-m tall the rocket weighs 137 tonnes on the launch pad and reaches orbit with three solid-propellant powered stages before the fourth liquid-propellant stage takes over. By rocket standards Vega is lightweight and powerful, the first three stages burn through their fuel and bringing Vega and its satellites to space in just six minutes.
Specialising in launches of small satellites to orbits flying over Earth’s poles, Vega has an impressive roster of missions that it has sent to space. Flagship ESA missions
China launches new set of classified Yaogan-43 satellites
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 08:53
Opportunities with ESA at Big Science Business Forum 2024
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 08:40 Write a comment
ESA is part of the Big Science Business Forum 2024 event on 1–4 October in Trieste, Italy. This is where industry and Europe’s leading science organisations, research infrastructures and their collaborators will meet to inform, network and discuss business opportunities in a market valued at nearly €10 billion annually.
Sentinel-2C operators complete final rehearsals
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 08:30 Write a comment
ESA mission controllers have completed the final phase of their simulation training for the critical launch and early orbit phase, confirming that everything is ready for the launch of Sentinel-2C.
Mission control GO for Sentinel-2C launch
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 07:00 Write a comment
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Mission control GO for Sentinel-2C launch ESA delays BepiColombo orbital insertion because of thruster problem
Tuesday, 03 September 2024 02:09
Inside the 'golden age' of alien hunting at the Green Bank Telescope
Monday, 02 September 2024 20:52 Write a comment
Nestled between mountains in a secluded corner of West Virginia, a giant awakens: the Green Bank Telescope begins its nightly vigil, scanning the cosmos for secrets.
If intelligent life exists beyond Earth, there's a good chance the teams analyzing the data from the world's largest, fully steerable radio astronomy facility will be the first to know.
"People have been asking themselves t Q&A: Scientist discusses the MESSENGER mission to Mercury
Monday, 02 September 2024 16:41 Write a comment
Twenty years ago, the MESSENGER mission revolutionized our understanding of Mercury. We sat down with project head and former Carnegie Science director Sean Solomon to talk about how the mission came together and the groundbreaking work it enabled.
Q: As the principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission, what were your personal highlights or proudest moments throughout the mission's duration?
Sean Solomon: There were many personal highlights for me during the MESSENGER mission, beginning with our initial selection by NASA in 1999 and culminating in the publication by the MESSENGER science team of all of the findings from our mission in a book published nearly two decades later.
The most challenging events in any planetary orbiter mission are launch and orbit insertion. The successful completion of those two milestones for MESSENGER—in 2004 and 2011, respectively—were sources of great pride for me in the technical expertise of all of the engineers, mission design experts, and project managers who contributed to the mission.
The long flight portion of the mission provided multiple scientific highlights. MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury in January 2008 yielded the first new spacecraft observations of Mercury in 33 years, and our team published 11 papers in a single issue of Science from those measurements six months later.
OHB secures final regulatory approvals for KKR deal
Monday, 02 September 2024 13:53
Ignite your curiosity for space at ESA Open Days 2024!
Monday, 02 September 2024 08:45
Watch Sentinel-2C launch live on the final Vega rocket
Monday, 02 September 2024 08:15 Write a comment
The Copernicus Sentinel-2C satellite is ready for liftoff! Tune in to ESA WebTV on 4 September from 03:30 CEST to watch the satellite soar into space on the last Vega rocket to be launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Sentinel-2C is scheduled to liftoff at 03:50 CEST.
Goodbye Hera: asteroid mission departs ESA test centre
Monday, 02 September 2024 07:00 Write a comment
After a year of testing, ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence is about to depart Europe and head towards its launch site in the USA. The Hera team looked on as the crated spacecraft – along with its twin miniature CubeSats and additional equipment – was driven away from ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
Fourth Mercury flyby begins BepiColombo’s new trajectory
Monday, 02 September 2024 06:00 Write a comment
Teams from across ESA and industry have worked continuously over the past four months to overcome a glitch that prevented BepiColombo’s thrusters from operating at full power. The ESA/JAXA mission is still on track, with a new trajectory that will take it just 165 km from Mercury’s surface on Wednesday.
Taking BepiColombo closer to Mercury than it’s ever been before, this flyby will reduce the spacecraft’s speed and change its direction. It also gives us the opportunity to snap images and fine-tune science instrument operations at Mercury before the main mission begins. Closest approach is scheduled for 23:48 CEST
NASA Discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth
Sunday, 01 September 2024 18:46 Write a comment
Using observations from a NASA suborbital rocket, an international team of scientists has, for the first time, successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields. Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove how our planet's atmosphere can escape above Earth's North an