ESA’s first human spaceflight mission lifted off 40 years ago today. Accompanied by the first ESA astronaut, Ulf Merbold, the Spacelab module took flight inside the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay, turning NASA’s ‘space truck’ into a mini-space station for scientific research. Europe continues to be highly active in the crewed module business to this day.

On 28 November 1983 European human spaceflight took a giant leap forward. Not only did German Ulf Merbold become the first ESA astronaut in space, but along with him travelled the European-made Spacelab. Carried in the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay, Spacelab converted the Shuttle into a highly productive orbital laboratory.

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Henk Hoekstra, professor of observational cosmology at Leiden University, the Netherlands, shares his professional trajectory linked to weak gravitational lensing, a technique used by ESA’s Euclid mission.

Henk explains how Euclid will reveal the dark side of the Universe. He uses enlightening examples involving a swimming pool and other terrestrial objects. Listen to Henk Hoekstra to understand how Euclid can make the invisible visible.

Space Team Europe is an ESA space community engagement initiative to gather European space actors under the same umbrella sharing values of leadership, autonomy, and responsibility.

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This new Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 28, 2023
Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), a renowned leader in the aerospace and defense sector, recently announced a significant step forward in space technology with the upcoming launch of a wideband Electronically Steerable Antenna (ESA) payload demonstrator. This initiative is a testament to Lockheed Martin's dedication to enhancing space capabilities for quick operational readiness once in orbit.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 28, 2023
In a significant advancement for space technology, Above: Space Development, in collaboration with Electric Sky, has successfully tested the Archimedes platform, a novel, rapidly deployable, free-flying on-orbit system. This platform marks a new era in space infrastructure, encompassing a wide range of functions including solar panels, beamed power, and electronically steerable antenna arrays fo