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ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti has started training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA. Set to launch for her second mission in spring 2022, Samantha is already getting reacquainted with International Space Station systems in a series of refresher courses.

Samantha was last on the International Space Station in 2014 for her Futura mission. She spent 200 days in space, conducting European and international scientific experiments and Space Station operations.

In the coming months, her schedule will intensify as she trains for the specific experiments and tasks she will perform in space during her second mission.

As a collaborative, international effort

The General Observer scientific observations for the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s first year of operation have been selected. Proposals from ESA member states comprise 33% of the total number of selected proposals and correspond to 30% of the available telescope time on Webb.

Image: When clouds collide

An international research group, including Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, has shown how the same forces responsible for building dust bunnies under our beds may be responsible for holding the asteroid Didymos together.

La Laguna, Spain (SPX) Mar 30, 2021
A team of researchers, led by the Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio (Incipit-CSIC) and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), in collaboration with the team from the Arqueological Zone of Caral (Peru) led by Dr. Ruth Shady Solis, has established the relation between the position of the monuments of the Supe Culture (Peru), their orientations, and some astronomical and topograph

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Mar 26, 2021
Earth is on a budget - an energy budget. Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth's system. But human activities are throwing that off balance, causing our planet to warm in response. Radiative energy enters Earth's system from the sunlight that shines on our planet. Some of this energy reflects off of Earth's surface or atmosphere back into space.

London, UK (SPX) Mar 29, 2021
Researchers find that the earliest bacteria had the tools to perform a crucial step in photosynthesis, changing how we think life evolved on Earth. The finding also challenges expectations for how life might have evolved on other planets. The evolution of photosynthesis that produces oxygen is thought to be the key factor in the eventual emergence of complex life. This was thought to take

Following the selection of the first Scout satellite mission last December, ESA has also given the greenlight to start negotiations with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in the UK to lead the development of the second Scout mission – HydroGNSS.

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Mar 30, 2021
In a newly signed agreement, Axelspace Corporation and KSAT are expanding their existing partnership on Global Ground Network support to also include data distribution from AxelGlobe, powered by the constellation of GRUS, a 100Kg microsatellite for optical Earth observation. With the successful launch of 4 satellites (GRUS-1B, 1C, 1D and 1E) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on March

Noordwijk, Netherlands (ESA) Mar 30, 2021
The longest corridor in ESA's largest establishment was turned into a test site for one of the Agency's most ambitious future missions, Proba-3. The two satellites making up this mission will line up so that one casts a shadow onto the other, revealing inner regions of the Sun's ghostly atmosphere. But such precision formation flying will only be possible through a vision-based sensor system all