science wire

Living in space
Thank you for rating! You have already rated this page, you can only rate it once! Your rating has been changed, thanks for rating! Title ESA Euronews: Living in space Released 24/05/

Watching for hazards: ESA opens asteroid centre
22 May 2013 ESA today inaugurated a new hub that will strengthen Europe's contribution to the global hunt for asteroids and other hazardous natural objects that may strike Earth.

Heading up
Astronaut training Related articles Services Calendar 21 May 2013 ESA astronaut Timothy Peake and UK prime minister David Cameron at the office of the pr

Moonrise
21 May 2013 The Moon rises above clouds blanketing the Pacific Ocean in this image taken by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft during its first flyby of Earth eight years ago.

Tim Peake to ISS
20 May 2013 ESA's Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain, announced today that the ISS Multilateral Crew Operations Panel has decided on Friday, 17 May to accept his proposal to fly astronaut Timothy Peake to the International Space Station in 2015.

Space drives e-mobility
20 May 2013 An ESA business incubation start-up company is helping major car manufacturers to develop electric vehicle concepts and improve safety systems by turning ideas quickly into virtual prototypes.

Proba-V opens its eyes
17 May 2013 Earth watcher Proba-V is in good health following its launch last week. The Vegetation imager has been switched on and the first image has been captured over western France.

First new Galileo satellite arrives at ESA for space testing
16 May 2013 The first satellite of Galileo's next phase has arrived at ESA's technical heart in the Netherlands for a rigorous set of tests to check its readiness for launch.

Next destination: space
16 May 2013 ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano left for Baikonur, Kazakhstan today, his last stop before heading to the International Space Station on 28 May.

ESA’s UK Facility
14 May 2013 David Willetts, UK Minister for Universities and Science, and Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, today unveiled the Agency's first UK facility: ECSAT, the European Centre for Space Applications and Tele , located at the Harwell Oxford campus.

Leak repaired on International Space Station
13 May 2013 Over the weekend the crew of the International Space Station worked overtime to fix a leaking cooling network outside the orbital outpost.

Galaxy zoom
13 May 2013 Bright arcs are smeared around the heart of galaxy cluster Abell S1077 in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope.

After Chelyabinsk: European experts assess asteroid options
8 May 2013 In February, a speeding asteroid slammed into our atmosphere and exploded high over Russia's Ural region, injuring hundreds and causing millions of euros of damage.

Last sunset
7 May 2013 Concordia research station in the heart of Antarctica witnessed its last sunset for over three months last Sunday.

ESA’S Vega launcher scores new success with Proba-V
7 May 2013 PR N° 12-2013 - The second flight of ESA's newest launch vehicle has been completed from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Earth Explorer 7
7 May 2013 ESA's Earth Observation Programme Board has selected 'Biomass' to become the seventh Earth Explorer mission. The innovative satellite aims to map and monitor one of Earth's most precious resources. Following the review of three candidate concepts at the Board's meeting today, the Biomass mission concept is set to become the next in a series of satellites developed to further our understanding of Earth.

Herschel finds hot gas on the menu for Milky Way’s black hole
7 May 2013 ESA's Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot molecular gas that may be orbiting or falling towards the supermassive black hole lurking at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Our local black hole is located in a region known as Sagittarius A* - Sgr A* - after a nearby radio source.

Vega success
7 May 2013 The second flight of ESA's newest launch vehicle has been completed from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Launch replay
Thank you for rating! You have already rated this page, you can only rate it once! Your rating has been changed, thanks for rating! Title Vega launch transmission replay - Part 1 Relea

Destination Earth
6 May 2013 Solar science meets art in this unique portrait of a solar storm heading straight for Earth.

Strong easterly winds postpone Vega countdown
5 May 2013 The second Vega flight, due on 4 May from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, has been postponed.

Launch postponed
5 May 2013 The second Vega flight, due on 4 May from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, has been postponed.

Landslides and lava flows at Olympus Mons on Mars
2 May 2013 Giant landslides, lava flows and tectonic forces are behind this dynamic scene captured recently by ESA's Mars Express of a region scarred by the Solar System's largest volcano, Olympus Mons.

Bedsuit
1 May 2013 Seventies science-fiction or science experiment? Not an actor or space traveller, this 'pillownaut' might not have his feet on firm ground, but he is simulating spaceflight by spending three weeks in bed.

World’s major development banks look closer at Earth observation
30 April 2013 International development banks often invest in regions where projects can be difficult to monitor and evaluate.

Herschel closes its eyes on the Universe
29 April 2013 ESA's Herschel space observatory has exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant, ending more than three years of pioneering observations of the cool Universe.

Eye of the storm
29 April 2013 The international Cassini spacecraft has found a powerful hurricane at Saturn's north pole, surrounded by the curious rotating hexagonal band of clouds.

Vega poised for commercial launches
26 April 2013 The second Vega launch marks the transition to commercial exploitation, showcasing a mature launcher with increased capabilities and flexibility to meet the different demands of the launchers market.

Stress to rest
26 April 2013 On Sunday, ESA's bedrest volunteers began lying down for their second three-week session with their heads angled below the horizontal to help research the effects of weightlessness on the human body.

From space: incubation programme creates a thousand jobs
25 April 2013 The creation of a thousand new high-tech jobs over the last nine years was celebrated at the Agency's business incubator in southern Germany on Wednesday.

Global experts agree action needed on space debris
25 April 2013 There is an urgent need to remove orbiting space debris and to fly satellites in the future without creating new fragments, Europe's largest-ever space-debris conference announced today.

Against-the-clock rehearsal for Station immunology test
25 April 2013 Simply getting anything into space is tough, but doing so against a strict deadline can be really stressful. Researchers in an ESA laboratory nervously checked the clock as they extracted immune cells - beginning a full dress rehearsal to prepare a time-critical experiment for launch.

Earth from Space
Thank you for rating! You have already rated this page, you can only rate it once! Your rating has been changed, thanks for rating! Title Earth from Space: Special edition Released 14

Vega VV02
Fully assembled Vega VV02 on pad ESA's Vega VV02 rocket is now fully assembled on its launch pad, 22 April, 2013. Final preparations are in full swing for the rocket's flight. Vega VV02 is the first of the five flights scheduled in ESA's Vega Research and Technology Accompaniment - VERTA - programme, which aims to demonstrate the flexibility of the launch system.

Cleaning space
23 April 2013 Artist's concept showing how a defunct satellite could be grappled for a controlled reentry into Earth's atmosphere, where it would burn up and be destroyed harmlessly.

Herschel links Jupiter’s water to comet impact
23 April 2013 ESA's Herschel space observatory has solved a long-standing mystery as to the origin of water in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter, finding conclusive evidence that it was delivered by the dramatic impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in July 1994.

Herschel
Herschel and Aquila ESA's Herschel space observatory set against a background image of stellar nursery W40, 1000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila.

Facing Enceladus
22 April 2013 A patchwork network of frozen ridges and troughs cover the face of Enceladus, Saturn's most enigmatic of icy moons.

Mars and the machine
22 April 2013 Without hi-tech magnetic sensors, rovers wouldn't be able to roam around Mars. These same sensors will soon boost terrestrial travel by improving the machinery that moulds parts for cars and aircraft here on Earth.

Herschel and Hubble see the Horsehead in new light
19 April 2013 New views of the Horsehead Nebula and its turbulent environment have been unveiled by ESA's Herschel space observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope.

Job creation and growth with space
19 April 2013 Ireland is setting an example for how space technologies can contribute to economic growth and recovery through the maritime sector.

Focus on growing threat of space debris
18 April 2013 The continuing growth in space debris poses an increasing threat to economically vital orbital regions.

Star factory in the early Universe challenges galaxy evolution theory
17 April 2013 ESA's Herschel space observatory has discovered an extremely distant galaxy making stars more than 2000 times faster than our own Milky Way. Seen at a time when the Universe was less than a billion years old, its mere existence challenges our theories of galaxy evolution. The galaxy, known as HFLS3, appears as little more than a faint, red smudge in images from the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES).

V for Vegetation
Thank you for rating! You have already rated this page, you can only rate it once! Your rating has been changed, thanks for rating! Title PROBA Vegetation Released 03/04/2013 Leng

90 million laser shots bring wind satellite back on track
16 April 2013 Developing new ways of monitoring Earth is always demanding, but ESA's Aeolus mission has faced some particularly difficult technical challenges. However, with the success of intense high-energy tests on its novel laser there is now light at the end of the tunnel for this unique mission.

Full tank, please
ATV Downloads Downloads Services 16 April 2013 A fuelling operator at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana inspects progress as ATV Albert Einstein is filled with propellant to take to the International Space Station.

Now on iTunes
iTunes is the world's easiest way to organise and add to your digital media collection. We are unable to find iTunes on your computer.

Amazing aurora
15 April 2013 This beautiful aurora illuminates the sky over the snow-clad landscape near Tromsø, Norway. These colourful displays are produced when electrically charged particles travelling from the Sun in the solar wind are channelled along Earth's magnetic field lines and strike atoms high in the atmosphere.

Week In Images
Tim Peake meets Prime Minister David Cameron ESA astronaut Tim Peake, of British nationality, meets Prime Minister David Cameron at number 10, Downing Street.

ATV-4 scheduled for summer liftoff
ATV Downloads Downloads Services 11 April 2013 ESA's space freighter ATV Albert Einstein will be the heaviest spacecraft ever launched into space by an Ariane rocket when it lifts off to the International Space Station on 5 June.

ATV-4 scheduled for June liftoff
ATV Downloads Downloads Services 11 April 2013 ESA's space freighter ATV Albert Einstein will be the heaviest spacecraft ever launched into space by an Ariane rocket when it lifts off to the International Space Station on 5 June.

Explosive crater twins on Mars
11 April 2013 Dramatic underground explosions, perhaps involving ice, are responsible for the pits inside these two large martian impact craters, imaged by ESA's Mars Express on 4 January.

Zone of silence
10 April 2013 Satellite engineers learn to get used to the weirdly hushed interior of the Compact Payload Test Range in ESA's ESTEC technical centre area, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Down the slopes with space app in your pocket
10 April 2013 Track your skiing, speed, altitude, slopes and lift kilometres with a nifty phone app from an ESA business incubation start-up.

Space underwater
Astronaut training Related articles Services Calendar 9 April 2013 ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet waves as he descends to a mockup of the International Space Station at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, USA.

Retired star found with planets and debris disc
9 April 2013 ESA's Herschel space observatory has provided the first images of a dust belt - produced by colliding comets or asteroids - orbiting a subgiant star known to host a planetary system. After billions of years steadily burning hydrogen in their cores, stars like our Sun exhaust this central fuel reserve and start burning it in shells around the core.

Shaking ExoMars
8 April 2013 The structural model of the Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module, or EDM, of ESA's 2016 ExoMars mission has been subjected to a series of intense shaker tests to simulate the rigours of launching into space. EDM will be launched to Mars together with the Trace Gas Orbiter and will test key landing technologies in preparation for the 2018 ExoMars rover mission and subsequent missions to Mars.

Eyes on our Sun: ESA opens new space weather centre in Brussels
5 April 2013 This week, ESA opened a new Space Weather Coordination Centre to gather up-to-date information on our Sun.

Shining light on elusive dark matter
The antimatter hunter AMS-02 on the International Space Station is searching for the missing pieces of our Universe. The project's first results published today are hinting at a new phenomenon and revealing more about the invisible 'dark matter'. AMS-02, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, consists of seven instruments that monitor cosmic rays from space.

Protecting history with satellites
Looking down from orbit is an attractive way of monitoring historical sites in remote or politically unstable regions - and can even help archaeologists to make new discoveries. The ancient city of Samarra was a powerful Islamic capital during the ninth century, located in what is today Iraq. It is the only surviving Islamic capital that retains its original plan, architecture and arts, although only about 20% of the site has been excavated.

Black hole wakes up and has a light snack
Astronomers have watched as a black hole woke up from a decades-long slumber to feed on a low-mass object - either a brown dwarf or a giant planet - that strayed too close.

Watching over you
Like astronauts, heavy-equipment operators in remote mines can benefit from long-distance monitoring using space technology.

Hunting high-mass stars with Herschel
In this new view of a vast star-forming cloud called W3, ESA's Herschel space observatory tells the story of how massive stars are born.

The long winter ahead
Secluded from civilisation and living in a white desert, the crew at the Concordia research base in Antarctica have settled in to their home and are ready for the cold, long winter ahead.

Cosmic blueprint
21 March 2013 Acquired by ESA's Planck space telescope, the most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background - the relic radiation from the Big Bang - was released today revealing the existence of features that challenge the foundations of our current understanding of the Universe.

Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe
Acquired by ESA's Planck space telescope, the most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background - the relic radiation from the Big Bang - was released today revealing the existence of features that challenge the foundations of our current understanding of the Universe. The image is based on the initial 15.5 months of data from Planck and is the mission's first all-sky picture of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when it was just 380 000 years old.

Black hole-star pair orbiting at dizzying speed
ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope has helped to identify a star and a black hole that orbit each other at the dizzying rate of once every 2.4 hours, smashing the previous record by nearly an hour.

ExoMars: ESA and Roscosmos set for Mars missions
ESA and the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, have signed a formal agreement to work in partnership on the ExoMars programme towards the launch of two missions in 2016 and 2018. Establishing whether life ever existed on Mars is one of the outstanding scientific questions of our time and the highest scientific priority of the ExoMars programme.

Galileo fixes Europe’s position in history
Europe's new age of satellite navigation has passed a historic milestone - the very first determination of a ground location using the four Galileo satellites currently in orbit together with their ground facilities.

Proba-V minisatellite reaches Europe’s Spaceport
ESA's Proba-V minisatellite for mapping global vegetation has arrived at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, where it is being prepared for a mid-April launch atop a Vega launcher.

X-ray snapshots: from big black holes to tiny viruses
Cameras designed for capturing black holes are now exploring a new frontier: they are helping us to get up close to viruses on Earth, opening the door to solving medical problems.

GOCE: the first seismometer in orbit
Satellites map changes in Earth's surface caused by earthquakes but never before have sound waves from a quake been sensed directly in space - until now. ESA's hyper-sensitive GOCE gravity satellite has added yet another first to its list of successes. Earthquakes not only create seismic waves that travel through Earth's interior, but large quakes also cause the surface of the planet to vibrate like a drum.

Herschel to finish observing soon
ESA's Herschel space observatory is expected to exhaust its supply of liquid helium coolant in the coming weeks after spending more than three exciting years studying the cool Universe.

Speedy black hole holds galaxy’s history
A rapidly rotating supermassive black hole has been found in the heart of a spiral galaxy by ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR space observatories, opening a new window into how galaxies grow. Supermassive black holes are thought to lurk in the centre of almost all large galaxies, and scientists believe that the evolution of a galaxy is inextricably linked with the evolution of its black hole.

Tracking trains with satellite precision
Taking a cue from how ESA controls satellites, Spanish railways now have their own high-tech upgrade to keep travellers abreast of when the next train is going to pull into the station.

SMOS: the global success story continues
ESA's water mission is shedding new light on the meandering Gulf Stream, just one of the SMOS satellite's numerous achievements.

ESA chooses instruments for its Jupiter icy moons explorer
The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer mission, JUICE, will carry a total of 11 scientific experiments to study the gas giant planet and its large ocean-bearing moons, ESA announced today.

Securing operational EU funding for GMES Copernicus
Good news for Europe's Global Monitoring for Environment and Security programme: the European Council has secured the programme's EU funding through 2020.

Russia asteroid impact: ESA update and assessment
The first firm details of the 15 February asteroid impact in Russia, the largest in more than a century, are becoming clear.

Russian asteroid strike
A space rock a few metres across exploded in Earth's atmosphere above the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia today at about 03:15 GMT.

At the mouth of the red valley
ESA's Mars Express took a high-resolution stereo image on 13 January of the southeast corner of the Amenthes Planum region on Mars, near to Palos crater and the mouth of a well-known sinuous valley, Tinto Vallis.

Honey, are you for real?
A laser device developed in the hopes of measuring carbon on Mars may soon be used here on Earth to root out counterfeit foods - and make sure that honey, olive oil and chocolate are what they claim. A cheap fake honey concocted from sugar would be unmasked simply by laser-scanning the carbon dioxide released from burning a few milligrams.

Is the ozone layer on the road to recovery?
Satellites show that the recent ozone hole over Antarctica was the smallest seen in the past decade. Long-term observations also reveal that Earth's ozone has been strengthening following international agreements to protect this vital layer of the atmosphere. According to the ozone sensor on Europe's MetOp weather satellite, the hole over Antarctica in 2012 was the smallest in the last 10 years.

Alphasat experiences heaven on Earth
Tucked away in a vacuum chamber for several months, Europe's largest telecom satellite has faced the harsh conditions it will deal with once it is launched into space this summer.

Ariane 5’s first liftoff of 2013
The first Ariane 5 heavy-lift mission of the year has delivered the Azerspace/Africasat-1a and Amazonas-3 telecom satellites into their planned transfer orbits.

Stranger in the night: space rock to make close Earth flyby
A little-known asteroid will skim past Earth on 15 February, passing just 28 000 km from our planet. The 50 m-diameter chunk of space rock was discovered in last year by ESA-sponsored amateur astronomers in Spain.

Massive stellar winds are made of tiny pieces
ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory has completed the most detailed study ever of the fierce wind from a giant star, showing for the first time that it is not a uniform breeze but is fragmented into hundreds of thousands of pieces. Massive stars are relatively rare, but play a very important role in recycling materials in the Universe.

Smooth ride at 300 km/h
Serious shocks need serious shock absorption, in space as well as on the ground. Now high-performance racing cars are driving more smoothly on space-ready rubber from ESA spacecraft.

Building a lunar base with 3D printing
Setting up a lunar base could be made much simpler by using a 3D printer to build it from local materials. Industrial partners including renowned architects Foster + Partners have joined with ESA to test the feasibility of 3D printing using lunar soil. "Terrestrial 3D printing technology has produced entire structures," said Laurent Pambaguian, heading the project for ESA.

NASA joins ESA’s ’dark Universe’ mission
NASA has officially joined ESA's Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to investigate the mysterious natures of dark matter and dark energy.

Galileo’s search and rescue system passes first space test
The first switch-on of a Galileo search and rescue package shows it to be working well. Its activation begins a major expansion of the space-based Cospas-Sarsat network, which brings help to air and sea vessels in distress. The second pair of Europe's Galileo navigation satellites - launched together on 12 October last year - are the first of the constellation to host SAR search and rescue repeaters.

Betelgeuse braces for a collision
Multiple arcs are revealed around Betelgeuse, the nearest red supergiant star to Earth, in this new image from ESA's Herschel space observatory.

Reull Vallis: a river ran through it
ESA's Mars Express imaged the striking upper part of the Reull Vallis region of Mars with its high-resolution stereo camera last year.

ESA workhorse to power NASA’s Orion spacecraft
Services Calendar 16 January 2013 ESA agreed with NASA today to contribute a driving force to the Orion spacecraft planned for launch in 2017.

Asteroid deflection mission seeks smashing ideas
A space rock several hundred metres across is heading towards our planet and the last-ditch attempt to avert a disaster - an untested mission to deflect it - fails. This fictional scene of films and novels could well be a reality one day. But what can space agencies do to ensure it works? ESA is appealing for research ideas to help guide the development of a US-European asteroid deflection mission now under study.

FlySafe adds new dimension to safe flying
Migrating birds fly as long as it takes to get to their destination, no matter what obstacles are in their way.

Testing time for Proba-V, ESA’s global vegetation tracker
ESA's Proba-V microsatellite is now assembled and midway through testing to ensure it is fully spaceworthy.

Herschel intercepts asteroid Apophis
ESA's Herschel space observatory made new observations of asteroid Apophis as it approached Earth this weekend. The data shows the asteroid to be bigger than first estimated, and less reflective. Catalogued as asteroid (99942) Apophis (previously 2004 MN4), it is often nicknamed 'the doomsday asteroid' in popular media, after initial observations made after its discovery in 2004 gave it a 2.7% chance of striking Earth in April 2029.

LEON: the space chip that Europe built
Just like home computers, the sophisticated capabilities of today's space missions are made possible by the power of their processor chips.

CryoSat hits land
ESA's ice mission is now giving scientists a closer look at oceans, coastal areas, inland water bodies and even land, reaching above and beyond its original objectives. Launched in 2010, the polar-orbiting CryoSat was developed to measure the changes in the thickness of polar sea ice, the elevation of the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica, and mountain glaciers.

Measuring skull pressure without the headache
Space research has developed a new way of measuring the pressure inside your skull using simple sound waves from headphones.

ESA’s powerful new tracking station ready for service
Ground Systems Engineering 14 December 2012 A new satellite tracking station at Malargüe, Argentina, will be formally inaugurated on Tuesday, completing the trio of deep-space stations and confirming ESA as one of the world's most technologically advanced space organisations.

Cassini spots mini Nile River on Saturn moon
The international Cassini mission has spotted what appears to be a miniature extraterrestrial version of the Nile River: a river valley on Saturn's moon Titan that stretches more than 400 km from its 'headwaters' to a large sea. It is the first time images have revealed a river system this vast and in such high resolution anywhere beyond Earth.

Shadows on ice: Proba-1 images Concordia south polar base
ESA's Earth-observing microsatellite Proba-1 has glimpsed one of the loneliest places on Earth - Concordia research base in the heart of Antarctica.

Charitum Montes: a cratered winter wonderland
The high-resolution stereo camera on ESA's Mars Express imaged the Charitum Montes region of the Red Planet on 18 June, near to Gale crater and the Argyre basin featured in our October and November image releases.

Six degrees of inclination
Stay in a tilted bed for weeks with your head at the lower end and your body starts to change as if it were ageing prematurely or living in space. Twelve volunteers in ESA's bedrest study are enduring the testing experience. The 'pillownauts' have to stay in a bed for 21 days that is inclined at 6º.

Third Galileo satellite begins transmitting navigation signal
Europe's third Galileo satellite has transmitted its first test navigation signals back to Earth. The two Galileo satellites launched last October have reached their final orbital position and are in the midst of testing.

Snow cover hits record lows
Santa Claus may someday need wheels for his sleigh - satellites show a decreasing amount of snow in the Northern Hemisphere. A new analysis of snow cover observed by satellites shows record lows in Eurasia for June each year since 2008. In addition, three of the past five years have seen record low cover in North America.

Glitter galaxy
The brilliant cascade of stars through the middle of this image is the galaxy ESO 318-13 as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Have Venusian volcanoes been caught in the act?
Six years of observations by ESA's Venus Express have shown large changes in the sulphur dioxide content of the planet's atmosphere, and one intriguing possible explanation is volcanic eruptions. The thick atmosphere of Venus contains over a million times as much sulphur dioxide as Earth's, where almost all of the pungent, toxic gas is generated by volcanic activity.

Watch online: ’Yellow River, Sea and sand’ on the Earth from Space programme
Watch online: 'Yellow River, Sea and sand' on the Earth from Space programme Discover more about our planet with the Earth from Space video programme.

Titan’s seasons make sharp turn
Scientists using the international Cassini spacecraft have studied the rapid change in seasons on Saturn's moon Titan, following equinox in August 2009, which saw the formation of a swirling vortex and a build up of exotic gases at unexpectedly high altitudes. Titan is the only other body in the Solar System with a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere like Earth's. Titan's atmosphere also contains methane and hydrogen, with trace amounts of other gases including hydrocarbons that form at high altitudes as a result of reactions with sunlight.

International Space Station salutes the Sun
Services 28 November 2012 This weekend, the International Space Station will turn itself to position ESA's SOLAR instrument for a better view of the Sun.

Do missing Jupiters mean massive comet belts?
Using ESA's Herschel space observatory, astronomers have discovered vast comet belts surrounding two nearby planetary systems known to host only Earth-to-Neptune-mass worlds. The comet reservoirs could have delivered life-giving oceans to the innermost planets. In a previous Herschel study, scientists found that the dusty belt surrounding nearby star Fomalhaut must be maintained by collisions between comets.

ESA Bulletin 152 (Nov 2012)
ESA Bulletin 152 (Nov 2012) Living in one of the world's most extreme environments creates an ideal opportunity to study the adaptation of human psychology and physiology in conditions similar to those of long-duration spaceflight.

Fostering Curiosity: Mars Express relays rocky images
For the first time, ESA's Mars orbiter has relayed scientific data from NASA's Curiosity rover on the Red Planet's surface.