ESA

When it comes to keeping tabs on the location of aircraft, radar has long ruled the roost. But radar range is limited, and long-haul planes become untraceable when passing over oceans and large deserts or polar regions. By equipping orbiting satellites with instruments that listen in on ADS-B signals, scientists think that it should possible to track aircraft over the course of their entire journey, and with the launch of Proba-V, they're ready to put the idea to the test.  Read More

All good things come to an end and the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory mission is no exception. After more than three years in orbit, the most powerful infrared telescope ever flown in space has ceased scientific operations after the last of the liquid helium used to supercool its instruments ran out.  Read More

New near-infrared and far-infrared views captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel space telescope have provided a spectacular new look at the famous Horsehead Nebula.  Read More

The European Space Agency (ESA) wants to bring the sort of precision normally associated with Swiss watch making to satellite navigation. When it launches in 2017, ESA’s Proba-3 mission will incorporate the first satellite pair capable of flying in formation to within a tolerance of a millimeter to one another. It's part of a demonstration technology that could one day be used to build space telescopes using formation-flying satellites as a “rigid structure” that would be impossibly large to achieve in a single spacecraft.  Read More

This month, the University of Helsinki and the European Space Agency (ESA) will test a new space tether that has less chance of snapping under the stresses of operating in orbit. Installed aboard Estonia’s ESTCube-1 cubesat, the new tether is scheduled to be launched with ESA’s Proba-V satellite atop a Vega rocket as part of an experiment in developing an electric solar sail.  Read More

A new image acquired by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck space telescope provides an unprecedented view of the oldest light in the Universe. The image represents the most detailed mapping of cosmic microwave background (CMB) ever created and both solidifies and questions our current understanding of the Universe.  Read More

ESA and the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, have entered into a project to jointly explore the planet Mars. During a ceremony on Thursday (Mar. 14) at ESA Headquarters in Paris, the two agencies formed a partnership for ESA’s ExoMars program when a formal agreement was signed between ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Head of Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin. This agreement covers shared responsibilities for two missions involving three spacecraft in 2016 and 2018.  Read More

The European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite was launched on March 17, 2009, as the first of a series of Earth Explorer satellites. Its mission is to capture high-resolution gravity measurements and produce an accurate gravity map – or geoid – of Earth. To increase the resolution of its measurements, GOCE was put into an unusually low orbit, which has also helped it to become the first satellite to sense sound waves from an earthquake from space.  Read More

The European Space Agency (ESA) is sending JUICE to Jupiter in 2022. Rather than some kind of interplanetary beverage delivery, JUICE stands for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) and is the first Large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. The spacecraft will carry out the most thorough exploration of Jupiter and its moons since NASA's Galileo mission that ran from 1989 to 2003. The ESA has now announced the eleven scientific instruments selected to for the unmanned probe to carry to the gas giant.  Read More