ESA

When someone mentions counterfeiting, it brings up images of money, watches or DVDs. It certainly doesn't make honey spring to mind, yet honey smuggling and counterfeiting is an international problem involving hundreds of millions of dollars. In an effort to combat this, the European Space Agency (ESA) is funding a demonstration project to adopt lasers designed to study the Martian atmosphere, to detect fake honey.  Read More

NASA’s Cassini probe witnessed a giant storm on Saturn that raced around the ringed planet, ran into its own tail, and consumed itself like the legendary Ouroboros – a snake that eats its tail. The storm, which at its peak was almost as wide as the Earth, lasted for 267 days and was marked by violent lightning bursts and an unusual rise in air temperature. This self-destructing storm is a phenomenon never seen before, and sheds new light on Saturn’s meteorology that could help with weather prediction on Earth.  Read More

London-based international architectural firm Foster + Partners has designed some pretty impressive structures over the past several years, including the Virgin Galactic spaceport, Apple’s “spaceship” campus, and the Kuwait International Airport. Today, however, the firm announced its involvement in a project that’s considerably more ambitious than any of those – as part of a consortium set up by the European Space Agency (ESA), it will be exploring the possibility of 3D printing a lunar base for astronauts.  Read More

NASA has signed an agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA) for the latter to supply service modules for NASA’s Orion manned spacecraft, due to launch in 2017. The modules will use technology from ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) currently ferrying supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) and will provide propulsion, power and life support to the Orion module.  Read More

When you’re trying to keep a rogue asteroid from hitting Earth, you’d better get it right the first time. With this in mind, the European Space Agency (ESA) is looking for new ideas to help develop a US-European asteroid deflection mission. With a target date of October, 2022, the purpose of the mission is to send a pair of spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid where one will impact it while the other observes the effect.  Read More

Reaction Engines Ltd. announced on Wednesday the completion of a critical round of testing of its SABRE engine’s precooler system. The SABRE is a radical type of hybrid jet/rocket engine capable of propelling a spacecraft into orbit or an aircraft in the atmosphere, at a velocity of Mach 5 (3,800 mph, 3,300 knots, 6,115 km/h). It’s intended for Reaction Engines’ SKYLON spacecraft and its airliner derivative, the LAPCAT A2 hypersonic aircraft.  Read More

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover got a bit of help from the European Space Agency (ESA) in October. Beaming data back to Earth from the surface of the Red Planet is often tricky, and Curiosity regularly uses satellites to act as relays when a proper line of sight isn't available. On October 6, the ESA probe Mars Express took up the slack by relaying data and images for the rover as part of an ESA-NASA support agreement.  Read More

The internet has changed a great deal of modern society, and now it promises to change space exploration as well. In late October, International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams used a NASA-developed laptop aboard the station to control a LEGO Mindstorm robot, located at the European Space Agency (ESA) European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Using a “space internet,” she was able to control the robot in real time despite being in orbit at an altitude of 230 miles (370 km).  Read More

At first glance, hydrogen seems like a brilliant alternative fuel for motor cars. It burns so clean that all it produces is water, it’s the most abundant element in the universe and it doesn’t need all those rare earth elements and heavy metals that electric vehicles depend on. The only trouble is, it’s very difficult to handle. In an effort to make hydrogen cars practical, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Austrian automotive manufacturer MagnaSteyr are adapting technology developed for the Ariane rockets so that it can be used in cars, as part of ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme.  Read More