ESA

This week, the European space technology company Astrium completed its Phase B1 study of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Lunar Landing Project. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the mission to land a spacecraft on the south pole of the Moon in 2019. That spacecraft would test new technologies, and explore an area of the lunar surface that scientists believe may contain deposits of ice in the permanently shadowed craters.  Read More

The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to give existing orbiting probes, such as COROT and Kepler, a helping hand in studying super-Earths. Selected from 26 proposals, the CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite) spacecraft is the first S-class (“small”) mission in the ESA’s Science Programme. A partnership between the ESA and the Swiss Space Office, CHEOPS will not seek out new exoplanets, but will instead target nearby, bright stars that are already known to have orbiting planets.  Read More

The size and age of our Universe is not only a critically important issue in cosmology, but is also among the most controversial and delicate of the cosmological questions. Infrared observations made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have now given us the most precise estimate yet of the rate at which our Universe is expanding. The key was not the discovery of a new method for measuring distance. Rather, astronomers discovered how to measure brightness more accurately. The new value for the Hubble constant, good to within three percent, is 74.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc).  Read More

With astronauts venturing beyond the protection of Earth’s magnetic field exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation, the European Space Agency (ESA) has teamed with Germany’s GSI (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung) particle accelerator in the search for materials to shield future astronauts going to the Moon, the asteroids and Mars, or manning a space station beyond the Moon. Amongst the candidates being assessed are Moon and Mars soil.  Read More

The European Space Agency (ESA) wants to know if it’s possible to use dead stars as a navigational aid for traveling in deep space. To answer that question, ESA has contracted Britain’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the University of Leicester to investigate whether pulsars can serve as navigational beacons in the far-flung reaches of the outer Solar System or interstellar space.  Read More

An international team of astronomers has combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory and Japan's Suzaku satellite to suggest that our galaxy may be surrounded by a halo of hot gas extending in all directions for hundreds of thousands of light-years. The finding also offers clues as to why more than half of the ordinary matter in early galaxies has seemingly disappeared without leaving a trace.  Read More

It will soon be spring on Saturn ... and it will last for the next eight years or so. To celebrate the slow passing of the seasons of the giant ringed planet, NASA has released four real-color images sent back by the Cassini space probe. The images not only show the seasonal changes, but also the mysterious vortex recently discovered at the south pole of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.  Read More

In Robert Heinlein’s 1948 novel Space Cadet, spacemen of the future learned their profession aboard an orbital training ship. Because there aren’t any retired space ships in orbit to play the part of PRS James Randolph in real life, astronauts headed for duty aboard the International Space Station must find earthbound substitutes. For the European Space Agency (ESA), the alternative is to turn smartly about and go underground. On September 7, CAVES 2012 (Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behavior and performance Skills) will see six international astronauts descend into the caverns of the island of Sardinia to learn how to use space procedures by going potholing.  Read More

NASA’s Curiosity rover may be stealing the headlines, but there is other news coming from Mars. Recently, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express probe made a 100-kilometer (62-mile) flyby of the Martian moon Phobos and returned a high-resolution 3D image filled with remarkable detail. The image includes a profile of Stickney crater, which dominates the right-hand side, and the grooves associated with the impact of the asteroid that created it thousands of years ago.  Read More