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After 27 years and 117 missions, ESA’s heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket has launched into retirement. On July 5, 2023 at 22:00 GMT, Flight VA261 successfully lifted off from the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) in French Guiana, to carry the Deutsches Zentrum f… Continue reading Ariane 5 lifts off into history with final space launch
ESA’s Euclid mission to map the universe and learn more about dark energy and dark matter is on its way. On July 1, 2023 at 5:12 pm CEST the space telescope lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.Con… Continue reading Euclid lifts off on mission to shed light on dark matter mystery
It may seem crazy dangerous, but just in case future astronauts might have a yen for fries on their sojourn into space, ESA and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki are investigating whether potatoes will fry properly in zero gravity or end up an u… Continue reading How do you fry potatoes in space? Very carefully
It may seem crazy dangerous, but just in case future astronauts might have a yen for fries on their sojourn into space, ESA and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki are investigating whether potatoes will fry properly in zero gravity or end up an u… Continue reading How do you fry potatoes in space? Very carefully
Saturn’s moon Enceladus is famous for its plumes that spray water into space. Now the James Webb Space Telescope has watched the biggest known plume so far, spanning thousands of miles, and studied how they feed a huge water “donut” around Saturn.Conti… Continue reading 6,000-mile plume spurts from icy moon into water “donut” around Saturn
When ESA’s Juventas CubeSat lands on Dimorphos in 2026 to assess the aftermath of last year’s spectacular collisions with NASA’s DART spacecraft, its GRAvimeter for small Solar System bodies (GRASS) instrument will directly measure the asteroid’s gravi… Continue reading ESA tests tiny instrument to measure asteroid’s tiny gravity
ESA is preparing to test a very cool new fold-out heat shield for protecting spacecraft on re-entry. The Pridwen won’t burn away like ablative heat shields, and it’ll also slow falling satellites down enough to be caught in a hover net.Continue Reading… Continue reading ESA to test a reusable origami heat guard for spacecraft
The James Webb Space Telescope has detected water vapor on an object in the asteroid belt, a region of the solar system where it wasn’t known to survive. The new observations also reveal something missing unexpectedly.Continue ReadingCategory: Space, S… Continue reading Webb confirms water in weird comet, but something else is missing
ESA’s Juice Jupiter mission is back on track after Mission Control in Darmstadt, Germany managed to shake loose and deploy the stuck ice-penetrating Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna that was stuck due to a tiny pin.Continue ReadingCategor… Continue reading Success: Juice radar antenna breaks free after remote control thump
As its Aeolus wind monitoring mission comes to an end, ESA is testing new procedures for deorbiting the decommissioned 1360-kg (3,000 lb) spacecraft to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, advancing international space safety standards.Continue ReadingCa… Continue reading ESA uses defunct satellite to practice safer reentry procedures