As ESA’s remaining supply ferry to the International Space Station burns up in the atmosphere, its final moments as its hull disintegrates will be recorded from the inside by a unique infrared camera.
An ESA-led team designed and developed the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Break-Up Camera in just nine months in order to make it on board in time.
Working … Read the rest of this article
The electromagnetic spectrum is vast, ranging from high-energy gamma rays all the way to low-energy radio waves. Different telescopes and instruments are optimised to detect different regions of this spectrum — for example, ESA’s XMM-Newton and Integral space observatories study the high-energy Universe, scouring the skies for X-rays and gamma rays.
One cosmic source of such high-energy radiation is the … Read the rest of this article
After eight years in orbit, ESA’s Venus Express has completed routine science observations and has spent the last month orbiting through the planet’s hostile atmosphere. Venus Express mission experts talk about surfing the Venus atmosphere. This Google Hangout originally took place on July 10th.
ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory has helped to uncover how the Universe’s first stars ended their lives in giant explosions.
Astronomers studied the gamma-ray burst GRB130925A – a flash of very energetic radiation streaming from a star in a distant galaxy – using space- and ground-based observatories.
They found the culprit producing the burst to be a massive star, known as a … Read the rest of this article
Astronomers routinely use the crisp view of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to study all kinds of intricate details in galaxy clusters. By now you would think they’ve seen it all — but nature always has new surprises in store.
The latest is an uncanny 100,000-light-year-long structure that looks like a string of pearls twisted into a corkscrew shape that winds … Read the rest of this article
After eight years in orbit, ESA’s Venus Express has completed routine science observations and has spent the last month orbiting through the planet’s hostile atmosphere. Join Venus Express mission experts in their ESAhangout to talk about how to surf the Venus atmosphere.
The Hangout happens on Thursday, 10 July, 15:00 GMT (17:00 CEST).… Read the rest of this article
This ethereal image shows a stunning sliver of large main-belt asteroid Lutetia from the viewpoint of ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, taken as Rosetta passed by on its 10-year voyage towards comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
This week marks four years since Rosetta flew by this ancient rocky body, on 10 July 2010. As the spacecraft swung past Lutetia it snapped hundreds of high-resolution photographs … Read the rest of this article
Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini mission have firm evidence the ocean inside Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, might be as salty as the Earth’s Dead Sea.
The new results come from a study of gravity and topography data collected during Cassini’s repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years. Using the Cassini data, researchers presented a model structure for … Read the rest of this article
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is releasing the Earthly equivalent of two glasses of water into space every second. The observations were made by the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO), aboard the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft on June 6, 2014. The detection of water vapor has implications not only for cometary science, but also for mission planning, as the Rosetta team … Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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