Category: Climate

ESA / Italy’s Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, has recently been on explosive form, with 17 eruptions in less than three months. Instruments onboard three different satellites orbiting Earth have acquired imagery of the eruptions – revealing the intensity of the lava-fountaining eruptive episodes, known as paroxysms. Located on the east coast of Sicily, Read More

ESA Today is 407 Day – the annual campaigning day to spread awareness of the importance of emergency beacons, and the satellites that pick up their signals, including Europe’s Galileo constellation. As well as letting people across the world find their way, Galileo also serves to detect SOS messages and relay them to authorities, contributing Read More

The Month of Ingenuity: Mars Helicopter Flights The Mars Helicopter, which hitched a ride to Mars beneath the Perseverance rover, is nearly ready to be released to surface for its upcoming test flights. Tune in for an interactive webinar preview on April 5 at 10:30 a.m. PDT/1:30 p.m. EDT Live Webinar Q&A | Meet the Read More

ESA / With Easter right around the corner, we take a look at four egg-shaped buildings visible from space as captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. Eggs are an ancient symbol of new life, associated with pagan festivals celebrating spring. Decorating eggs for Easter is a tradition that dates back to the 13th century. One Read More

Our galaxy is surrounded by numerous ‘satellite’ galaxies, the largest being the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is a complex mix of stars, gas and molecular clouds, and hosts many fascinating celestial objects and features – including the huge and luminous region of 30 Doradus, otherwise known as the Tarantula Nebula. This nebula is Read More

ESA / The Gariep Dam, the largest dam in South Africa, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. Click on the image to explore it in its full resolution and learn about the features in this stunning landscape. The Gariep Dam, visible in the bottom right of the image, lies Read More

Safety & Security ESA New observations of asteroid Apophis – thought to pose a slight risk of impacting Earth in 2068 – rule out any chance of impact for at least a century. After 17 years of observations and orbit analysis, ESA is removing the enormous asteroid from its Risk List. Estimated at about 350 Read More

ESA / For well over a decade, ESA’s SMOS satellite has been delivering a wealth of data to map moisture in soil and salt in the surface waters of the oceans for a better understanding of the processes driving the water cycle. While addressing key scientific questions, this exceptional Earth Explorer has repeatedly surpassed expectations Read More

Stretches of land across New South Wales, Australia, have been hit with torrential rain leading to record-breaking floods. The heavy rainfall has caused dams to spill over, rives to burst their banks and thousands of people forced to evacuate their homes. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission are being used to map flooded areas to Read More

ESA Mars has lost most of its once plentiful water, with small amounts remaining in the planet’s atmosphere. ESA’s Mars Express now reveals more about where this water has gone, showing that its escape to space is accelerated by dust storms and the planet’s proximity to the Sun, and suggesting that some water may have Read More