SPACENEWS

This image features the southeast wall of a small crater located a few hundred kilometres to the north of the giant Hellas impact basin on Mars. The complete crater itself is about 12 km in diameter; this image shows a 5 x 10 km area. The Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the Read More

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is due to land on the Red Planet at 21:43 CET on 18 February 2021. In order to communicate with Earth from its landing site in Jezero Crater, the rover will rely on spacecraft orbiting Mars to relay the images and other data it collects back to Earth and pass Read More

On 18 February, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will land on the Red Planet ESA’s Mars orbiters – the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express – are supporting the landing TGO will relay important data from Perseverance to Earth as soon as four hours after landing Mars Express is monitoring the local Read More

This satellite mockup, seen during antenna testing, shows the shape of ESA’s new Proba-V Companion CubeSat, which is due for launch at the end of this year. ESA-P. de Maagt The mission is a 12-unit ‘CubeSat’ – a small, low-cost satellite built up from standardised 10-cm boxes. It will fly a cut-down version of the Read More

Sea salt embedded in the dusty surface of Mars and lofted into the planet’s atmosphere has led to the discovery of hydrogen chloride – the first time the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has detected a new gas. The spacecraft is also providing new information about how Mars is losing its water. A major quest Read More

The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is investigating the martian atmosphere. Discovering new gases related to active process and looking for their sources is a key goal of the mission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8jkTweQqyY&feature=emb_logo ExoMars has discovered hydrogen chloride for the first time. It appeared during a global dust storm in 2018 and disappeared again afterwards. The detection Read More

NASA astronaut Victor Glover installs the Fluid Dynamics in Space experiment, or Fluidics for short. Fluidics is the black cylinder pictured in the foreground of the European Columbus module of the International Space Station.Developed by French space agency CNES and co-funded by Airbus, the Fluidics experiment is probing how fluids behave in weightlessness. photo copyright Read More

What happens when the Solar System's No. 1 source of violent energy interferes with spacecraft communication? Name? Solar Orbiter, or ‘Solo’ as the mission control team fondly call it, is one of the European Space Agency’s pluckiest missions and is now cruising toward the Sun. photo copyright ESA Solar Orbiter views 'campfires' on the Sun Read More

Last week another online training session organized by ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Programme concluded with over 30 University students who are now setting off on a year-long adventure of building, testing and performing experiments on gravity altering platforms. A few weeks ago, 8 new teams were selected for some of ESA Academy’s hand-on programmes Read More

In November 2020, the Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite was launched into orbit from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US. Now, months later, the satellite has successfully passed what is known as the ‘in-orbit verification phase’, where its equipment is switched on and the instruments’ performance is checked. The Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Read More