Category: Climate

ESA’s first online space physicians training course took place from 21–22 January 2021, attracting over 50 participants from across Europe and the world. Usually conducted in person at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, the annual course is run by ESA’s space medicine team and gives medical doctors the opportunity to learn more about Read More

A sustained test firing of a ‘green’ satellite thruster at Poland’s Institute of Aviation, intended as a future alternative to today’s hydrazine-based apogee engines, typically used by telecommunication satellites to manoeuvre into their final geostationary orbits. Today hydrazine is the most common propellant employed by thrusters aboard satellites: it is highly energetic in nature but Read More

Traditionally, optical, or ‘camera-like’, satellite images are used to map different crops from space, but a recent study shows that Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar data along with interferometric processing can make crop-type mapping even better. This, in turn, will help improve crop-yield forecasts, production statistics, drought and storm damage assessments, and more. The Sentinel-1 mission comprises Read More

Italy’s Mount Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, has erupted twice in less than 48 hours, spewing a fountain of lava and ash into the sky. This image, captured yesterday 18 February 2021 at 09:40 GMT by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, has been processed using the mission’s shortwave-infrared band to show the lava Read More

Dutch drone company Avy – an alumnus of ESA’s Business Incubation Centre Noordwijk, next to the Agency’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands – looked into using its long-range Aera drone to raise the alarm on summer wildfires on a real-time basis. https://www.esa.int/About_Us/ESTEC Last year more than 750 football fields worth of forests and dunes Read More

To experience a simulated mission to Mars and discover how space is helping to combat climate change, join ESA at the Science Swindon Festival of Tomorrow on 18-20 February. https://www.scienceswindon.com/festival-of-tomorrow Over 5000 people are set to attend the virtual event to learn about how the latest science and engineering innovations are tackling the world’s greatest Read More

ESA & UNOOSA on: satellites vs debris check here https://soundcloud.com/esa/satellites-vs-debris Read More

For Valentine’s Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Valentine Island in northern Western Australia. The tiny Valentine Island, visible in the top-left of the image, measures around 1.6 km in length and around 250 m wide. The island is located in the King Sound, a large gulf and inlet of the Indian Ocean Read More

In early 2019, all eyes were fixed on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, where a massive iceberg, around the size of Greater London, appeared poised to break off. Almost two years later, the berg is desperately clinging on, although current data indicate calving is imminent. A new crack, spotted in images captured by the Read More