Space News & Blog Articles

ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence is being prepared for a journey to the distant asteroid moon Dimorphos orbiting around its parent body Didymos. One of the first features Hera will look for is the crater left on Dimorphos by its predecessor mission DART, which impacted the asteroid to deflect its orbit. Yet a new impact simulation study reported in Nature Astronomy today suggests no crater will be found. The DART impact is likely to have remodelled the entire body instead – a significant finding for both asteroid science and planetary defence.

Image: ERS-2 buckles and bends during final farewell

Week in images: 19-23 February 2024

Video: 00:03:29

Mission complete. ESA’s second European Remote Sensing (ERS-2) satellite has reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the North Pacific Ocean. The satellite returned at 18:17 CET (17:17 UTC) between Alaska and Hawaii.

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image from October 2023 captures the plains of northern India and Pakistan under a white veil of haze and smoke.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has found the best evidence yet for emission from a neutron star at the site of a recently observed supernova. The supernova, known as SN 1987A, occurred 160 000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. SN 1987A was observed on Earth in 1987, the first supernova that was visible to the naked eye since 1604 — before the advent of telescopes.

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Tracking ice lost from the world’s glaciers, ice sheets and frozen land shows that Earth is losing ice at an accelerating rate. Monitoring the cryosphere is crucial for assessing, predicting and adapting to climate change.

Playing a huge role in moderating the climate, oceans are fundamental to the functioning of our planet. Understanding more about how seawater temperatures are rising and how oceans are absorbing excess atmospheric carbon dioxide, as well as knock-on issues such as ocean acidification, is key for understanding climate change and for taking effective action.

Image: Ariane 6 ready for unloading

Image: Ariane 6 arrives at Europe’s Spaceport via Canopée

Further embracing the New Space era, ESA is to develop two new Scout satellites: NanoMagSat and Tango. NanoMagSat will measure Earth’s magnetic field to help assess space weather hazards and continue on from ESA’s current Swarm mission. Tango will measure greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity and complements the upcoming Copernicus Carbon Dioxide Monitoring mission and the Sentinel-5 mission, as well as the current Sentinel-5P mission.

It's 'Lights, camera and... action!' for ESA as the agency launches Film ESA, a dedicated film location guide.

Image: Before and after satellite images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission show the scale of the oil spill that occurred off the shores of Trinidad and Tobago’s coastline earlier this week.

Week in images: 12-16 February 2024

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Côte d'Ivoire in western Africa.

Video: 00:12:27

The Arctic is experiencing disproportionately higher temperature increases compared to the rest of the planet, triggering a series of cascading effects. This rapid warming has profound implications for global climate patterns, human populations and wildlife.

Image: Saying goodbye to ERS-2

Today, ESA’s space telescope Euclid begins its survey of the dark Universe. Over the next six years, Euclid will observe billions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history. Learn how the team prepared Euclid in the months after launch for this gigantic cosmic quest.