As the current wildfires in Canada show, climate change is increasing the risk and extent of wildfires across the globe. ESA, along with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts have taken a new approach by using realtime observations from ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite mission to better anticipate the outbreak of fires.
Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket is being prepared for its final flight. You can follow the launch live on ESA Web TV. Flight VA261 will lift off as soon as 16 June at 23:26 CEST, pending suitable conditions for launch.
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission is gearing up for its next close flyby of Mercury on 19 June, when it will pass the planet’s surface at an altitude of about 236 km.
A second pair of satellites that use light to communicate with each other has been launched.
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The level of practical expertise, technical and operational expertise required to operate in such a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment such as space needs to be permanently developed and improved to maintain the technical excellence at the right level. But the constant improvement of the technical and operational knowledge is an exciting journey. Nicolas has experienced this first-hand since he joined the European Space Agency Operation Centre as Ground Station Engineer. As a young engineer at ESA, you can gain extremely valuable expertise through launch campaigns, test and validation campaigns, time at the console in the operation control room together with your team, witnessing and learning from the whole life cycle of a real satellite mission, one impossible thing at the time.
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Imagine you are singing in a choir. You are doing your best, just like everybody else. Suddenly, somebody turns to you and points out that you are not singing the right note. If you are told off in a harsh way, you may feel bad about it, and if this happens too often you might not only feel upset about the choir but might even leave it for good. Eventually, the whole choir could end if everybody just leaves.
Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Cook Strait, which separates New Zealand's North and South Islands.
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ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops confirmed the existence of four warm exoplanets orbiting four stars in our Milky Way. These exoplanets have sizes between Earth and Neptune and orbit their stars closer than Mercury our Sun.
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25 years ago, Copernicus set out to transform the way we see our planet. It is the largest environmental monitoring programme in the world. Learn more about the Copernicus programme and the Sentinel satellite missions developed by ESA.
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Satellites in orbit underpin our modern lives. They are used in many areas and disciplines, including space science, Earth observation, meteorology, climate research, telecommunication, navigation and human space exploration. However, as space activities have increased, a new and unexpected hazard has started to emerge: space debris.
Twenty-five years ago, Copernicus set out to transform the way we see our planet. Now, well established as the largest environmental monitoring programme in the world, it returns a whopping 16 terabytes of high-quality data every single day. To mark a quarter-century of European success in space, we look back at a selection of 25 Copernicus highlights.
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Innovation is triggered by many drivers. One of these is the constant need for ESA to develop innovative solutions, such as unique spacecraft technologies.
The food we eat determines how we feel, and nothing beats a good fry-up, although in moderation of course. As we prepare for missions to the Moon and on to Mars, astronauts will be happy to hear from researchers that one staple comfort food is not out of reach, even in space: fries.
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