Final report from the high-level advisory group on accelerating the use of space in Europe
A group of advisors were given the mandate to advise the ESA DG on directions and actions for ESA to realise ambitious goals, together with other stakeholders, serving the future of Europe and its citizens. This report summarises their recommendations.
ESA Vision: accelerate the use of space
Europe must have the ambition to have a space programme and a space agency that is world-class and is leading. Agenda 2025 will bring European space to the next level. To meet our ambitions we need to accelerate the use of space in Europe.
On 21 October 2011, the first pair of Galileo navigation satellites was launched by a Russian-built Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
As of today, ESA has appointed three new Directors - for Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement, Earth Observation Programmes and Navigation. The new Directors were appointed by ESA Council at its meeting on 21 October; they will support the Director General with responsibility for activities and overall objectives in their respective directorates.
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Auroras make for great Halloween décor over Earth, though ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet snapped these green smoky swirls of plasma from the International Space Station in August. Also pictured are the Soyuz MS-18 “Yuri Gagarin” (left) and the new Nauka module (right).
The Station saw quite some aurora activity that month, caused by solar particles colliding with Earth’s atmosphere and producing a stunning light show.
Fast forward to October and space is quite busy.
On 9 October the Sun ejected a violent mass of fast-moving plasma into space that arrived at Earth a few days later. The coronal mass ejection (CME) crashed into our planet’s magnetosphere and once again lit up the sky.
CMEs explode from the Sun, rush through the Solar System and while doing so speed up the solar wind – a stream of charged particles continuously released from the Sun’s upper atmosphere.
While the climate crisis is, unfortunately, a reality, it is all too easy to assume that every aspect of our changing world is a consequence of climate change. Assumptions play no role in key environmental assessments and mitigation strategies such as we will see in the upcoming UN climate change COP-26 conference – it’s the science and hard facts that are critical. New research published this week is a prime example of facts that matter. Using model projections combined with satellite data from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, this latest research shows that the global rise in the temperature of lake water and dwindling lake-ice cover can only be explained by the increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution – in other words, humans are clearly to blame.
ESA Impact October Council edition
Great images and videos of climate change on view, BepiColombo flies by Mercury, Cheops gets a surprise, and more
On 22 September, around midday, ESA’s Integral spacecraft went into emergency Safe Mode. One of the spacecraft’s three active ‘reaction wheels’ had turned off without warning and stopped spinning, causing a ripple effect that meant the satellite itself began to rotate.
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After the Sun ejected a violent mass of fast-moving plasma into space on 9 October, ESA waited for the storm to strike. A few days later, the coronal mass ejection (CME) arrived at Earth, crashing into our planet’s magnetosphere, and lighting up the sky.
CMEs explode from the Sun, rush through the Solar System and while doing so speed up the solar wind – a stream of charged particles continuously released from the Sun’s upper atmosphere.
While most of the solar wind is blocked by Earth’s protective magnetosphere, some charged particles become trapped in Earth’s magnetic field and flow down to the geomagnetic poles, colliding with the upper atmosphere to create the beautiful Aurora.
A marbled sky
This stunning video was created from images taken every minute during this recent period of intense auroral activity in the early hours of 12 October, by an all-sky camera in Kiruna, Sweden – part of ESA’s Space Weather Service Network. The goal of such cameras is to view as much as the sky as possible, so they are fitted with a 'fish-eye' lens to see horizon to horizon when pointed straight up.
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These are exciting days at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana and throughout several sites in ESA Member States as the development of Ariane 6 enters its final phase. Ariane 6 parts are being shipped from Europe for combined tests on the new Ariane 6 launch base. These tests rehearse all activities and systems involving the rocket and launch base on an Ariane 6 launch campaign. On the final test, the Ariane 6 core stage will perform a static hot firing while standing on its recently inaugurated launch pad. It will be from this new launch base that ESA’s Ariane 6 rocket will soon be launched for the first time.
Meanwhile in Europe, Ariane 6’s upper stage will experience the conditions of space at a new test bench at the DLR German Aerospace Center in Lampoldshausen. After this, all is ready for the much anticipated first flight of ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket from Europe’s Spaceport.
It includes an interview with :
- Daniel Neuenschwander, Director of Space Transportation in English, French and German
- Tony Dos Santos, Technical Manager at Europe’s Spaceport, ESA in English
Between September 1982 and December 2020, at least 51 512 people were rescued on land and at sea with help from a network of Earth-orbiting satellites able to detect and locate emergency distress beacons.
The magnetic and particle environment around Mercury was sampled by BepiColombo for the first time during the mission’s close flyby of the planet at 199 km on 1-2 October 2021, while the huge gravitational pull of the planet was felt by its accelerometers.
The magnetic and accelerometer data have been converted into sound files and presented here for the first time. They capture the ‘sound’ of the solar wind as it bombards a planet close to the Sun, the flexing of the spacecraft as it responded to the change in temperature as it flew from the night to dayside of the planet, and even the sound of a science instrument rotating to its ‘park’ position.
New Delhi, the capital and second-largest city of India, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.
What do high-tech sponges, aircraft shaped like falcons and 3D printers on the Moon have in common?
They can all be found among the topics of the 87 research and development activities funded by ESA's Discovery & Preparation programme between November 2020 and April 2021.
An upgrade to ESA’s three 35-metre deep-space antennas will boost science data return by 40% by cooling the ‘antenna feed’ to just 10 degrees above the lowest temperature possible in the Universe.
How can a digital replica of Earth help us understand our planet’s past, present and future? As part of the fourth edition of Φ-week taking place this week, a group of European scientists have put forward their ideas on the practical implementation of Digital Twins and the potential application areas for a Digital Twin Earth in the real world.
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The second European Service Module is prepared for shipment to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA this week at Airbus facilities in Bremen, Germany. Made up of components from ten European countries, ESM-2 will power the first crewed flight to the Moon on the Artemis II mission.
The European Service Modules are a key element of the Orion spacecraft, the first to return humans to the Moon since the 1970s.
Built by the brightest minds in Europe, the module provides propulsion, power and thermal control and will supply astronauts with water and oxygen. The ESM is installed underneath the Crew Module Adapter and Crew Module and together they form the Orion spacecraft.
ESM-2 is currently in route to Florida on an Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft, where NASA is finalising preparations for the launch of Artemis I. The first European Service Module has long since been mated with the crew module to form the first Orion spacecraft ready to launch to the Moon. It will soon be integrated on top of the Space Launch System rocket in its final preparations for Artemis I, during which it will be put to the test when it powers the uncrewed maiden flight of the Orion spacecraft on an orbit which will go as far as 64 000 km behind the Moon, around, and back.
ESA is delivering up to six modules to NASA, with three more currently under negotiation. These Artemis missions will allow for assembly and service of the lunar Gateway.
The second European Service Module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft is on its way to USA. It is the last stopover on Earth before this made-in-Europe powerhouse takes the first astronauts around the Moon on the Artemis II mission.
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