Space News & Blog Articles

Week in images: 13-17 June 2022

Part of the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, which lies along the coast of southeast Alaska, is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

ESA’s new medium-lift Vega-C rocket is nearly ready for its inaugural flight, with its four fully-stacked stages now ready for payload integration, final checks and launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. 

ESA has put forward its ambitious plans for the next three years and beyond to increase European autonomy, leadership and responsibility in space.

The European Space Agency is currently looking for a new Director of Science and new Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality, to join its executive board and support the Director General, with responsibility for relevant ESA activities and overall objectives.

As the European Space Agency prepares to begin operations of its next-generation Vega-C and Ariane 6 launch systems complemented by the reusable Space Rider orbital transportation system, work is underway to define the future of European space transportation capabilities for the coming decade and beyond.

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ESA’s Council at Ministerial level will take place in November 2022, a crucial milestone as Europe sets out its ambitions and plans for space activities in the coming years and decades.

Press Release N° 30–2022

Image: Hera asteroid mission’s first step

The media information session following the 308th ESA Council will be streamed on 15 June from 12:40 to 13:15 CEST at esawebtv.esa.int. Join us to hear more about the cooperation between ESA and NASA.

How does ESA enable the European space industry to prosper in the global market? People attending this week’s VivaTech show in Paris – which will showcase how innovation and technology can build a more sustainable and inclusive society – will discover how.

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Watch the replay of the press event "New data from our Milky Way".

Entrepreneurs, fledgling firms and established space companies are to receive a boost with the launch of the European Centre for Space Economy and Commerce.

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Since its launch in 2013 ESA’s Gaia observatory has been mapping our galaxy from Lagrange point 2, creating the most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way. By now two full sets of data have been released, the first set in 2016 and a second one in 2018. These data releases contained stellar positions, distances, motions across the sky, and colour information, among others. Now on 13 June 2022 a third and new full data set will be released. This data release will contain even more and improved information about almost 2 billion stars, Solar System objects and extragalactic sources. It also includes radial velocities for 33 million stars, a five-time increase compared to data release 2. Another novelty in this data set is the largest catalogue yet of binary stars in the Milky Way, which is crucial to understand stellar evolution.

Today, ESA’s Gaia mission releases its new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy. Astronomers describe strange ‘starquakes’, stellar DNA, asymmetric motions and other fascinating insights in this most detailed Milky Way survey to date.

ESA Impact June Council edition

Week in images: 06-10 June 2022

This radar image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, shows us the only city-island-nation – Singapore – and one of the busiest ports in the world.