Space News & Blog Articles

With extreme weather events threatening to be more frequent and more severe as the climate crisis takes grip, it’s never been more important to have fast and accurate forecasts. ESA and Eumetsat are working hard to ensure that there will be a constant stream of weather data from space for the next decades and that these data will arrive faster and be more accurate compared to what we have today. It is therefore fitting that on World Meteorological Day, ESA can be assured that the first of the next generation weather satellites, Meteosat Third Generation Imager, has passed a critical set of tests, paving the way for it to be launched in December.

A newly released Android app will turn your smartphone into an instrument for crowdsourced science. Leave it by your window each night with your satnav positioning turned on and your phone will record small variations in satellite signals, gathering data for machine learning analysis of meteorology and space weather patterns.

Tune in to ESA Web TV channel 2 from 12:30 CET (11:30 GMT) this Wednesday 23 March to watch ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer’s first spacewalk, known as US EVA 80, live from the International Space Station.

Video: 00:04:15

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will return to the International Space Station in April 2022. Her second space mission is known as Minerva.

Data from the Tropomi instrument onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite has been used to detect methane plumes over some of Europe’s largest methane-emitting coal mines.

Image:

New picture, but a familiar face.

Week in images: 14 - 18 March 2022

Video: 00:08:04

One of the many milestones in the leadup to the launch of Artemis is its rollout: this is when a crawler will carry the SLS rocket with Orion and ESM from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launchpad 39B. NASA’s John Giles gives us a tour of the crawler and explains the adaptations made to this “wonderful piece of machinery” since it was first built for the Apollo programme in the 1960s. ESA is playing a key role in NASA’s Artemis programme, which will bring astronauts back to the Moon. The European Service Module – or ESM – will provide propulsion, power and thermal control for the Orion spacecraft.

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer is scheduled to perform his first spacewalk next week, stepping outside the International Space Station on Wednesday 23 March alongside NASA’s Raja Chari.

Part of Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Video: 01:01:27

Replay of the media information session following the 306th ESA Council, held on 16 and 17 March 2022 in Paris, France. Updates were provided on ESA’s main programmes, the outcome of the 16 February Space Summit in Toulouse, upcoming missions for Earth Observation, and for ESA astronauts, the overall rollout of the Director General’s Agenda 2025 on the way to the ESA Ministerial Meeting in November 2022 as well as the implications of the current geopolitical situation on ESA’s activities.

Press Release N° 9–2022

The media information session following the 306th ESA Council will be streamed at esawebtv.esa.int from 16:00 CET.

Following the completion of critical mirror alignment steps, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope team expects that Webb’s optical performance will be able to meet or exceed the science goals the observatory was built to achieve.

On 18 February, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope was photographed by ESA’s Gaia observatory.

Image: Unlimited 3D printing for space

Lunar caves are not only a geologically pristine record of the Moon's history, but they could also provide a safe home for future human explorers. Building upon ESA Discovery's OSIP call and SysNova challenge, ESA gathered a spectrum of over 60 experts in many different areas of science and engineering to design a mission to enter a pit on the Moon's surface and explore the entrance to a lunar cave.

ESA Impact March Council edition

Week in images: 7 - 11 March 2022