Space News & Blog Articles

Video: 00:04:04

On 1 December 2023, at 19:19 CET (18:18 GMT), Ireland's first satellite EIRSAT-1 launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, USA. 

Built by students at University College Dublin under guidance of ESA’s Education Office, EIRSAT-1 is a 2-unit CubeSat carrying three experiments, including a novel gamma ray detector that will study some of the most luminous explosions in the universe.    

The mission has been in development since the team was accepted to the ESA Academy Fly Your Satellite! programme in 2017. Over the past six years, the students have worked with ESA experts and acquired the professional competences needed to design and build their satellite. They were accompanied through test campaigns at ESA Education’s CubeSat Support Facility in Belgium and other ESA sites, and were offered the opportunity to launch their satellite by ESA.  

Learn more about EIRSAT-1

Week in images: 27 November - 01 December 2023

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Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission shows us an amazing view of the tropical island of Tutuila, the largest in the American Samoa archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean.

Image: After being grounded on the ocean floor for well over four decades, the largest iceberg in the world is on the loose.

Video: 00:12:34

Almost 200 countries are gathering in Dubai to attend the biggest climate event of the year. COP28 – the 2023 United Nations climate change summit – isn’t just another conference though. For the first time, country representatives will assess the progress they’ve made towards cutting their greenhouse gas emissions through a process called the ‘global stocktake’.

Satellites are critical in the quest to tackle climate change as they give the robustness and transparency needed to monitor progress towards a lower-emissions and more resilient world. If undertaken effectively, the global stocktake can provide an opportunity to leverage decisions and accelerate ambition in climate action plans.

This video contains interviews with ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, Antony Delavois, ESA Junior Professional, Atmospheric Composition and Yasjka Meijer, CO2M Mission Scientist.

An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to provide the first observation of water and other molecules in the inner, rocky-planet-forming regions of a disc in one of the most extreme environments in our galaxy.

Week in images: 20-24 November 2023

Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:01:25

Cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un. Allumage Vulcain! This is the moment Ariane 6’s main engine was sparked into life, and the entire main stage of the new rocket and the many parts of the launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, practised for the full duration of a launch. Of course, as planned, the test model did not leave the ground.

Without its boosters, instead of piercing the clouds Ariane 6’ created its own on Earth: a clean byproduct of the Vulcain 2.1 engine’s oxygen and hydrogen propellants, which came together to send out impressive swirls of H2O.

After the almost 150 tonnes of propellant was burnt through and the clouds dispersed, the curtains closed on the successful rehearsal. The data from thousands of monitors around the rocket will be crunched in the coming weeks to learn all that’s needed for Ariane’s next, real, flight.

Access the related broadcast quality video material.

Watch the live launch broadcast of Ireland’s first satellite EIRSAT-1 on ESA Web TV Channel 2 and ESA YouTube, currently scheduled for 29 November. Coverage of this historic moment is set to begin shortly before 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET) (times to be confirmed). 

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures the colourful waters of two salty lakes in East Africa: Lake Natron in northern Tanzania and Lake Magadi in southern Kenya.

Video: 00:08:32

On 23 November 2023, in preparation for its first flight, Ariane 6 went through its biggest test to date: a full-scale rehearsal that meant complex fuelling, a launch countdown and ignition of the core stage Vulcain 2.1 engine, followed by over seven minutes of engine burn that covered the entire core stage flight phase, just as would happen during a real launch into space.

The engine roared into action after a slight anomaly meant there was a suspenseful pause to the automated sequence, before the countdown was reset and began to tick again. The live feed continued until just after core stage operations were complete and the engine had burnt through all of its propellant.

For this rehearsal the boosters were not ignited, so the Ariane 6 test model stayed firmly on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. This was the longest ‘full-stack’ run performed to date for the rocket’s liquid propulsion module with a Vulcain 2.1 engine.

The Vulcain 2.1 engine burnt through almost 150 tonnes of propellant supplied from the Ariane 6 core stage tanks – liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen – supercooled to temperatures below -250°C.

With thousands of monitors situated around the launchpad, the data from this rehearsal will be analysed meticulously and used for Ariane 6’s next and first real flight.

Video: 02:02:28

One giant planet. Three icy moons. An eight-year journey. One special spacecraft.

Building a mission to Jupiter took years of planning and thousands of people. Now that Juice is finally en route to its destination, we go behind the scenes to discover the story of the making of Juice.

The film features exclusive interviews with scientists and engineers from across Europe, as well as backstage footage from the planning, testing and launch of this once-in-a-generation mission.

Follow the final three years of Juice’s life on Earth. Discover why the mission was named Juice, how teams working on the spacecraft handled the COVID-19 pandemic, and why the spacecraft carries a special plaque dedicated to Galileo. Join Juice as it gets assembled, probed and tested to be certain that it is ready for Jupiter. And experience the emotion as Juice is put into a rocket and launched into space, marking the beginning of its 12-year adventure in the Solar System.

Image: A satellite’s death spiral

ESA has reached a significant milestone in its commitment towards a deeper understanding of Earth's dynamic processes and addressing pressing environmental challenges with the selection of two new candidates – Cairt and Wivern – to progress to the next development phase as part of the process of realising the Agency’s eleventh Earth Explorer satellite mission.

The latest image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense centre of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. The star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*.

Embracing the New Space approach, it has taken just 36 months to develop and build ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite. Now complete, this remarkable microsatellite has been shipped from OHB in Sweden to Germany where it is starting a series of tests to make sure that it will survive liftoff next year and its subsequent life in orbit.

Week in images: 13-17 November 2023

Discover our week through the lens