Space News & Blog Articles

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image features the ice tongue of the Dawson-Lambton Glacier in Antarctica.

Image: Proba-3's laser-precise positioning

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According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural production will need to increase by 60% by 2050 to meet the food demands of the growing global population.

The ESA Young Graduate Trainee call for applications closes on 7 March 2024. Don’t hesitate to apply and kick-start your career in space today! Positions are available in engineering, science, IT and business services.   

Using the unprecedented capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of scientists has obtained the first spectroscopic observations of the faintest galaxies during the first billion years of the Universe. These findings help answer a longstanding question for astronomers: what sources caused the reionisation of the Universe? 

ESA’s Mars Express has captured an intriguing view near Mars’s north pole, imaging where vast sand dunes meet the many layers of dusty ice covering the planet’s pole.

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The largest components for the first flight model of Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6 arrived at the port of Pariacabo in Kourou, French Guiana on 21 February 2024 via the novel ship, Canopée (canopy in French).

ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence is being prepared for a journey to the distant asteroid moon Dimorphos orbiting around its parent body Didymos. One of the first features Hera will look for is the crater left on Dimorphos by its predecessor mission DART, which impacted the asteroid to deflect its orbit. Yet a new impact simulation study reported in Nature Astronomy today suggests no crater will be found. The DART impact is likely to have remodelled the entire body instead – a significant finding for both asteroid science and planetary defence.

Image: ERS-2 buckles and bends during final farewell

Week in images: 19-23 February 2024

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Mission complete. ESA’s second European Remote Sensing (ERS-2) satellite has reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the North Pacific Ocean. The satellite returned at 18:17 CET (17:17 UTC) between Alaska and Hawaii.

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image from October 2023 captures the plains of northern India and Pakistan under a white veil of haze and smoke.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has found the best evidence yet for emission from a neutron star at the site of a recently observed supernova. The supernova, known as SN 1987A, occurred 160 000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. SN 1987A was observed on Earth in 1987, the first supernova that was visible to the naked eye since 1604 — before the advent of telescopes.

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Tracking ice lost from the world’s glaciers, ice sheets and frozen land shows that Earth is losing ice at an accelerating rate. Monitoring the cryosphere is crucial for assessing, predicting and adapting to climate change.

Playing a huge role in moderating the climate, oceans are fundamental to the functioning of our planet. Understanding more about how seawater temperatures are rising and how oceans are absorbing excess atmospheric carbon dioxide, as well as knock-on issues such as ocean acidification, is key for understanding climate change and for taking effective action.

Image: Ariane 6 ready for unloading

Image: Ariane 6 arrives at Europe’s Spaceport via Canopée

Further embracing the New Space era, ESA is to develop two new Scout satellites: NanoMagSat and Tango. NanoMagSat will measure Earth’s magnetic field to help assess space weather hazards and continue on from ESA’s current Swarm mission. Tango will measure greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity and complements the upcoming Copernicus Carbon Dioxide Monitoring mission and the Sentinel-5 mission, as well as the current Sentinel-5P mission.