Space News & Blog Articles

Week in images: 09-13 January 2023

Discover our week through the lens

Two teams of astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope have observed repeated outbursts of light from inactive black holes that partially destroy stars again and again. This discovery is unexpected, since outbursts of black holes usually appear only once when a black hole consumes a star. 

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At the start of 2023 the European Space Agency ESA is happily looking forward to another year filled with a host of thrilling new missions, cutting edge science and the continued effort to guarantee independent access to space for Europe. We will see the first images of the first Meteosat Third Generation satellite, the launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, and of Euclid and another Sentinel-1 satellite launch. It will also be the year of Ariane 6 which will make its inaugural flight and the first Dane in space, Andreas Mogensen will return to the ISS as the new astronaut-candidates commence their training. Near the end of the year the second Space Summit will further cement ESA’s ambitions for Space in Europe.

Image: Europe has kicked off the new year with an intense winter heatwave. The warm temperatures and lack of snowfall in the Alps has left several ski resorts with little or no snow. The difference in snow cover is visible in these Copernicus Sentinel-2 images captured in January 2022 compared to January 2023.

Researchers have confirmed the presence of an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star, using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope for the first time. Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth’s diameter.

Scientists have developed a new Artificial Intelligence, or AI, technique using radar images from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission, to reveal how the Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue in West Antarctica is being damaged by squeezing and stretching as it flows from the middle of the continent to the coast. Being able to track fractures and crevasses in the ice beneath the overlying snow is key to better predicting the fate of floating ice tongues under climate change.

ESA is kicking off the new year by inviting you to create a unique juice mocktail to represent the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – also known as Juice – launching in April. The winner of the most imaginative recipe will be invited to ESA’s Social Space launch event in Darmstadt, Germany, where our favourite space juices will be served!

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Recently, Andreas Mogensen, now getting ready for his ‘Huginn’ mission to the ISS in 2023, stopped by ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to meet with some of the experts who keep our satellites flying.

Andreas usually works at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as an ISS ‘capcom’, and we don’t often see him in Europe. A few months back, while returning to Germany for some training at ESA’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne, we seized the opportunity to ask him if he’d like to stop over in Darmstadt for a look behind the scenes at mission control, and he immediately answered, ‘yes’!

Andreas’ studied aeronautical engineering with a focus on ‘guidance, navigation and control of spacecraft’ and we thought he’d be delighted to meet with the teams at mission control doing precisely that sort of work for our robotic missions.

We figured he’d also enjoy meeting colleagues from our Space Safety programme, especially the ones working on space debris and space weather, as these are crucial areas that influence the daily life of astronauts on the ISS.

Andreas met with Bruno Sousa and Julia Schwartz, who help keep Solar Orbiter healthy and on track on its mission to gather the closest-ever images of the Sun, observe the solar wind and our Star’s polar regions, helping unravel the mysteries of the solar cycle.

This beautifully crisp icy scene with a swirling ribbon of rusty red and white striped terrain connecting two large craters wraps up the year on Mars.

Image: How Hera asteroid mission will phone home

Press Release N° 72–2022

Arianespace announced early today the failure of Flight VV22 carrying Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 satellites.

Image: Young ESA team prepare Ariane 6 passenger

Year in images 2022

Our year through the lens: a selection of our favourite images for 2022

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image shows the wide-coverage of snowfall in the Alps, which hopefully bodes well for the coming year.

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Webb's picture of the month December is dominated by NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. 

This spiral galaxy has recently been studied as part of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRGs Survey (GOALS), which aims to study the physics of star formation, black hole growth, and feedback in four nearby, merging luminous infrared galaxies. Other galaxies studied as part of the survey include previous ESA Webb Pictures of the Month II ZW 096 and IC 1623.

NGC 7469 is home to an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is an extremely bright central region that is dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas as it falls into the galaxy’s central black hole. This galaxy provides astronomers with the unique opportunity to study the relationship between AGNs and starburst activity because this particular object hosts an AGN that is surrounded by a starburst ring at a distance of a mere 1500 light-years. While NGC 7469 is one of the best studied AGNs in the sky, the compact nature of this system and the presence of a great deal of dust have made it difficult for scientists to achieve both the resolution and sensitivity needed to study this relationship in the infrared. Now, with Webb, astronomers can explore the galaxy’s starburst ring, the central AGN, and the gas and dust in between.

Using Webb’s MIRI, NIRCam and NIRspec instruments to obtain images and spectra of NGC 7469 in unprecedented detail, the GOALS team has uncovered a number of details about the object. This includes very young star-forming clusters never seen before, as well as pockets of very warm, turbulent molecular gas, and direct evidence for the destruction of small dust grains within a few hundred light-years of the nucleus — proving that the AGN is impacting the surrounding interstellar medium. Furthermore, highly ionised, diffuse atomic gas seems to be exiting the nucleus at roughly 6.4 million kilometres per hour — part of a galactic outflow that had previously been identified from the ground, but is now revealed in stunning detail with Webb. With analysis of the rich Webb datasets still underway, additional secrets of this local AGN and starburst laboratory are sure to be revealed.

A prominent feature of this image is the striking six-pointed star that perfectly aligns with the heart of NGC 7469. Unlike the galaxy, this is not a real celestial object, but an imaging artifact known as a diffraction spike, caused by the bright, unresolved AGN. Diffraction spikes are patterns produced as light bends around the sharp edges of a telescope. Webb has three struts, with two angled at 150 degrees from its vertical strut, and its primary mirror is composed of hexagonal segments that each contain edges for light to diffract against. Webb’s struts are designed so that their diffraction spikes partially overlap with those created by the mirrors. Both of these lead to Webb’s complex star pattern.

Space companies in Europe that could create telecommunications and navigation services for missions to the Moon will be invited to bid for the work, following the completion of two feasibility studies.

Enjoy ESA’s Impact over the last quarter!

Welcome to this edition of ESA Impact, an interactive publication covering stories and images from the fourth quarter of 2022.

The voice counted backwards in French from ten to one, then announced, “Décollage” – lift-off. The 15-year-long collaboration between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency had just entered its most critical phase: the launch itself. What happened next would determine whether the James Webb Space Telescope made it into space or not.

One ESA: now in six languages

The One ESA brochure explores ESA’s establishments and how they work together on European space missions. The brochure is printed in English and is available as a PDF and interactive format in five additional languages.

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2022 was a year of many ‘firsts’ for space in Europe, seeing the first European female ISS commander, the launch of the first Vega-C rocket, Solar Orbiter’s first close encounter with our home star, the launch of the first Artemis mission working to bring humans back to the Moon, and first images from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Let’s take a look at the highlights and accomplishments of the European Space Agency during 2022.