Latest ESA Stories
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online European researchers are in the process of building an unmanned probe that would travel to the moon, where it would search for subsurface ice on the lunar surface, within the next six years. The $800 million (£500 million) project, which is detailed in an October 21 article by Telegraph Science Correspondent Richard Gray, is currently being planned by the European Space Agency (ESA) and is on pace to take place sometime in 2018....
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Radioactive titanium associated with supernova remnant 1987A has been directly detected by ESA's Integral space observatory. The glowing remnant around the exploded star has likely been powered by the decaying from this titanium for the last 20 years. The first space observatory that can simultaneously observe objects in gamma rays, X-rays and visible light, Integral's principal targets are violent explosions known as gamma ray...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A giant filament of dark matter extends 60 million light-years from one of the most massive galaxy clusters known. Leftover from the very first moments after the Big Bang, the filament is part of the cosmic web that constitutes the structure of the Universe. Scientists using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have studied this filament in 3D for the first time and conclude that if the filament is representative of the rest of the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new radar designed to test methods for finding space debris has been deployed by the European Space Agency (ESA). ESA said it has installed the new test radar in Spain so it can be used to develop future debris warning services. The radar was deployed near Santorcaz, about 18 miles from Madrid. Its first series of acceptance and validation tests will begin in mid-November. ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program...
This week, ESA’s Integral space observatory celebrates ten years since launch on 17 October 2002. Integral, short for International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, is equipped with two gamma-ray telescopes, an X-ray monitor and an optical camera. All four of Integral’s instruments point simultaneously at the same region of the sky to make complementary observations of high-energy sources. Integral is often bathed in gamma-ray bursts, the death cries of massive stars that have...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that it has rediscovered an asteroid that was once lost through the agency's space hazards program. Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2008SE85 was first discovered back in September 2008 by the Catalina Sky Survey, and was observed by a few observatories the following month. However, no one since then has observed the object, and predictions for its current position had become so inaccurate that...
The potential of GMES for crisis management and environmental monitoring is highlighted in a new publication with users demonstrating the importance of Earth observation data to European regions. The joint ESA-NEREUS (Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies) publication is a collection of articles that provide insight into how the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme is being used in new applications and services across Europe. The articles,...
Space debris came into focus last week at the International Astronautical Congress in Naples, Italy. Envisat, ESA’s largest Earth observation satellite, ended its mission last spring and was a subject of major interest in the Space Debris and Legal session. Envisat was planned and designed in 1987–1990, a time when space debris was not considered to be a serious problem and before the existence of mitigation guidelines, established by the UN in 2007 and adopted the next year by ESA for...
[WATCH VIDEO: Touching Down On Titan] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Huygens space probe, which landed on Saturn’s largest moon Titan in 2005, had a bit of a shaky landing in the final seconds of its Titanian descent. After touching down on the distant landscape--the farthest away any spacecraft has ever landed--the probe “bounced, slid and wobbled” to its final resting place, according to a new analysis of the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking into how Moon and Martian soil could be used to help shield astronauts in space. ESA is teaming up with Germany's GSI particle accelerator for a two-year project in assessing promising materials for shielding future astronauts en route to the Moon, an asteroid or Mars. “We are working with the only facility in Europe capable of simulating the high-energy heavy atomic nuclei found in...
Latest ESA Reference Libraries
Roberto Vittori is an ESA astronaut as well as an Italian Air Force Officer and a test pilot for the United States. Vittorri was born on October 15, 1964 in Viterbo, Lazio, Italy and attended the Italian Air Force Academy, graduating in 1989. While working towards his graduation from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland in 1995, Vittori operated the Tornado GR1 along with the 50th Wing of the 155th Squadron in Piacenza, Italy from 1991 to 1994. During this time, he...
Léopold Eyharts is a Brigadier General in the French Air Force and an ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut. Eyharts was born April 28, 1957, in Biarritz, France. After completing his basic academics, he joined the French Air Force Academy of Salon-de-Provence in 1977 to study aeronautical engineering. Eyharts graduated in 1979 as an engineer. By 1980 he became a fighter pilot and was sent to the Istres Air Force Base in France. Initially he was assigned to an operational jaguar squadron...
Jean-Francois Clervoy is a French engineer and test pilot, a CNES and ESA astronaut, and a veteran of three NASA Space Shuttle missions. He was born Jean-Francois André Clervoy on November 19, 1958 in France. He has a twin brother, Patrick, and is married to the former Laurence Boulanger. The couple has two children, and the family enjoys racquet sports, skill games, skiing, and flying kites. Clervoy graduated from high school in Saint-Cyr Lycee and then earned his Bachelor's degree from...
Chister Fuglesang is a Swedish physicist and an ESA astronaut. He was born Arne Christer Fuglesang on March 18, 1957 in Stockholm, Sweden. His mother was Swedish, but his father was Norwegian, having become a Swedish citizen just before Fuglesang's birth. Fuglesang graduated college, and went on to receive a Master of Science degree in engineering physics from the Royal Institute of Technology in 1981. While at the Royal Institute, he met Elisabeth, whom he married in 1983. He then earned a...
