Latest European Space Agency Stories

ESA ESA’s Proba-V vegetation-mapping minisatellite has been fitted to the payload adapter and met its fellow passengers for its 2 May flight to orbit on a Vega launcher. Last week, technicians attached Proba-V to the top of the Vespa adapter, which carries multiple payloads on a single Vega. The other two satellites flying with Proba-V have now been installed inside Vespa: Vietnam’s VNREDSat Earth observation mission and Estonia’s ESTCube-1 student nanosatellite, to test...

ESA Developing new ways of monitoring Earth is always demanding, but ESA’s Aeolus mission has faced some particularly difficult technical challenges. However, with the success of intense high-energy tests on its novel laser there is now light at the end of the tunnel for this unique mission. The Aeolus satellite will carry a single, but complex, instrument that will probe the atmosphere to profile the world’s winds. Reliable and timely wind profiles are urgently needed by...

Watch the video "Proba-3 Mission Spacecraft Will Fly In Formation" April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency's (ESA) Proba-3 mission, a world first in precise formation flying, is being led by Spanish industry. The aim of the project is to demonstrate that two satellites can be synchronized to move as one object with sub-millimeter precision, enabling the creation of enormous space telescopes with the lens and detector hundreds of feet apart....

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Part of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan has been actively tracked by NASA’s Cassini mission for the past several years. During that time, the mission has found a remarkable presence of hydrocarbon methane lakes and seas dotting the surface of the moon. But a model developed by mission leaders at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, suggests the supply of these methane lakes will soon come to end. Of...

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Between March 18 and April 8, Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] invited fans to participate in "Innovation Madness," a tournament-style competition to vote for the ultimate Lockheed Martin innovation on the company's Facebook page. Approximately 32 innovations from Lockheed Martin's storied 100-year history were featured in the tournament, which was part of the corporation's year-long centennial commemoration. The venerable Hubble Space...

ESA Track your skiing, speed, altitude, slopes and lift kilometers with a nifty phone app from an ESA business incubation start-up. Compete against friends, win prizes and even donate to a children’s charity. This is what German start-up company MapCase GmbH is offering with their MAPtoSNOW free app for mobile phones. The company was supported by ESA Business Incubation Centre Darmstadt, Germany, to develop their application, based on satnav. Available at over 190 ski resorts in...

HubbleSite NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) have announced the selection of 17 new Hubble Fellows. STScI in Baltimore, Md., administers the Hubble Fellowship Program for NASA. The Hubble Fellowship Program now includes all research relevant to present and future missions in NASA's Cosmic Origins theme. These missions currently include the Herschel Space Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Stratospheric...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel space observatory has snapped images of a dust belt orbiting a subgiant star that hosts a planetary system. The space observatory's sensitive far-infrared detection helped astronomers resolve bright emission around Kappa Coronae Borealis, indicating the presence of a dusty debris disc. The star is a little heavier than our own Sun at 1.5 solar masses, is around 2.5 billion years old, and sits...

The Electronic Security Association (ESA) offers tips for utilizing three common smart home features. Irving, TX (PRWEB) April 08, 2013 It’s that time of year again: Flowers are blooming, the weather is warmer, and spending an afternoon outside is a pleasant prospect. In addition to more bearable temperatures, spring also motivates many homeowners to begin home improvement projects. This year, as part of your home upgrade, why not consider smart home technology? Integrating security...

ESA This week, ESA opened a new Space Weather Coordination Centre to gather up-to-date information on our Sun. It is the first such data coordination center opened under the Agency’s Space Situational Awareness Programme. The new Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Space Weather Coordination Centre (SSCC) will serve as the central access point to a portfolio of European space-weather expertise for customers, including satellite operators, industrial sectors including telecommunications...