Latest European Space Astronomy Centre Stories
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency said Tuesday that its Herschel Space Observatory is beginning to wrap up its mission. Famous for its ability to view the sky in the entire wavelength range from far-infrared to submillimeter, the space observatory is beginning to run out of its supply of liquid helium coolant. ESA says Herschel is running on its last fumes and will be running empty in the coming weeks. Herschel first launched on May 14, 2009...
ESA [ Watch The Video Sea-Surface Salinity and Currents ] ESA’s water mission is shedding new light on the meandering Gulf Stream, just one of the SMOS satellite’s numerous achievements. Launched in 2009, ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite has been helping us to understand the water cycle. Over the past three years it has been providing more accurate information on global soil moisture and ocean salinity. New results unveiled today in Spain show that SMOS...
ESA, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the DLR German Aerospace Center and the German Aerospace Industries Association will be exhibiting in the ‘Space for Earth’ space pavilion at the ILA Berlin Air and Space Show on 11–16 September. ILA is one of the world’s largest aerospace trade shows, organized every two years by the BDLI aerospace industries association. This year, it will take place in its new premises at the Berlin Expo-Center Airport close to the...
[ Watch the Video ] Astronomers around the world looked to the sky last night and this morning to observe Venus as it passed across the face of the Sun for the last time this century. ESA’s Sun-watching space missions also tuned in for the solar spectacular. ESA’s microsatellite Proba-2, situated in low-Earth orbit, tracked Venus as it moved across the solar disc over a period of nearly seven hours. Venus appears to wobble thanks to the slight up-down motion of Proba-2 and the large...
All space missions have one inescapable dependency: the electricity flowing through their systems to keep them alive. Take away its power and a spacecraft is nothing more than space debris "“ an eventuality the space power professionals strive to avoid. Next week sees more than 250 experts come together at an ESA-organized conference on power systems. The Ninth European Space Power Conference (ESPC) will take place on 6"“10 June in Saint Raphaël on France's Côte d'Azur, jointly...
The Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, a unique collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Southern Observatory, will close on December 31, 2010 after 26 years. ESA's continuing partnership with NASA on the Hubble mission ensures that European astronomers will continue to have access to observing time.The Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF), the scientific and technical coordination center for the Hubble Space Telescope in...
Two new infrared catalogues, containing more than 1.3 million celestial sources, are made public today. The AKARI All-Sky Catalogues, based on the first all-sky infrared survey in more than a quarter of a century, will provide important new data for a wide range of studies that cover topics ranging from the properties of nearby stars, to the formation of planetary systems, and the star formation history of the distant Universe.All-sky surveys are an essential tool for astronomers. The large...
ESA's SMOS satellite has recently completed its first phase of life in orbit "“ the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP), which means that all the systems are working as they should and the satellite is ready for full commissioning.Following launch on November 2, the satellite has passed a number of important milestones as part of the LEOP, namely: the satellite platform and subsystems have shown to be functioning well, the MIRAS instrument has been deployed and is working as expected, the...
Access to data from the ESA-NASA SOHO mission has just become easier with the launch of a new SOHO science archive with enhanced capabilities for searching and visualizing the vast SOHO data archive. This is the first in a new generation of science archives under development at ESA's European Space Astronomy Center. Since operations began in 1995 the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been transmitting data from its twelve scientific instruments back to Earth at a rate of 1...
The MIRAS instrument on ESA's SMOS satellite, launched earlier this month, has been switched on and is operating normally. MIRAS will map soil moisture and ocean salinity to improve our understanding of the role these two key variables play in regulating Earth's water cycle."Following the switch-on, MIRAS is working beautifully well with all key subsystems, including all of the receivers, the optical fibers and the correlator unit, in perfect functioning condition," said ESA's...
