ESA Science & Technology - sciweb.xml

After a comprehensive review of their scientific merits and technical status, the SPC has confirmed the continued operations of the missions led by ESA's Science Programme: Cluster, Gaia, INTEGRAL, Mars Express and XMM-Newton. The SPC also confirmed the contributions to the extended operations of CHEOPS, Hinode, Hubble, IRIS, and SOHO.

The CHEOPS Time Allocation Committee (TAC) met on 11 - 13 May 2022 to review proposals submitted to the third and final annual Announcement of Opportunity (AO-3) for observing time in ESA's CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme during the nominal mission.

Proposals are solicited in response to the third, and final, Announcement of Opportunity (AO-3) for observing time in the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme during the nominal mission. This AO covers the period from 1 July 2022 to 24 September 2023.

The third annual announcement of opportunity (AO-3) for participation in the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme was due to open on 9 November 2021. The AO has been postponed and is currently foreseen to come out in early 2022.

The international James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review for its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.

While exploring two exoplanets in a bright nearby star system, ESA's exoplanet-hunting CHEOPS satellite has unexpectedly spotted the system's third known planet crossing the face of the star. This transit reveals exciting details about a rare planet "with no known equivalent", say the researchers.

ESA's large-class science missions for the timeframe 2035-2050 will focus on moons of the giant Solar System planets, temperate exoplanets or the galactic ecosystem, and new physical probes of the early Universe.

EnVision will be ESA's next Venus orbiter, providing a holistic view of the planet from its inner core to upper atmosphere to determine how and why Venus and Earth evolved so differently.

The development of ESA's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) is continuing apace and has hit milestones in recent months: the spacecraft's 10.6-metre-long boom is now attached, many instruments have been integrated, and the mission's high-gain antenna has arrived and undergone rigorous vibration testing.

Thanks to ESA's star mapping spacecraft Gaia and machine learning, astronomers have discovered 12 quasars whose light is so strongly deflected by foreground galaxies that they are each visible as four distinct images, called an 'Einstein cross'.