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| Announcement of Opportunity for ExoMars Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module Science |
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| Date: 30 Nov 2010 |
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| Venus holds warning for Earth |
| A mysterious high-altitude layer of sulphur dioxide discovered by ESA's Venus Express has been explained. As well as telling us more about Venus, it could be sending a warning to those on Earth seeking to inject our atmosphere with sulphur droplets in an attempt to mitigate climate change. |
| Date: 30 Nov 2010 |
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| Cassini finds ethereal atmosphere at Rhea |
| The Cassini-Huygens mission has detected a very tenuous atmosphere known as an exosphere, infused with oxygen and carbon dioxide around Saturn's icy moon Rhea. This is the first time a spacecraft has directly captured molecules of an oxygen atmosphere - albeit a very thin one - at a world other than Earth. |
| Date: 26 Nov 2010 |
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| INTEGRAL helps unravel the tumultuous recent history of the solar neighbourhood |
| Just like archaeologists, who rely on radioactive carbon to date the organic remains from past epochs, astronomers have exploited the radioactive decay of an isotope of aluminium to estimate the age of stars in the nearby Scorpius-Centaurus association, the closest group of young and massive stars to the Sun. The new observations, performed in gamma rays by ESA's INTEGRAL observatory, provide evidence for recent ejections of matter from massive stars that took place only a few million years ago in our cosmic neighbourhood. |
| Date: 26 Nov 2010 |
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| Gaia's 'eyes' and 'brain' pass tests |
| Another milestone in the development of ESA's Gaia spacecraft has been passed with the successful conclusion of two parallel test programmes during October. These tests demonstrated that Gaia's focal plane assembly (FPA) - the 'eyes' of the spacecraft - is structurally and functionally fit for flight. |
| Date: 23 Nov 2010 |
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| Europe maintains its presence on the final frontier |
| ESA has decided to extend the productive lives of 11 of its operating space science missions. This will enable ESA's world-class science missions to continue returning pioneering results until at least 2014. |
| Date: 22 Nov 2010 |
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| New evidence for supernova-driven galactic fountains in the Milky Way |
| Observing the X-ray-bright gas in the halo of the Milky Way, ESA's XMM-Newton has gathered new data which favour a process involving fountains of hot gas in our Galaxy. Such a scenario, with the gas flowing from the galactic disc into the halo where it then condenses into cooler clouds and subsequently falls back to the disc, confirms the importance of supernova explosions in forging the evolution of the interstellar medium and of the entire Galaxy. |
| Date: 19 Nov 2010 |
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| New method reveals gravitationally lensed galaxies in Herschel-ATLAS first survey |
| Astronomers using early data from one of the largest projects to be undertaken with
the ESA Herschel Space Observatory have demonstrated that virtually all bright sub-millimetre galaxies in the distant Universe are subject to gravitational lensing, which
amplifies their flux thus easing their detection and characterisation. Analysis of less
than three per cent of the entire Herschel-ATLAS survey, which probes the distant
and hidden Universe, yielded a first sample of five lensed galaxies and paves the way
for the compilation, in the near future, of a rich catalogue of distant, star-forming
and dust-obscured galaxies. The results are reported in the 5 November 2010 issue
of Science. |
| Date: 04 Nov 2010 |
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