ESA Science & Technology - Science & Technology

3 October 2019

ESA's new Sun explorer will leave Europe soon, with final launch preparations starting in November at Cape Canaveral in Florida, US. ESA and Airbus Defence and Space invite members of the media to get a final glimpse of Solar Orbiter on 18 October at IABG's space test centre in Ottobrunn, near Munich, Germany, before the spacecraft departs...

2 September 2019

Registration is now open for the ESA Voyage 2050 workshop. The focus of this workshop will be presentations and discussions related to the White Paper proposals that have been submitted by the broad scientific community for Voyage 2050, the next planning cycle of the ESA Science Programme.

10 October 2019

This is the first entry in the Euclid Test Campaign Journal, a series of articles covering the main events during testing of the Structural and Thermal Model (STM) and Flight Model (FM) of the spacecraft.

 

23 September 2019

An important stage in the development of ESA's Solar Orbiter mission was completed between May and June, when a series of tests to validate the electromagnetic compatibility and magnetic properties was carried out on the spacecraft's flight model.

25 June 2019It takes collaboration and teamwork to operate a spacecraft. As the CHEOPS launch approaches, a Europe-wide team is preparing to take control of inflight activities once the satellite is in space.

11 December 2018The JUICE engineering model spacecraft test readiness review was completed successfully on 2 October, and the first engineering model instruments are now being delivered and tested.

27 August 2019The Solar wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission is still four years away from launch, but scientists are already using existing ESA satellites, such as the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory and the Cluster mission studying Earth's magnetosphere, to pave the way for this pioneering venture.

17 May 2019ESA's Gaia mission has been busy mapping our Milky Way galaxy since 2014, and just over one year ago released its second batch of data on more than one billion stars. Since then, astronomers have been exploring this catalogue to reveal a huge amount of new information about the cosmos. One type of object that has seen an abundance of new...

13 May 2019One has a thick poisonous atmosphere, one has hardly any atmosphere at all, and one is just right for life to flourish – but it wasn't always that way. The atmospheres of our two neighbours Venus and Mars can teach us a lot about the past and future scenarios for our own planet.

9 May 2019Launched in May 2009 and making observations until April 2013, the successful Herschel space observatory has produced a treasure trove of data. This brochure summarises the Herschel mission and its science achievements to date, capturing the basis for the science yet to come and its enduring legacy.