ESA Science & Technology - News Archive
News archive
News archive
Astronomers have caught a rare glimpse of a rapidly fading shroud of gas around an aging star. Archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357, nicknamed the Stingray nebula, has faded precipitously over just the past two decades.
The motion of stars in the outskirts of our galaxy hints at significant changes in the history of the Milky Way. This and other equally fascinating results come from a set of papers that demonstrate the quality of ESA's Gaia Early third Data Release (EDR3), which is made public today.
The ESA-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is celebrating its twenty-fifth launch anniversary.
New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides further evidence for tidal disruption in the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4. This result explains a previous finding that this galaxy is missing most of its dark matter.
Today, ESA is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Infrared Space Observatory, ISO, with a brand new interface to the mission's unique legacy archive.
ESA's exoplanet mission Ariel, scheduled for launch in 2029, has moved from study to implementation phase, following which an industrial contractor will be selected to build the spacecraft.
Proposals are solicited in response to the second Announcement of Opportunity (AO-2) for observing time in the CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme. This AO covers the period 26 March 2021 to 25 March 2022. The deadline for proposals is 1 December 2020, 13:00 CET/12:00 GMT.
Using data from the international Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, scientists have found that there are two distinct types of craters on Saturn's largest moon Titan that are still being shaped by erosion.
After years of detective work, the second touchdown site of Rosetta's Philae lander has been located on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in a site that resembles the shape of a skull. Philae left its imprint in billions-of-years-old ice, revealing that the comet's icy interior is softer than cappuccino froth.
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission has completed the first of two Venus flybys needed to set it on course with the Solar System's innermost planet, Mercury.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS/JAXA) have announced their decision to no longer consider the infrared space observatory, SPICA, as a candidate for the upcoming selection as ESA's 5th medium-class mission in its Cosmic Vision...
ESA's Science Programme Committee has confirmed the continued operations of five missions led by ESA's Science Programme: Cluster, Gaia, INTEGRAL, Mars Express, and XMM-Newton, from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2022. The SPC also confirmed the Science Programme's contributions to the extended operations of Hinode, Hubble Space Telescope,...
The NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope has tracked the fading light of a supernova in the spiral galaxy NGC 2525, located 70 million light years away. Supernovae like this one can be used as cosmic tape measures, allowing astronomers to calculate the distance to their galaxies.
ESA has released its first Solar Orbiter data to the scientific community and the wider public. The instruments contributing to this data release come from the suite of in-situ instruments that measure the conditions surrounding the spacecraft.
ESA's Rosetta mission has revealed a unique kind of aurora, an exciting phenomenon seen throughout the Solar System, at its target comet, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
This latest image of Jupiter, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 25 August 2020, was captured when the planet was 653 million kilometres from Earth.
Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have found that something may be missing from the theories of how dark matter behaves.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the closest images yet of the sky's latest visitor to make the headlines, comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, after it passed by the Sun. The new images of the comet were taken on 8 August and feature the visitor's coma, the fine shell that surrounds its nucleus, and its dusty output.
Proposals are solicited for observations with XMM-Newton in response to the twentieth Announcement of Opportunity, AO-20, issued 18 August 2020. This AO covers the period May 2021 to April 2022 and is open to proposers from all over the world. The deadline for proposal submission is 9 October 2020, 12:00 UTC.
New observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the unexpected dimming of the supergiant star Betelgeuse was most likely caused by an immense amount of hot material ejected into space, forming a dust cloud that blocked starlight coming from Betelgeuse's surface.