ESA Science & Technology - News Archive

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has once again captured comet 2I/Borisov streaking through our Solar System on its way back into interstellar space. At a breathtaking speed of over 175 000 kilometres per hour, Borisov is one of the fastest comets ever seen.

On 10 December 1999, as XMM-Newton launched from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, no one was expecting that the mission would last for two decades.

During its 20 years in space, ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has made many exciting discoveries. But no one could have predicted that the very first observation of the spacecraft would be one of its most important.

ESA's X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has now spent 20 years in orbit. In those two decades it has made many scientific breakthroughs, helping bring X-ray astronomy into the main stream of astronomical investigation.

New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have investigated the nature of the gamma-ray burst GRB 190114C.

Data from ESA's Cluster mission has provided a recording of the eerie 'song' that Earth sings when it is hit by a solar storm.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a galaxy in the distant regions of the Universe which appears duplicated at least 12 times on the night sky. This unique sight, created by strong gravitational lensing, helps astronomers get a better understanding of the cosmic era known as the epoch of reionisation.

In celebration of Halloween, this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face. This observation was made on 19 June 2019 in visible light by the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

ESA's Solar Orbiter mission has completed its test campaign in Europe and is now being packed ready for its journey to Cape Canaveral at the end of this month, ahead of launch in February 2020.

On 12 October 2019, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provided astronomers with their best look yet at an interstellar visitor – Comet 2I/Borisov – which is believed to have arrived here from another planetary system elsewhere in our galaxy.

ESA congratulates 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who have been awarded the prestigious prize for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star, and James Peebles, honoured for the theoretical framework of cosmology used to investigate the Universe on its largest scales.

Scientists analysing data from the Cassini mission have found evidence of light, soluble and reactive organic molecules in the ice grains ejected by Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, providing another important piece of evidence to investigate its potential habitability.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a new resource for astronomers: the Hubble Catalog of Variables (HCV), which is the first full, homogeneous catalogue of variable sources based on archival data from the iconic observatory.

Scientists analysing the treasure trove of images taken by ESA's Rosetta mission have turned up more evidence for curious bouncing boulders and dramatic cliff collapses.

For the first time, astronomers have detected synchronised pulses of optical and X-ray radiation from a mysterious pulsar some 4500 light years away. The observations indicate that a new physical mechanism might be needed to explain the behaviour of fast-spinning sources like this one, known as transitional millisecond pulsars.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 observed Saturn on 20 June 2019 as the planet made its closest approach to Earth this year, at approximately 1.36 billion kilometres away.

With data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, water vapour has been detected in the atmosphere of a super-Earth within the habitable zone by University College London (UCL) researchers in a world first.

ESA's X-ray space telescope XMM-Newton has detected never-before-seen periodic flares of X-ray radiation coming from a distant galaxy that could help explain some enigmatic behaviours of active black holes.

Just as people of the same age can vary greatly in appearance and shape, so do collections of stars or stellar aggregates. New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope suggest that chronological age alone does not tell the complete story when it comes to the evolution of star clusters.

Rather than leaving home young, as expected, stellar 'siblings' prefer to stick together in long-lasting, string-like groups, finds a new study of data from ESA's Gaia spacecraft.