News archive

News archive

Rosetta's Deep Space Link Down Under
The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to Comet Wirtanen is one of the most ambitious scientific missions to be launched during the next decade. A particular challenge posed by Rosetta is the problem of receiving a stream of data from a spacecraft which is flying alongside a small, fast-moving comet almost 900 million km from Earth.
Published: 2 March 2000
PR 15-2000: ESA, CERN and ESO launch Physics on Stage
Physics is Everywhere!The laws of physics govern the Universe, the Sun, the Earth and even our own lives. In today's rapidly developing society, we are becoming increasingly dependent on high technology - computers, transport, and communication are just some of the key areas that are the result of discoveries by scientists working in physics.
Published: 1 March 2000
A debate on the Sun's role in global warming
Discoveries about how the Sun may affect the Earth's climate will bediscussed on the Spanish island of Tenerife, 25-30 September 2000. Theleading hypothesis in climate science is that most of the warming duringthe 20th Century was due to manmade gases, enhancing the naturalgreenhouse effect that reduces heat loss into space. Behind the scenes,and especially among space scientists, there is renewed attention tonatural changes in climate due to the Sun.
Published: 29 February 2000
INFO 04-2000: ESA announces contest to Name the Cluster Quartet
1. Contest rulesThe European Space Agency (ESA) is launching a public competition to find the most suitable names for its four Cluster II space weather satellites. The quartet, which are currently known as flight models 5, 6, 7 and 8, are scheduled for launch from Baikonur Space Centre in Kazakhstan in June and July 2000.
Published: 22 February 2000
Rosetta STM is 'all shook up'
The test programme of the Rosetta Structural Thermal Model (STM) continuesto go with a bang. At the end of last week, the STM underwent a series ofshocking experiences in order to check its ability to survive the roughtreatment that will be meted out during launch. This was followed today bya deployment test of a giant solar array.
Published: 20 February 2000
A good weekend for aurora watchers?
At 22:30 Central European Time on 17 February the ESA-NASA SOHO spacecraft spotted a large puff of gas from the Sun. Subsequent images from the LASCO coronagraph on SOHO confirmed that this coronal mass ejection is heading towards the Earth. The gas will reach the Earth's vicinity on Saturday or Sunday, 19 or 20 February. When it hits the Earth's magnetic shield, it is likely to cause a magnetic storm. It may provoke spectacular displays of auroras high in the air over sub-polar regions of the Earth, and perhaps even at lower latitudes in Scandinavia and North America.
Published: 17 February 2000
XMM-Newton spies mother Earth
An unexpected spin-off from the XMM-Newton commissioning phase, thespacecraft has snapped a picture of mother Earth. The image was takenwith one of the two Small Visual Monitoring Cameras (VMC).
Published: 17 February 2000
Romantic rendezvous with Eros previews Rosetta's rock show
Last Monday, Valentine's Day, NASA's NEAR satellite achieved a notable'first' when it entered orbit around a near-Earth asteroid named 433 Eros.While this romantic rendezvous should provide a host of new informationabout the potato-shaped little world, Eros is just one out of many millionsof asteroids roaming the Solar System.
Published: 15 February 2000
Reponse to Call for Ideas for Flexi-missions
At the beginning of October 1999, ESA issued a call for ideas for the next flexi-missions (F2 and F3). A large number of proposals have been received and are being evaluated.Flexi-missions were introduced into the Horizons 2000 implementation concept in 1997 to increase the flexibility of the programme, basically by splitting each of the two Medium-size missions of Horizons 2000 into two Flexi-missions (F-missions).
Published: 15 February 2000
New Cassini images of asteroid Masursky
New images taken by the camera onboard the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft are giving scientists the first size estimates on asteroid 2685 Masurskyand preliminary evidence that it may have different material propertiesthan previously believed, NASA reports.
Published: 14 February 2000
Doubling the Hipparcos star count: the Tycho-2 Catalogue
The success of ESA's Hipparcos satellite in mapping many stars with amazing accuracy takes another stride this week. The Tycho-2 Catalogue, giving positions, motions, brightness and colours of 2 539 913 stars, more than doubles the number of stars in the original Tycho Catalogue.Included are 99 per cent of all stars down to magnitude 11, which means almost 100 000 times fainter than the brightest star, Sirius.
Published: 10 February 2000
Stargazing - ESA's 3rd XMM-Newton competition
At the press conference to present XMM-Newton's first images, ESA announced its third XMM-Newton competition, Stargazing. This competition is open to young Europeans between 16 and 18 years old, in the final two years of secondary school. The challenge is to make a proposal for a scientific observation with ESA's XMM-Newton Space Observatory.
Published: 10 February 2000
INFO 03-2000: Eye-openers from XMM-Newton
The first pictures from ESA's new X-ray space observatory fully demonstrate the capabilities of the spacecraft's telescopes and its science instruments. The images were officially presented on 9 February at the XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre in Villafranca, Spain.
Published: 9 February 2000
Cluster II on track after maiden flight of Fregat upper stage
The first qualification flight of the new Fregat ('Frigate' in English) upper stage on the Russian Soyuz rocket was completed today. This is thefirst time that the Fregat has flown on a Soyuz and represents a major milestone on the road towards the launch of ESA's four Cluster II satellites this summer.
Published: 8 February 2000
Huygens S-band probe relay test successfully completed on 5 February
The Huygens S-band Probe Relay test was successfully completed during the night of 4 to 5 February. The test started on 4 February at 21:45 UTC and finished on 5 February at 05:15 UTC.
Published: 8 February 2000
Launcher for Mars Express undergoes successful test flight
The first Soyuz-Fregat launch vehicle, of the type that will launch Mars Express in June 2003, was launched successfully from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan today.
Published: 8 February 2000
INFO 02-2000: 100 and Counting - SOHO's score as the world's top comet finder
Calculations completed today confirm that a comet spotted by a Lithuanian astronomer on 4 February is a previously unknown object, making it the 100th comet discovered with the SOHO spacecraft. Launched four years ago as a project of international cooperation between theEuropean Space Agency and NASA, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatoryhas revolutionized the science of the Sun. It has also revealed anamazing number of kamikaze comets plunging into the solar atmosphere, which help to make SOHO the most prolific comet finder in the history of astronomy. But SOHO-100 is an ordinary comet, and so are two others that have appeared in the past few days.
Published: 7 February 2000
Ulysses gets ready for new solar polar adventure
Ulysses, the joint ESA/NASA spacecraft to explore the region of space above the Sun's poles, is poised on the edge of new discoveries as it prepares to pass over the poles of the Sun for the second time in its ten year lifetime. The first passage occurred at solar minimum, a time of low solar activity. But the second will occur at solar maximum when the Sun is at its most turbulent. New findings are expected about the effects of this turbulence on the heliosphere, the vast volume of space that engulfs all the planets and over which the Sun exerts its influence.
Published: 6 February 2000
INFO 01-2000: The crystalline revolution: ISO's finding opens a new research field, 'astro-mineralogy'
Silicate crystals, the most abundant minerals on Earth, are also found in great quantities around old stars and in protoplanetary discs -the discs where planets form. This finding, presented today at a press conference at ESA's Villafranca station in Madrid, is considered by experts in space chemistry as one of the main results of ESA's infrared space telescope, ISO.
Published: 3 February 2000
Huygens fifth checkout successfully completed during night of 2 February
The fifth in-flight Huygens checkout was successfully completed during the night of 2 to 3 February. The Probe was switched on at 23:00 UTC on 2February and switched OFF at 02:50 UTC on 3 February. The data came down with a 25 min delay due to the propagation time of the radio signal from Cassini/Huygens to the Earth. The telemetry data were made available to the Huygens Flight Operations Team at HPOC at ESOC in Darmstadt (D). A preliminary evaluation of the data by the Flight Operations Team indicates that all subsystems and experiments performed as expected.
Published: 2 February 2000
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