News archive

News archive

The head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Science Programme will tell more than 200 astronomers gathered in Belgium today that Europe could play a significant role in the development of a new space telescope.
Published: 18 June 1998
The baseline INTEGRAL orbit has been modified to relfect the options available from a Proton launch.
Published: 15 June 1998
Members of the Cluster II team visited the Baikonur launch site inKazakhstan at the end of May. The team were able to inspect the newStarsem facilities for spacecraft integration.
Published: 12 June 1998
At its 28/29 May meeting the ESA Science Programme Committee (SPC) endorsed the Planck payload proposed by the scientific community.
Published: 9 June 1998
At its meeting of 28/29 May ESA's Science Programme Committee (SPC) unanimously endorsed the recommended scientific payload for the SMART-1 mission.
Published: 7 June 1998
In a rare celestial spectacle, two comets have been observed plunging into the Sun's atmosphere in close succession, on June 1 and 2. This unusual event on Earth's own star was followed on June 2 by a likely unrelated but also dramatic ejection of solar gas and magnetic fields on the southwest (or lower right) limb of the Sun.
Published: 4 June 1998
In its meeting on 28-29 May 1998 the ESA Science Programme Committee (SPC) approved the FIRST/Planck mission for implementation, with a target launch date of 2007.
Published: 4 June 1998
The Huygens off-Sun AGC calibration test was successfully executed on 28 May at 22:04 UTC. The test lasted 33 minutes, including thetwo manoeuvres required to point Cassini's high-gain antenna (HGA) 12 deg away from the Sun and back. The purpose of the test was tocalibrate the automatic gain control (AGC) level of the Huygens receivers in a radio-noise free environment.
Published: 29 May 1998
Scientists have shown for the first time that solar flares produce seismic waves in the Sun's interior that closely resemble those created by earthquakes on our planet. The researchers observed a flare-generated solar quake that contained about 40 000 times the energy released in the great earthquake that devastated San Francisco in 1906. The amount of energy released was enough to power the United States for 20 years at its current level of consumption, and was equivalent to an 11.3 magnitude earthquake, scientists calculated.
Published: 28 May 1998
The European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) was switched off on 16 May at 12:00 UT, thereby bringing to a close the highly-successful in-orbit operations of the ISO mission.
Published: 18 May 1998
Astronomers have obtained an unprecedented look at the nearest example of galactic cannibalism - a massive black hole hidden at the center of a nearby giantgalaxy that is feeding on a smaller galaxy in a spectacular collision. Such fireworks were common in the early universe, as galaxies formed and evolved, but are raretoday.
Published: 15 May 1998
The Conference "UV Astrophysics beyond the IUE Final Archive" (11-14 November 1997) was organised to mark the end of the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE)project by the three Agencies responsible for the design and operations of this ultraviolet telescope in space. It represented the last time that thelarge community of astronomers utilising this amazing Space Observatory would get together to review the progress made in astrophysics usingthe results of IUE.
Published: 8 May 1998
A team of astronomers from the California Institute of Technology announced today that a recently detected cosmic gamma-ray burst was as bright as the rest of the universe, releasing a hundred times more energy than previously theorized.
Published: 6 May 1998
The Sun has tall gyrating storms far larger and faster than tornadoes on the Earth. This unexpected finding is among the latest results from the solar spacecraft SOHO, to be announced at a European Space Agency press briefing on 28 April. British scientists discovered the solar tornadoes in images and data from SOHO's scanning spectrometer CDS. So far they have detected a dozen such events. They occur most frequently near the north and south poles of the Sun and are almost as wide as the Earth.
Published: 24 April 1998
Infant galaxies, distant quasars, exploding stars, mysterious black holes, colliding galaxies. Since its launch on 24 April 1990, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided a stunning view of our universe by making unique discoveries and capuring spectacular images
Published: 23 April 1998
On 17 April, after travelling for more than seven years and covering 3.8 billion kilometres, the space probe Ulysses will complete its first orbit of the Sun. Built in Europe for the European Space Agency, this intrepid explorer has ventured into regions never before visited by any spacecraft. It has journeyed far away from the realm of the planets and gone over the poles of the Sun.
Published: 15 April 1998
Although ISO observations finished on 8 April, new results continue to pour as astronomers process their ISO data. A team of American astronomers has discovered a large concentration of water vapour in a cloud of interstellar gas close to the Orion Nebula.
Published: 10 April 1998
ESA's Infrared Space Observatory, ISO, has ended its observational phase, long after the expiry date of the end of May 1997 foreseen in the specifications for the mission. Instead of the required 18 months, the astronomers have been able to use ISO for more than 28 months, and as a result have gathered a wealth of additional information about the Universe. Altogether ISO has made over 26 000 observations of cosmic objects.
Published: 9 April 1998
Water vapour detected on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and infrared galaxies identified atimmense distances are among the latest results from ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). At a press briefing in London on 7 April, ESA's director of science, Roger Bonnet, said "ISO is one of the most successful space observatories, and in the infrared it has had no rival." Its discoveries will change our views on the Universe.
Published: 7 April 1998
Data of exceptional accuracy, from ESA's star-mapping satellite Hipparcos, show that distant stars aremoving in unexpected directions. Their strange behaviour could mean that the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy is changing. Ateam of astronomers from Turin Observatory and Oxford University announced the discovery in the 2 April issue of theLondon science journal Nature.
Published: 1 April 1998
8-Dec-2024 07:07 UT

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