ESA Science & Technology

Fifth Close Titan Flyby

Titan-5 is Cassini's fifth close flyby, and sixth targeted flyby of Titan. The flyby occurs on Saturday 16 April at 19:12 UT. The closest approach will be at an altitude of 1025 km above the surface at a speed of 6.1 kms-1. Titan has a diameter of 5150 km, so the spacecraft passes within 1.4 Titan radii. The Titan-5 flyby is also the first near-polar pass - the orbiter reaches a latitude of 74 deg at closest approach.

Published: 14 April 2005

Gaia in 2004 - status report now available

Gaia in 2004, a status report prepared by the Gaia Project Scientist, summarises the status of the Gaia project at the end of 2004, describes the progress achieved in 2004 with emphasis on the scientific activities, and summarises the major ongoing and planned activities.

Published: 31 March 2005

Fourth Close Titan Flyby

On 31 March 2005 at 20:05 UT, Cassini performs its fifth targeted encounter with Saturn's largest moon. At closest approach the spacecraft's altitude above Titan's surface will be just over 2400 kilometres.

Published: 30 March 2005

Cosmic Vision: The Long Term European Space Science Programme

Report on the status of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Programme by the Director of Science at the EGU 2005 Assembly.

Published: 22 March 2005

The Distortion of the Heliosphere: our Interstellar Magnetic Compass

Measurements by the SWAN instrument onboard SOHO, have shown that the heliosphere, the solar wind filled volume which prevents the solar system from getting embedded in the local (ambient) interstellar medium is not axi-symmetrical, but is distorted, very likely under the effect of the local galactic magnetic field.

Published: 14 March 2005

Jupiter: A cloudy mirror for the Sun?

Scientists using XMM-Newton have discovered an x-ray glow on Jupiter due to x-rays from the Sun being reflected back off the planet's atmosphere.

Published: 7 March 2005

Distant Galaxies Show a Young Universe

Using ESA's XMM-Newton observatory and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, scientists have discovered the most distant massive structure in the Universe.

Published: 2 March 2005

Newly Seen Force May Help Gravity in Star Formation

Scientists have pierced through a dusty stellar nursery to capture the earliest and most detailed view of a collapsing gas cloud turning into a star, analogous to a baby's first ultrasound.

Published: 1 March 2005

VLT Observations of Titan

Around the time of the descent of the Huygens probe in Titan's atmosphere on 15 January 2005, ground based observations of Saturn's largest moon were made with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile during the nights from 14-16 January.

Published: 1 March 2005

Black Holes in a radar trap

Scientists using XMM-Newton have observed a relativistic Fe line in the mean X-ray spectra of type-1 and type-2 active galactic nuclei.

Published: 23 February 2005

Cluster will become the first multi-scale mission

On 10 February, the ESA Science Programme Committee approved unanimously the extension of the Cluster mission, pushing back the end date from December 2005 to December 2009.

Published: 18 February 2005

Saturn's aurorae defy scientists' expectations [heic0504]

The dancing light of the aurorae on Saturn behaves in ways different from how scientists have thought possible for the last 25 years. New research by a team of US and European planetary scientists led by John Clarke of Boston University, USA, has overturned theories about how Saturn's magnetic field behaves and how its aurorae are generated.

Published: 17 February 2005