News archive

News archive

A group of European astronomers have obtained the first detailed images of a galaxy in which a gamma-ray burst has occurred. The image was taken with one of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's high-resolution cameras and reveals a barred spiral galaxy with numerous star-forming regions. The gamma-ray burst has been located in one such actively star-forming region. This is a very important step forward in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts and their immediate surroundings and offers possible clues to their progenitors.
Published: 27 June 2000
An exhibition on 'The Sun - our star' opened at the Norwegian Technical Museum in Oslo on 22 June. The exhibits include 1:4 scale models of the SOHO and Cluster II satellites as well as several metres of panels with information on the science from these ESA missions. The ESA SOHO CD-Rom can be viewed interactively by the visitors and SOHO real-time pictures are displayed continuously.
Published: 26 June 2000
"The latest evidence that liquid water has flowed on Mars very recently, makes Mars Express even more relevant," says Agustin Chicarro, Mars Express Project Scientist. "Water may have flowed tens of thousands or a million years ago - that's still recent in geological terms. Or it may even be flowing now. Either way, this is very important."
Published: 23 June 2000
After being detected using telescopes equipped with electronic CCD imaging cameras, ESA's X-ray space observatory has been sighted visually for the very first time.
Published: 21 June 2000
Behind the apparently simple brightness of certain stars there isoften a fascinating complexity. That is the case for the particularlyinteresting Castor stellar system upon which XMM-Newton has shed newlight.
Published: 19 June 2000
Two and a half years to launch... and counting. That was the primaryconsideration for approximately 80 scientists and mission managers from ESAmember countries and the United States as they gathered this week at theEuropean Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in The Netherlandsfor a progress report on the Rosetta mission to Comet Wirtanen.
Published: 16 June 2000
A group of American and French astronomers, including several who are playing a leading role in the Rosetta mission, has announced the discovery of the noble gas argon in Comet Hale-Bopp. This is the first time that one of the so-called noble gases (argon, xenon, neon etc.) has been found in a comet.
Published: 14 June 2000
The European Space Agency has agreed to fund the Ulysses mission for an extra 2 years 9 months. At its meeting in Paris on 5-6 June, ESA's Science Programme Committee approved the funds to continue operating the spacecraft from the end of 2001 to 30 September 2004.
Published: 14 June 2000
The European Space Agency has agreed to fund the Ulysses mission for an extra 2 years and 9 months. At its meeting in Paris on 5-6 June, ESA's Science Programme Committee approved the funds to continue operating the spacecraft from the end of 2001 to 30 September 2004.
Published: 13 June 2000
Another major landmark in the Cluster II launch campaign has been completed with the successfulpressurisation and fuelling of the first two spacecraft (FM 6 and FM 7).
Published: 13 June 2000
The Milky Way's centre is the busy core of a metropolis, crowded with huge populations of stars frantically dancing to the rhythm of gravitation. These stars are precious for astronomers: they hold many clues to unveil the past and future history of our galaxy. But the galactic centre has remained a fairly unexplored place so far, due to the thick dust covering it.
Published: 7 June 2000
The Danish Space Research Institute (DSRI) will develop the main elements of the telescope of ESA's Planck satellite, according to a document signed yesterday by ESA and the DSRI at ESA headquarters in Paris. Planck, due to be launched in 2007, will study the origin and evolution of the Universe by observing the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, the first light that filled the Universe after the Big Bang.
Published: 5 June 2000
New results by a group of European and American scientists make it clear that the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is nothing less than a true black hole finder.
Published: 5 June 2000
Serendipity, or chance discovery, plays a big role in astronomy. Observing one celestial target astronomers often find, in a corner of their telescope's field of view, another interesting and perhaps unknown object. XMM-Newton has made one such discovery.
Published: 5 June 2000
Representatives of ESA and Italian industry today attended a specialCluster II press briefing at the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum ofScience and Technology in Milan.The purpose of the event was to inform the media about the current statusof the Cluster II mission and the key role that Italian industry has playedin the successful completion of the four Cluster II spacecraft, which arenow undergoing pre-launch preparations in Kazakhstan.
Published: 30 May 2000
A team from the Observatoire de Paris using ESA's infrared space telescope ISO has measured variations in the thermal flux of the Pluto-Charon system, which prove that the temperature of Pluto's surface is not uniform. The coldestregions have a temperature of about -235 degrees Centigrade, while the warmest may reach -210 degrees. The measurements provide indications about its physical nature.
Published: 29 May 2000
The Nomenclature Committee of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) today announced that asteroid 8640 has been named after ESA scientist Rita Schulz.There can be few higher awards in the world of science than to have a celestial body named after you. This distinction has now been granted to Rita Schulz, a comet specialist who works at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in The Netherlands.
Published: 26 May 2000
The European Space Agency's ISO telescope was the first space observatoryrevealing the infrared 'face' of the Universe with high sensitivity, andby so doing pictured thousands of objects whose true nature is stillunknown. This month a network of European astronomers will try to learnmore about these new ISO sources, by observing many of them with about adozen ground-based telescopes, mainly at the observatories in theCanary Islands (Spain)."ISO has worked as a 'scoop' finder, and nowthere's a whole set of telescopes following up the news", says MartinKessler, ISO Project Scientist. The new ISO sources will soon also be observed with ESA's recently launched X-ray telescope, XMM-Newton.
Published: 24 May 2000
XMM-Newton is blessed with good luck! During the current calibration campaign of its science instruments ESA's new X-ray observatory has chanced on a sudden and dramatic alteration in a binary star system, whose properties had not changed for thirty years.
Published: 22 May 2000
Representatives of Spanish industry and the media yesterday joined stafffrom ESA and the Villafranca del Castillo Satellite Tracking Station site(VILSPA) near Madrid to celebrate the inauguration of the VIL-1 antennathat will be used for the ambitious Cluster II mission.
Published: 19 May 2000
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