News archive

News archive

After almost four years, an exploratory voyage crossing regions of the cosmos never before visited by spacecraft is approaching its climax. On 13 September 1994, ESA's Ulysses spaceprobe will reach a point less than 10 degrees from the Sun's south pole.
Published: 30 August 1994
Upon the invitation of the Swiss Government, the European Space Agency (ESA) is organising from Tuesday 31 May to Friday 3 June 1994 an international workshop on present and future plans for study and exploration of the Moon. This meeting will be held in Beatenberg, Switzerland, and attended by European, Russian and Japanese national space agencies as well as by NASA, the National Aeraunotics & Space Administration.
Published: 11 May 1994
The Hubble Space telescope servicing mission in December (STS-61) was a great success and the fully refurbished orbiting telescope produced absolutely remarkable first results just two weeks ago. The 7-member crew who carried out the mission will soon be in Europe to share their experience with the Press, ESA space specialists and the European space community. Public conferences will also be held in Switzerland, the home country of ESA astronaut Claude Nicollier.
Published: 28 January 1994
Just five weeks after the dramatic Hubble servicing mission, the first images from ESA's Faint Object Camera and NASA's Wide Field and Planetary Camera II have become available. The operation to correct the telescope optics was a total success, and the differences are striking. Also, the new solar panels supplied by ESA are performing very well.
Published: 13 January 1994
The first Hubble Space Telescope (*) servicing mission ended this morning with a nighttime landing at the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. The space shuttle Endeavour emerged from the Florida night sky and touched down at 05:26 UT
Published: 17 December 1993
The Hubble Space Telescope spread its wings this morning clearing the way for the release of the orbiting observatory. The telescope's twin European solar arrays slowly unfurled as shuttle Endeavour passed 593 kilometres above the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Published: 9 December 1993
The Hubble Space Telescope was fitted with a new set of solar arrays after a 6.5-hour spacewalk by Tom Akers and Kathy Thornton. These unique power-generating wings, supplied by the European Space Agency, will power the telescope for at least the remainder of the decade.
Published: 6 December 1993
The servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope(*) began today with an eight-hour spacewalk. One of the telescope's twin solar arrays was successfully rolled-up at the end of the day but the second array, which had one supporting beam that was bowed and twisted, failed to retract. The astronauts will jettison the troublesome right-hand wing and then proceed with replacement of the arrays as normal.
Published: 5 December 1993
The space shuttle Endeavour blasted off in a blaze of light this morning on the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission(*). The spectacular pre-dawn lift-off, visible for hundreds of miles, occurred at 09:27 UT. The launch was delayed from yesterday due to high crosswinds but the weather co-operated today and the shuttle lifted off on time into a clear, moon-lit sky.
Published: 2 December 1993
In one of the deepest celestial surveys yet made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a small group of previously unknown, interacting galaxies estimated to be three billion light-years away.*Hubble caught the galaxies in an early stage of evolution, and so they offer new clues to developing a much clearer understanding of how galaxies have changed over time.
Published: 8 November 1993
At its 68th meeting on 4/5 November 1993, ESA's Science Programme Committee endorsed the recommendation of the Space Science Advisory Committee to implement Rosetta, a comet rendezvous mission, as the third cornerstone and FIRST (the Far Infrared Space Telescope) as the fourth cornerstone of the Horizon 2000 programme. The launch dates will be 2003 and 2006, respectively. However, FIRST would return its scientific data earlier than Rosetta, as the travel time to the comet is rather long.
Published: 8 November 1993
After more than three years of efficient and successful operations, communications with ESA's scientific satellite Hipparcos were terminated on 15 August 1993. The Hipparcos satellite, a purely European undertaking, and the first space experiment dedicated to the highly accurate measurements of star positions, distances, and space motions, was launched in August 1989. Targeted for an operational lifetime of two and a half years, more than three years of high quality star measurements were eventually accumulated, and all of the original scientific goals of the mission have been fully accomplished.
Published: 17 August 1993
A team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a "double nucleus" in the center of the neighboring spiral galaxy M31, located in the constellation Andromeda."Hubble shows that the M31 nucleus is much more complex than previously thought," says Dr. Tod R. Lauer of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, Tuscon, Arizona.A nucleus is a dense clustering of stars at the very center of a galaxy.
Published: 20 July 1993
On 9 June 1993, ESA's Ulysses spaceprobe became the first spacecraft to reach a latitude of more than 32 degrees relative to the Sun's equator. In doing so, Ulysses broke the existing record held by Voyager 1, which is currently exploring the depths of space beyond the solar system at a distance of more than 50 AU from the Sun (1 astronomical unit (AU) = 150 million km).
Published: 9 June 1993
ESA's Science Programme Committee, meeting at the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk (the Netherlands) on 3 and 4 June 1993, has accepted the recommendations of the Space Science Advisory Committee and confirmed INTEGRAL (International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) as the second medium-sized mission (M2) within the framework of the Horizon 2000 scientific programme.
Published: 4 June 1993
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has discovered a new population of exceptionally bright and young star clusters at the heart of a head-on collision between two galaxies.The orbiting telescope also discovered a rotating, pinwheel-shaped disk at the center of the collision. In the Hubble photo, the disk resembles a full spiral galaxy, seen face on. Yet the disk is only ten thousand light-years across, about 1/20 the diameter of the whole galaxy.
Published: 25 May 1993
Three interplanetary spacecraft, ESA's Ulysses and NASA's Mars Observer and Galileo, now quietly heading towards separate destinations (the poles of the Sun, Mars and Jupiter respectively), may soon prove the existence of waves in the universe's gravitational field by bobbing on ripples in space like corks bobbing on ripples in a pond.
Published: 19 March 1993
With the countdown for the forthcoming D-2 mission on the Space Shuttle still running, ESA and European scientists are already preparing for ATLAS-2, the Shuttle's next mission. ESA sees its participation in this second flight of the "Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science" as a further step in preparing for utilisation of the Columbus Attached Laboratory.
Published: 16 March 1993
On Wednesday 10 March 1993 astronauts from ESA and NASA will be at British Aerospace Space Systems Limited, Filton, Bristol, UK, training on the replacement set of solar arrays which they are scheduled to fit to the Hubble Space Telescope at year end.
Published: 17 February 1993
Astronomer John S. Mulchaey, of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI) and fellow team members announced today the discovery of a huge concentration of mysterious "dark matter" with the ROSAT X-ray observatory satellite. ROSAT is an acronym for Roentgen Satellite, a joint project of Germany, NASA, and the U.K.)
Published: 4 January 1993
28-Mar-2024 21:04 UT

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