ESA Science & Technology - News Archive
News archive
News archive
A recent study from ESA's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provides new evidence for a warm young Mars that hosted water across a geologically long timescale, rather than in short episodic bursts – something that has important consequences for habitability and the possibility of past life on the planet.
Published: 6 December 2016
New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the intricate structure of the galaxy NGC 4696 in greater detail than ever before. The elliptical galaxy is a beautiful cosmic oddity with a bright core wrapped in system of dark, swirling, thread-like filaments.
Published: 1 December 2016
An ambitious, multi-spacecraft mission to explore the planet Mercury in unprecedented detail is now scheduled for lift-off from Europe's spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, in October 2018.
Published: 25 November 2016
ESA's Science Programme Committee (SPC) has today confirmed two-year mission extensions for nine scientific missions in which the Agency is participating. This secures their operations until the end of 2018.
Published: 22 November 2016
As Rosetta's comet approached its most active period last year, the spacecraft spotted carbon dioxide ice – never before seen on a comet – followed by the emergence of two unusually large patches of water ice.
Published: 17 November 2016
Space Education International Workshop organised by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Galileo Teacher Training Program (GTTP), and the Space Awareness project, took place in Leiden, the Netherlands, from 18 to 22 October 2016.
Published: 15 November 2016
Scattered pockets of magnetism across the surface of Mars have a significant influence on the planet's upper atmosphere, according to observations from ESA's Mars Express. Understanding these effects may be crucial for ensuring safe radio communications between Mars and Earth and, eventually, between explorers on the surface of the planet.
Published: 3 November 2016
On 2-4 November, the European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid, Spain, will host the Gaia 2016 Data Release #1 Workshop. Many of the talks will be broadcast live.
Published: 28 October 2016
While scanning the sky to measure the position of over one billion stars in our Galaxy, ESA's Gaia satellite has detected two rare instances of stars whose light was temporarily boosted by other celestial objects passing across their lines of sight.
Published: 27 October 2016
Today, ESA has invited European scientists to propose concepts for the third large mission in its science programme, to study the gravitational Universe.
Published: 25 October 2016
Astronomers using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopes and other telescopes have performed an accurate census of the number of galaxies in the Universe. The group came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times as many galaxies in the observable Universe as previously thought.
Published: 13 October 2016
During the last month of Rosetta's operations at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it was no longer possible to observe the comet with telescopes on Earth because it was too close to the Sun's position in the sky and therefore not visible in the night-time.
Published: 7 October 2016
Today, ESA's LISA Pathfinder Science Archive opens its virtual gates to the world. It contains data collected by the satellite during the mission's first few months, covering the nominal operations phase of the LISA Technology Package (LTP) – the European payload on LISA Pathfinder.
Published: 7 October 2016
ESA’s historic Rosetta mission has concluded as planned, with the controlled impact onto the comet it had been investigating for more than two years.
Published: 30 September 2016
Over the past two years, Rosetta has kept a close eye on many properties of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, tracking how these changed along the comet's orbit. A very crucial aspect concerns how much water vapour a comet releases into space, and how the water production rate varies at different distances from the Sun.
Published: 27 September 2016
Rosetta is set to complete its historic mission in a controlled descent to the surface of its comet on 30 September, with the end of mission confirmation predicted to be within 20 minutes of 11:20 UTC (13:20 CEST).
Published: 27 September 2016
As Rosetta began homing in on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in the weeks leading up to its arrival in August 2014, it became very clear that this was no ordinary comet. But its striking shape was only just the beginning of the comet's surprises.
Published: 26 September 2016
Brief but powerful outbursts seen from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko during its most active period last year have been traced back to their origins on the surface.
Published: 23 September 2016
ESA's ambitious Gaia mission is the culmination of over two thousand years of astrometry – the science of charting the sky. A new sonification demonstrates in a novel way the remarkable progress that has been made in the lead up to the first data release from Gaia.
Published: 22 September 2016
A distant planet orbiting two stars, found by its warping of spacetime, has been confirmed using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Published: 22 September 2016
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