News archive

News archive

This 6th Announcement of Opportunity (AO), open to scientists affiliated with institutes located in ESA Member States, solicits proposals for participation as Science Planners in the NASA-led IRIS mission. The deadline for proposals is 30 April 2020, 12:00 (noon) CEST.

Published: 13 March 2020

The behaviour of one of nature's humblest creatures and archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are helping astronomers probe the largest structures in the Universe.

Published: 10 March 2020

Professor Stefano Vitale, principal investigator of ESA's LISA Pathfinder and currently the chair of ESA's Science Programme Committee, has been honoured with the 2020 Tycho Brahe Medal for leading the ambitious mission that demonstrated technology to detect gravitational waves from space.

Published: 6 March 2020

Astronomers have pondered for years why our galaxy, the Milky Way, is warped. Data from ESA's star-mapping satellite Gaia suggest the distortion might be caused by an ongoing collision with another, smaller, galaxy, which sends ripples through the galactic disc like a rock thrown into water.

Published: 2 March 2020

Proposals are solicited for observations with INTEGRAL in response to the Eighteenth Announcement of Opportunity, AO-18, issued 2 March 2020. This AO covers the period January to December 2021. The deadline for proposals has been postponed to 4 May, 14:00 CEST.

Published: 2 March 2020

A star of about eight percent the Sun's mass has been caught emitting an enormous 'super flare' of X-rays – a dramatic high-energy eruption that poses a fundamental problem for astronomers, who did not think it possible on stars that small.

Published: 20 February 2020

First measurements by a Solar Orbiter science instrument reached the ground on Thursday, providing a confirmation to the international science teams that the magnetometer on board is in a good shape following a successful deployment of the spacecraft's instrument boom.

Published: 17 February 2020

At 16:00 CET on Thursday, 13 February, the critical first 83 hours of Solar Orbiter's unique mission to study our star came to an end.

Published: 14 February 2020

ESA's Solar Orbiter mission lifted off on an Atlas V 411 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 05:03 CET on 10 February on its mission to study the Sun from new perspectives.

Published: 10 February 2020

Following an internal assessment of the results of the phase 0 studies, the European Space Agency is moving forward starting the Definition Phase (phase A) for the F-class mission Comet Interceptor.

Published: 6 February 2020

A grand synthesis of Rosetta data has shown how its target comet repeatedly changed colour during the two years it was watched by the spacecraft. The chameleon comet's nucleus became progressively less red as it made its close pass around the Sun, and then red again as it returned to deep space.

Published: 5 February 2020

Six weeks after the launch of CHEOPS, ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, the telescope cover was opened as part of the mission's in-orbit commissioning.

Published: 29 January 2020

A 500-day global observation campaign spearheaded more than three years ago by ESA’s galaxy-mapping powerhouse Gaia has provided unprecedented insights into the binary system of stars that caused an unusual brightening of an even more distant star.

Published: 21 January 2020

Observations from ESA's Rosetta spacecraft are shedding light on the mysterious make-up of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, revealing a mix of compounds thought to be essential precursors to life – including salts of ammonium and a particular type of hydrocarbons.

Published: 20 January 2020

Material falling into a black hole casts X-rays out into space – and now, for the first time, ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has used the reverberating echoes of this radiation to map the dynamic behaviour and surroundings of a black hole itself.

Published: 20 January 2020

ESA's XMM-Newton has discovered that gas lurking within the Milky Way's halo reaches far hotter temperatures than previously thought and has a different chemical make-up than predicted, challenging our understanding of our galactic home.

Published: 16 January 2020

Astronomers using the combined powers of ESA's Rosetta mission and the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have traced the journey of phosphorus – one of life's building blocks – from star-forming regions to comets.

Published: 15 January 2020

Fifteen years ago today, ESA's Huygens probe made history when it descended to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan and became the first probe to successfully land on another world in the outer Solar System. However, during its descent, the probe began spinning the wrong way – and recent tests now reveal why.

Published: 14 January 2020

ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has spied hot gas sloshing around within a galaxy cluster – a never-before-seen behaviour that may be driven by turbulent merger events.

Published: 10 January 2020

The science instrument on ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, CHEOPS, was successfully activated on 8 January, marking the beginning of the mission's in-orbit commissioning.

Published: 10 January 2020
28-Mar-2024 13:53 UT

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