ESA

Blog about ESA activities.

The Australe Scopuli region on Mars (Image ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO))

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ESA has published reprocessed images of the Australe Scopuli region of Mars captured by its Mars Express space probe’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The area is covered in what appears to be snow but is actually carbon dioxide ice and dust. Despite the differences, the view is reminiscent of a Christmas landscape, especially the kind common at altitudes where it normally snows on Earth. It’s still a significant day because, on December 25, 2003, Mars Express entered Mars’ orbit.

Sentinel-1C satellite blasting off atop a Vecga-C rocket (Photo courtesy ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–S. Martin)

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A few hours ago, the Sentinel-1C satellite, part of the Copernicus / GMES, was launched from the Kourou spaceport, in French Guiana, atop a Vega-C rocket. After about 1 hour and 44 minutes, the satellite regularly separated from the rocket’s last stage and started sending signals. Its final orbit in low Earth orbit will be at an altitude of about 693 kilometers.

The galaxy NGC 2090 as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope (ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy)

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ESA has published an image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope that portrays the galaxy NGC 2090 in the near and mid-infrared thanks to the combination of the MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instruments. This allowed to obtain an unprecedented amount of detail on this galaxy’s two spiral arms. For ESA, which participates in various astronomical missions, NGC 2090 is at the center of the scene these days because the choice for the Webb image of the month follows by a few days the choice for the Hubble Space Telescope image of the week, captured using various WFC3 (Wide Field Camera 3) instrument’s filters in the visible frequencies and an ultraviolet filter.

The Hera space probe blasting off atop a Falcon 9 rocket (Image courtesy SpaceX)

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Yesterday, ESA’s Hera space probe blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral together with the two nanosatellites Juventas and Milani. After about 76 minutes, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and set on its course which in almost exactly two years will take it to the asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos to examine the consequences of the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft.

The Sentinel-2C satellite blasting off atop a Vega rocket (Image courtesy ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–S. Martin)

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A few hours ago, the Sentinel-2C satellite of the Copernicus / GMES program blasted off from the Kourou base, French Guiana, atop a Vega rocket. After about 57 minutes, the satellite regularly separated from the rocket’s last stage and started sending signals. A few hours later it started deploying its solar panels. After a period of testing, it will replace the Sentinel-2A satellite, launched on June 23, 2015. This is the last launch of the original version of the Vega rocket.