Tag: European Space Agency
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Photos: Vega launch lights up French Guiana
Monday night’s blastoff of a Vega rocket from the northern shore of South America dispatched a 2,500-pound Earth imaging satellite for Europe and put on a light show across the tropical spaceport at the edge of the Amazon. The 98-foot-tall rocket launched at 10:51:58 p.m. local time Monday (0151:58 GMT Tuesday; 9:51:58 p.m. EDT Monday)…
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Live coverage: Vega rocket deploys second Sentinel satellite
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Vega rocket with the Sentinel 2A land imaging satellite. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
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‘Europe’s Landsat’ in the starting blocks
Artist’s concept of the Sentinel 2A satellite in orbit. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab The first in a planned multi-decade series of European land imaging satellites is fastened on top of a solid-fueled Vega launcher at a French Guiana space base for liftoff Monday, kicking off a mission to track everything from global crop growth to urban…
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For comet scientists, elation and redemption at Philae’s wakeup
Artist’s concept of Philae. Credit: ESA Research teams across Europe spent the last half-year meticulously going through a wish list of experiments for the Philae comet lander without knowing whether they would ever get a chance to execute the tasks. With Philae now awake after a seven-month slumber, scientists are eager to turn on the…
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Engineers seek to stabilize radio link with comet lander
Rosetta’s navigation camera captured this view of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko awakened by the sun June 5. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam Emboldened by renewed contact with Europe’s comet lander, engineers are repositioning the mission’s Rosetta mothership this week to establish a reliable a communications link with the dishwasher-sized Philae landing craft, a prerequisite for resuming a science campaign abbreviated…
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Comet lander wakes up!
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist’s concept of the Philae lander. Credit: DLR The European Space Agency’s Philae comet lander, out of power and presumably lost after bouncing into heavily shadowed terrain last November, phoned home Saturday after finally getting enough sunlight on its solar panels to transmit data to the Rosetta orbiter…
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ESA reveals candidates for new space science missions
Earth’s protective barrier – the magnetosphere – shields it from some of the effects of the supersonic solar wind. Studying the interaction between this wind and the magnetosphere is important for our understanding of space weather. Credit: ESA The European Space Agency revealed plans Thursday to build and launch a joint space weather research satellite…
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Tour comet 67P in Rosetta’s latest image release
The latest batch of images released from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission shows the brutal gray landscape of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in vivid detail. ESA posted 1,776 images from Rosetta’s navigation camera on the agency’s website Thursday, adding to a growing catalog of imagery of comet 67P since the probe arrived in August 2014. The…
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Space-based airplane tracking demonstrated by ESA satellite
Aircraft positions picked up by ESA’s Proba-V minisatellite, using an experimental Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) receiver. These signals are regularly broadcast from aircraft, giving flight information such as speed, position and altitude. All aircraft entering European airspace are envisaged to carry ADS-B in the coming years. Credit: ESA/DLR/SES An experimental receiver aboard a…
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NASA invites ESA to build Europa piggyback probe
Artist’s concept of the Europa Clipper spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech After walking away from a previously planned joint mission to Jupiter, NASA has asked the European Space Agency if it can furnish a lander or ice-penetrating probe for a rejuvenated U.S.-led robotic spacecraft to visit Jupiter’s moon Europa. NASA’s mission to Europa is scheduled to launch…