esa Archives

May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

ESA is Testing How Iron Burns in Weightlessness

ESA tested a process called discrete burning, using iron powder mixed with oxygen while in microgravity. The result is a possible way to create sustainable fuels on Earth and in space. Courtesy ESA. — ESA tested a process called discrete burning, using iron powder mixed with oxygen while in microgravity. The result is a possible way to create sustainable fuels on Earth and in space. Courtesy ESA and photo by TU/e, Bart van Overbeeke

What happens when you burn iron in space? The European Space Agency is torching iron powder in microgravity, to find out. They aren’t doing it for the fun of it, but to understand something called “discrete burning.” It turns out that this process might enable more efficient iron-burning furnaces right here on Earth. It could eventually join other renewable energy sources as a way to combat the release of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

May 24, 2023May 24, 2023 by Matt Williams

Artificial Gravity Tests on Earth Could Improve Astronaut Health in Space

The centrifuge at the MEDES center. Credit: MEDES–R. Gaboriaud

They’re affectionately known as “pillownauts,” volunteers who commit to spending weeks in bed to advance research into astronaut health. While bedridden, the pillownauts will lie with their heads tilted at 6° below the horizontal with their feet up to increase blood flow to their heads. They also perform work-related tasks, are subject to regular medical exams, and take their meals, showers, and bathroom breaks, all while remaining in bed. The purpose of this research is to simulate the effects of weightlessness on the human body, including muscle atrophy, bone density loss, and cognitive effects.

The European Space Agency (ESA) recently kicked off another round of pillownaut research, the Bed Rest with Artificial gravity and Cycling Exercise (BRACE) study, at the Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES) in Toulouse, France. For this study, twelve volunteers will remain inclined (with their heads below their feet) for sixty days and exercise using cycles adapted to their beds and centrifuges that simulate gravity. Beyond measuring the effects of microgravity on astronaut health, this study also aims to measure the effectiveness of countermeasures used to address them.

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May 16, 2023May 16, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Hurray! Juice Deploys its Stuck Antenna

One of the stuck parts of Juice's RIME antenna deploys. Credit: ESA/Juice mission.

ESA’s Juice mission launched last month on April 14, beginning its long journey to explore Jupiter’s icy moons, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. But soon after launch, mission controllers realized a 16-meter (52.5 ft)-long antenna for a radar instrument was jammed and couldn’t deploy. The Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna is mission critical, as it gathers data for the instrument that will be able to map beneath the ice at these moons.

But, whew, the story has a happy ending. After nearly a month of efforts to free the stuck antenna, engineers figured out a fix for the RIME antenna. They fired a mechanical device in the jammed bracket, which created enough jiggling and rattling to allow the antenna to fully deploy.

May 15, 2023May 15, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

ESA Wants Your Ideas for Living off the Land… on the Moon

Challenges have been a mainstay of space exploration for several years at this point. In the past, they have ranged from making a potential space elevator to designing a solar power system on the Moon. The European Space Agency is continuing that tradition and has recently released a new challenge focusing on lunar resources. Called the Identifying Challenges along the Lunar ISRU Value Chain campaign, this new ESA platform is the next step in the agency’s efforts to develop an entire “value chain” of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technologies.

May 13, 2023May 13, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

New Photos Show Collapsed Chains of Craters on a Martian Volcano

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows the southern flanks of Ascraeus Mons, the second-tallest volcano on Mars. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin,.

Most everyone is familiar with Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars and also the largest in the Solar System. But there are several other enormous shield volcanoes on Mars. The second largest is Ascraeus Mons, and new images from ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft reveal some interesting features on the side or flank of the mountain.

April 17, 2023April 17, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

ESA's Juice is On Its Way to Visit Jupiter's Moons

ESA’s Juice mission lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on April 14, 2023 to begin its eight-year journey to Jupiter, where it will study in detail the gas giant planet’s three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

A new era of exploration at Jupiter’s moons began last week with the launch of the European Space Agency’s Juice, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. This mission will visit three of Jupiter’s largest moons — Europa, Callisto and Ganymede — to investigate whether they could be potentially habitable, a question that’s been highly debated since the first evidence of subsurface oceans on these moons was seen by the Galileo mission in the 1990s.

February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 by Matt Williams

Astronomers Suspected There Should Be a Planet Here, and Then They Took a Picture of it

Direct images of AF Lep b, acquired by the SPHERE instrument on the VLT. Credit: ESO/Paranal Observatory

To date, astronomers have confirmed 5,272 exoplanets in 3,943 systems using a variety of detection methods. Of these, 1,834 are Neptune-like, 1,636 are gas giants (Jupiter-sized or larger), 1,602 are rocky planets several times the size and mass of Earth (Super-Earths), and 195 have been Earth-like. With so many exoplanets available for study (and next-generation instruments optimized for the task), the process is shifting from discovery to characterization. And discoveries, which are happening regularly, are providing teasers of what astronomers will likely see in the near future.

For example, two international teams of astronomers independently discovered a gas giant several times the mass of Jupiter orbiting a Sun-like star about 87.5 light-years from Earth. In a series of new papers that appeared in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the teams report the detection of a Super-Jupiter orbiting AF Leporis (AF Lep b) using a combination of astrometry and direct imaging. The images they acquired using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) have since become the ESO’s Picture of the Week.

February 18, 2023February 18, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

ESA is Building an Early Warning System for Dangerous Asteroids

A graphic showing the concept for the NEOMIR orbiting observatory will act as an early warning system to detect and monitor any asteroid coming towards Earth from the Sun’s direction. Credit: ESA.

The European Space Agency is working on a new mission that would act as an early warning system for dangerous, hard-to-see asteroids. Called NEOMIR (Near-Earth Object Mission in the InfraRed), the spacecraft would orbit between the Earth and the Sun at the L1 Lagrange Point, finding space rocks that otherwise get lost in the glare of the Sun.

February 2, 2023February 2, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Drag Sail Success! This Satellite Won't Turn Into Space Junk

The deployment of the Drag Augmentation Deorbiting System (ADEO) was captured by a camera onboard the ION satellite carrier. Credit: ESA.

The European Space Agency successfully tested a solar-sail-type device to speed up the deorbit time for a used cubesat carrier in Earth orbit. The so-called breaking sail, the Drag Augmentation Deorbiting System (ADEO) was deployed from an ION satellite carrier in late December 2022. Engineers estimate the sail will reduce the time it takes for the carrier to reenter Earth’s atmosphere from 4-5 years to approximately 15 months.

The sail is one of many ideas and efforts to reduce space junk in Earth orbit.

“We want to establish a zero debris policy, which means if you bring a spacecraft into orbit you have to remove it,” said Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director General.

January 27, 2023January 27, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Europe Will be Building the Transfer Arm for the Mars Sample Return Mission

The concept for a Mars lander with a Sample Transfer Arm to retrieve and bring samples of Mars dirt and rocks to Earth. Credit: ESA.

Now that the Perseverance rover has dropped off ten regolith and rock sample tubes for a future sample return mission to retrieve, the plans for such a mission are coming together. The mission is a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, and ESA has agreed to build a 2.5-meter-long robotic arm to pick up tubes and then transfer them to a rocket for the first-ever Mars samples to be brought to Earth.