esa Archives

July 17, 2019July 17, 2019 by Matt Williams

Gaia Mission is Mapping Out the Bar at the Center of the Milky Way

Credit: Data: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, A. Khalatyan(AIP) & StarHorse team; Galaxy map: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)

Despite the many advancements made in the field of astronomy, astronomers still struggle to get an accurate assessment of the Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are embedded in its disk, it is much more difficult to assess its size, structure, and extent – unlike galaxies located millions (or billions) of light-years away. Luckily, thanks to improved instruments and tireless efforts, progress is being made all the time.

For instance, a team of astronomers recently combined the latest data obtained by the ESA’s Gaia observatory with the infrared and optical observations of other telescopes to start mapping the bar-shaped collection of stars at the center of our Milky Way. This constitutes the first time in history that astronomers have been able to make direct measurements of this barred structure.

July 8, 2019July 8, 2019 by Evan Gough

The ESA’s SpaceBok Robot Will Hop Its Way Around Low-Gravity Worlds

The SpaceBok is a hopping exploration robot being developed for use on low-gravity worlds. Image Credit: ESA

The ESA is helping a group of students from Zurich test and develop their hopping exploration robot. Called SpaceBok, the robot is designed to operate on low-gravity bodies like the Moon or asteroids. It’s based on the concept of ‘dynamic walking’, something that animals on Earth use.

June 29, 2019June 29, 2019 by Evan Gough

Meet the Comet Interceptor. It’ll Wait Patiently In Space for a Comet, Then Pounce On It

An artist’s overview of the mission concept for the Comet Interceptor spacecraft, which will fly from the vicinity of Earth to rendezvous with a long-period comet or interstellar object inbound from the outer solar system. Credit: ESA

The ESA has announced a new mission to explore a comet. The Comet Interceptor mission will have a spacecraft wait in space until a pristine comet approaches the inner Solar System. Then it will make a bee line for it, and do some ground-breaking science.

June 26, 2019June 26, 2019 by Matt Williams

The Most Efficient Way to Explore the Entire Milky Way, Star by Star

Modelling galactic settlement. Credit: ESA/ACT

It seems like the stuff of dreams, the idea that humanity will one day venture beyond the Solar System and become an interstellar species. Who knows? Given enough time and the right technology (and assuming there’s not some serious competition), we might even be able to colonize the entire Milky Way galaxy someday. And while this seems like a far-off prospect at best, it makes sense to contemplate what a process like this would entail.

That’s what a think tank from the ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) managed to do recently. As part of the tenth annual Global Trajectory Optimization Competition (GOTC X), they created a simulation that showed how humanity could optimally colonize the Milky Way. This was in keeping with the competition’s theme of “Settlers of the Galaxy“, which challenged teams to find the most energy-efficient way of settling as many star systems as possible.

June 15, 2019June 15, 2019 by Matt Williams

Satellites Equipped With a Tether Would be Able to De-Orbit Themselves at the end of Their Life

Artist's impression of the orbital debris problem. Credit: UC3M

There’s no denying it, we are facing an orbital debris problem! As of January 2019, the ESA’s Space Debris Office estimates that there are at least 34,000 pieces of large debris in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – a combination of dead satellites, spent rocket stages, and other assorted bits of space junk. And with thousands of satellites scheduled to be launched in the next decade, that problem is only going to get worse.

This is a situation that cries out for solutions, especially when you consider the plans to commercialize LEO and start sending crewed missions to deep space in the coming years. A team of scientists from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has come up with a simple but elegant idea: equip future satellites with a tether system so they can de-orbit themselves at the end of their lives.

June 7, 2019June 7, 2019 by Evan Gough

Don’t Worry About Asteroid 2006QV89. There’s Only a 1 in 7000 Chance It’ll Hit the Earth in September

One of the many PHOs (Potentially Hazardous Objects) that we're keeping an eye on. Image Credit: NASA

Whenever scientists announce an upcoming close encounter with an asteroid, certain corners of the internet light up like the synaptic rush that accompanies a meth binge, with panicky headlines shouted straight from the brain stem. But never mind that. We’re not that corner of the internet. We’re sober, yo!

June 7, 2019June 7, 2019 by Evan Gough

Europe is Working On a Reusable Space Transport System: Space Rider

The ESA is developing a reusable spacecraft called the Space Rider. Image Credit: ESA-Jacky Huart

The ESA is developing its own spacecraft capable of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The reusable spacecraft is called the Space RIDER (Reusable Integrated Demonstrator for Europe Return), and the ESA says that the Space Rider will be ready for launch by 2022. It’s being designed to launch on the Vega-C rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 by Matt Williams

16 Years of Hubble Images Come Together in this one Picture Containing 265,000 Galaxies

This Hubble Space Telescope image represents the largest, most comprehensive "history book" of galaxies in the universe.The image, a combination of nearly 7,500 separate Hubble exposures, represents 16 years' worth of observations.The ambitious endeavor, called the Hubble Legacy Field, includes several Hubble deep-field surveys, including the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), the deepest view of the universe. The wavelength range stretches from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, capturing all the features of galaxy assembly over time.The image mosaic presents a wide portrait of the distant universe and contains roughly 265,000 galaxies. They stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the universe's birth in the big bang. The tiny, faint, most distant galaxies in the image are similar to the seedling villages from which today's great galaxy star-cities grew. The faintest and farthest galaxies are just one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see.The wider view contains 100 times as many galaxies as in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, taken in 2004. The new portrait, a mosaic of multiple snapshots, covers almost the width of the full Moon. Lying in this region is the XDF, which penetrated deeper into space than this legacy field view. However, the XDF field covers less than one-tenth of the full Moon's diameter. Credits: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth and D. Magee (University of California, Santa Cruz), K. Whitaker (University of Connecticut), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), P. Oesch (University of Geneva) and the Hubble Legacy Field team

Even after almost three decades of faithful service, the Hubble Space Telescope continues to operate and provide breathtaking images of the cosmos. As one of NASA’s Great Observatories, its observations of distant galaxies, exoplanets, and the expansion of the Universe have had a revolutionary impact on astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology.

Hubble’s latest contribution comes in the form of a deep-sky mosaic image that was constructed using 16 years’ worth of observations. Known as the “Hubble Legacy Field“, this mosaic is being described as the largest and most comprehensive “history book” of galaxies. All told, it contains roughly 265,000 galaxies that date back to just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

May 1, 2019May 1, 2019 by Evan Gough

The World’s Space Agencies are Responding to a Hypothetical Asteroid Impact. You Can Watch it all Unfold Online.

Remember when Orson Welles’ 1938 radio show called “The War of the Worlds” fooled people into thinking that Earth was actually being invaded? That was fun.

Now, the ESA (European Space Agency) is tempting fate by live-tweeting the hypothetical approach of the hypothetical asteroid 2019PDC and hypothetically planning a hypothetical response to this hypothetically destructive asteroid. In their hypothetical scenario, 2019 PDC has a 1 in 10 chance of striking Earth in 2029. And you can follow the action on Twitter.

April 30, 2019April 30, 2019 by Evan Gough

Rapidly Spinning Black Hole is Spitting Out Blobs of Plasma

An artist's illustration of the black hole V404 Cygni. Image Credit: ICRAR.

Black holes, those beguiling singularities that sit on the precipice of the known and the unknown, keep surprising us with their behaviour. As organizations like the Event Horizon Telescope have made clear, there’s a lot we don’t know about the holes, and worse than that, we don’t even know how much we don’t know.

Now scientists have observed a new phenomenon that adds to the black hole mystique: a rapidly spinning black hole that ejects massive blobs of plasma.