The final approach to an asteroid has been practised for ESA’s proposed Asteroid Impact Mission using a real spacecraft camera mounted on a robot arm. The 2020 AIM mission would find its way across deep space as usual with startrackers and radio ranging but the real challenge would come after arrival at its target Didymos … Dowiedz się więcej
The latest satellite for the European Commission’s Copernicus environmental programme has left France bound for the Plesetsk launch site in Russia and launch late next month. Carrying a suite of state-of-the-art instruments, Sentinel-3A is set to provide an unprecedented step forward in the Copernicus marine, land, atmosphere and climate change services. The satellite began its … Dowiedz się więcej
ESA plans to track the health of the world’s vegetation by detecting and measuring the faint glow that plants give off as they convert sunlight and the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide into energy. Yielding information about the health and stress of the planet’s vegetation is important as the growing global population places increasing demands on the … Dowiedz się więcej
ESA’s Mars Express has shed new light on the Red Planet’s rare ultraviolet aurora by combining for the first time remote observations with in situ measurements of electrons hitting the atmosphere. On Earth, auroras are often-spectacular light shows at high northern and southern polar latitudes as the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field. As … Dowiedz się więcej
An underwater robot initially built to help astronauts train for life in weightlessness is now being tested in the Mediterranean Sea. One day, robots like this may carry out sophisticated missions on our ocean floors, from finding lost aircraft blackboxes to mining minerals or maintaining the sites of ancient pirate shipwrecks. In space stations, robots … Dowiedz się więcej
Saturn has many, varied moons – over 60 have been discovered so far. One of the larger ones, Dione, is shown here in this image from the Cassini orbiter, pictured as it moved across the face of its parent planet. Dione orbits Saturn at around 377 400 km, roughly the same distance as that between … Dowiedz się więcej