Tag Archives: ESA

Since 2004, NASA has been working on the launch system that will send astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. These efforts bore fruit in 2011 with the proposed Space Launch System (SLS), the heaviest and most powerful rocket since the Saturn V. Paired with the Orion spacecraft, this vehicle will be the workhorse of ...

Thanks to evidence provided by missions like NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, scientists have theorized that Venus likely experienced a catastrophic resurfacing event about 500 million years ago (give or take 200 Mya). This is believed to be the reason why Venus is such a hellish place today, with an atmosphere that is 92 times as dense as Earth’s, predominantly composed of ...

An Ariane 5 rocket lifts off from the Guiana Space Center with the SES 17 and Syracuse 4A communications satellites. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/S. Martin A European Ariane 5 rocket fired into space Saturday night from French Guiana with a commercial broadband satellite for SES and a French military telecom craft, setting a new payload mass record for geostationary transfer orbit on ...

On Oct. 12th, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) arrived safely at Port de Pariacabo in French Guiana after spending 16 days traveling between California and South America. Since then, the observatory was transported from California to French Guiana and brought to a cleanroom in the Guyanese Space Center (GSC). Here, crews “unboxed” the observatory from its protective cargo container ...

The French-flagged MN Colibri transport ship arrived Tuesday at the Pariacabo harbor in Kourou, French Guiana, with the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/P. Baudon/E. Prigent The James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to Hubble, arrived at the European Space Agency’s launch base Tuesday in Kourou, French Guiana, for final checkouts and fueling ahead of blastoff in December on top ...

BepiColombo recently had its first close flyby of Mercury, its eventual mission target, and got to snap some pictures to commemorate the event.  Even at this early stage of the mission, these images are some of the clearest we have ever had of the innermost planet. The spacecraft itself passed within about 199 km of the planet’s surface.  Unfortunately, it ...

Between the rise of the commercial space industry and the proliferation of agencies and programs, it is clear that we live in a new space age. A cornerstone of this new age is how reusable rockets, small satellite technology, and other advances are reducing the cost of launching payloads to orbit. This, in turn, increases access to space and allows ...

 A Soyuz rocket rolled out to its launch pad in Kazakhstan Friday, ready to blast off Tuesday to the International Space Station with veteran Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild, and film director Klim Shipenko. The Soyuz-2.1a launcher, positioned on its side on a special railroad car, emerged from an integration building at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and rode to ...

BepiColombo made a quick visit to Venus in August and is on to its next rendezvous. On October 1st it’ll perform a flyby of Mercury, the spacecraft’s eventual destination. This visit is just a little flirtation—one of six—ahead of its eventual orbital link-up with Mercury in late 2025. The quick visit will yield some scientific results, though, and they’ll be ...

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet snapped this view of two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked at the International Space Station during a spacewalk Sept. 12. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft is seen docked at the top-facing port of the Harmony module, while a Cargo Dragon capsule is docked with the forward port in the background. Credit: NASA/ESA/Thomas Pesquet With the ...