Empowering European industry
Today: ESA ground systems software
Tomorrow: European Ground Systems Common Core (EGS-CC)
Advanced Mission Concepts

Simplifying complexity

Operations image of the week: For ESA's flight dynamics team, a simple, low-tech white board is a good way to track the progress of aerobraking manoeuvres at Mars

ESOC: Our world

Our world is about systems, communication and exploration; our passion is for humanity’s voyages into the Universe

Last command

LISA Pathfinder principal investigator Stefano Vitale sends the final command to the spacecraft, shutting it down after successfully demonstrating the technology to build ESA's future gravitational wave observatory

Dancing with Cassini

A complex coordinated ‘dance’ between ESA and NASA deep-space tracking stations is following the international Cassini orbiter during its Grand Finale, 1.2 billion km away

Robot meets its masters

Operations image of the week: The flight controllers who will operate BepiColombo on its ambitious mission to Mercury meet their robotic explorer

By the numbers

From 2 to 814 million: In 50 years, ESA's mission control centre has achieved some pretty impressive numbers

Latest News

NASA's SCaN Testbed is an advanced, integrated communications lab facility on the ISS; in 2017, one experiment will include the simultaneous receipt of US GPS and European Galileo signals.

Galileo arrives on the Space Station26 July 2017

Galileo arrives on the Space Station26 July 2017 If one’s good, two are better, and this is especially true when it comes to developing new applications for navsat systems like Galileo and GPS. That’s why an experiment on the International Space Station will start receiving signals from both simulta...

LISA Pathfinder: bake, rattle and roll13 July 2017

LISA Pathfinder: bake, rattle and roll13 July 2017 The final days of the LISA Pathfinder mission are some of the busiest, as controllers make final tests and get ready to switch off the gravitational pioneer next Tuesday.

50 years of ESOC: Treasures from the archives10 July 2017

50 years of ESOC: Treasures from the archives10 July 2017 Since 1975, the ESA Bulletin has been the go-to journal for anyone wishing to stay up-to-date on activities, developments and missions across all branches of ESA.

LISA Pathfinder to conclude trailblazing mission29 June 2017

LISA Pathfinder to conclude trailblazing mission29 June 2017 After sixteen months of science operations, LISA Pathfinder will complete its mission on 30 June, having successfully demonstrated the technology to build ESA's future space observatory of gravitational waves.

ESA is developing an automated telescope for nightly sky surveys. This telescope is the first in a future network that would completely scan the sky and automatically identify possible new near-Earth objects, or NEOs, for follow up and later checking by human researchers.

ESA marks #Asteroid Day21 June 2017

ESA marks #Asteroid Day21 June 2017 The United Nations has declared 30 June to be International Asteroid Day, and ESA is joining other space agencies, astronauts, scientists and even rock stars for a 24-hour global telethon.

First Sentinel-2B images delivered by laser12 June 2017

First Sentinel-2B images delivered by laser12 June 2017 With the Sentinel-2B satellite close to beginning its working life in orbit, this latest Copernicus satellite has linked up to Alphasat by laser, across almost 36 000 km of space, to deliver images of Earth just moments after they were captured.

News Archive