A Red Alert has been declared in southern Chile after the eruption of the Villarrica volcano early on 3 March. Thousands of residents in the area have been evacuated and the International Charter Space & Major Disasters has been activated by Chile's risk management authority ONEMI.

Further to the operational support provided by the Charter, ESA and the DLR German Aerospace Center have teamed up to acquire and process Sentinel-1A imagery illustrating changes at the surface of the volcano. This image is a colour composite of the two Sentinel-1 scans from 20 February and 4 March; changes are visually enhanced by a Normalised Change Index (NCI) and some statistical computations. Pink and blue show changes in the radar signal caused by changes in the surface, while areas with no change between the two acquisitions appear grey.

This work was performed by DLR in the framework of the ASAPTERRA project originated by ESA.

Sentinel-1A is the first satellite for Europe’s Copernicus programme. With its radar vision, the Sentinel-1 mission provides an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface.

Although not yet in routine operations, Sentinel-1A currently provides a coverage every 12 days of relevant tectonic areas worldwide and is therefore very suitable to monitor events such as volcanic eruptions.

ESA’s Proba-V minisatellite captures the rare sight of standing water in the arid south Australian outback.

Lake Frome, one of the whitest salt lakes in the southern hemisphere is visible to the right. Unusually, this 12 February image shows it filled with brackish water that has flowed down the creeks in the area, which are typically dry.

Covering most of this 100-m spatial resolution image are the ranges and gorges of Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park, haven to many rare and endangered plants and animals.

Launched in 2013, Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

Its main imager’s continent-spanning 2250 km swath collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands – at 300 m spatial resolution and down to 100 m resolution in its central field of view.

VITO, the Flemish institute for technological research, processes and then distributes Proba-V data to users. VITO has a produced an online gallery highlighting some of the mission’s most striking images so far, including views of storms, fires and deforestation.

This image of Hungary, with the political border in white, is a mosaic of 11 scans by Sentinel-1A’s radar from October to December 2014.

The scans were recorded in ‘dual polarisation’ horizontal and vertical radar pulses, from which the artificial colour composite was generated.

The majority of the landlocked country has an elevation lower than 300 m above sea level, but there are also a number of mountain ranges. The Great Hungarian Plain dominates the south and east of the country. Above it lies the North Hungarian Mountains region – the mountains appearing brownish in colour in this image, although they would appear green to the eye.

To the west lie the Transdanubian Mountains, and the Transdanubian Hills south of these.

Lake Balaton is seen in the west of the country. With a surface area of about 590 sq km, it is mainly fed by the Zala River at its western end. The lakewater flows out near the eastern end via an artificial channel called the Sió, which eventually feeds into the Danube River – which we can clearly see running north to south through the country.

The capital, Budapest, is visible along the Danube as a cluster of bright radar reflections. Located at the centre of the Carpathian Basin, the city boasts multiple thermal springs, earning it the nickname ‘City of Spas’.

On 24 February, Hungary signed the Accession Agreement to the ESA Convention. Following the conclusion of the ratification process by the Hungarian Government and once the ratification instrument is deposited with the Government of France, Hungary will become the 22nd ESA Member State.

To mark the signing of the Accession Agreement, ESA has recently launched the Hungarian language webpage.

This image is featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Building a space telescope is no mean feat. Conditions here on Earth are drastically different from those experienced in orbit around our planet. How do we know that any telescope built in our controlled laboratories can withstand the harsh environment of space?

Luckily, we can recreate space-like conditions using simulators such as this thermal–vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA. In this image, the chamber is not in action, as shown by the presence of a photographer wielding a torch on the sidelines. When switched on, multiple pumps suck all the air out to create a space-like vacuum, and the temperature can drop to a toe-curlingly low –253°C.

However, the real star of this image is the futuristic gold-coloured frame and its contents. This frame holds the Integrated Science Instrument Module, a structure containing the science instruments for 2018’s James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Along with the frame, this module weighs about as much as an elephant and houses four instruments to observe in the infrared, a part of the spectrum that is key for exploring the origins of the Universe and the properties of very distant cosmic objects.

This capability is the reason for the chamber’s extremely low temperature: infrared light is emitted by warm objects. To avoid infrared emissions from the telescope itself interfering with JWST’s observations, the entire telescope must be cooled to very low temperatures.

In space, JWST will make use of a giant sunshield to keep it completely in the shadows. This will keep the telescope at –233°C.

The JWST team hit a milestone last summer as all four science instruments passed their cryogenic testing in this chamber. The three near-infrared units were cooled to around –233°C, while the mid-infrared instrument reached an even lower –266°C, for a total of 116 days. For more information, read here.

After these tests, one of the units – the Near InfraRed Spectrograph – was removed and fitted with new detectors and ‘microshutters’, a new technology to study hundreds of celestial objects simultaneously using minuscule windows the width of a human hair. When this upgraded instrument is returned, the entire module will continue with further environmental tests to reproduce the conditions endured during launch and in space. For more information, read here.

JWST is a joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.

On 25 February, the Sentinel-2A Mission Control Team at ESOC, ESA’s mission operations centre, Darmstadt, Germany, commenced simulation training for the critical launch and early orbit phase.

Simulations are a crucial aspect of launch preparations at ESOC. The main objective of any simulation campaign is to train the mission control team, which comprises the flight control team, supporting specialists from flight dynamics, ground systems, the ESTEC project team, and the satellite manufacturer.

In practise, this means that a series of intensive, real-time mission scenarios are rehearsed again and again, until the integrated team are able to handle all routine as well as unplanned situations.

Simulations cover a wide range of scenarios, from before lift-off until the satellite enters the correct orbit with all systems functioning as expected. Failures in systems on board the satellite and in the ground systems are also simulated so as to train the team to recover from any emergency.

Teamwork is honed to a sharp edge; each engineer on the team knows their role, and has an in-depth knowledge of the satellite and ground systems for which they’re responsible.

“Simulations are an exciting time for the mission control team, culminating in one of the highlights of any mission, the launch,” says Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager Michelle Collins, pictured above.

“The shared – and sometimes high pressure – experiences help build a sense of trust and camaraderie across all the teams, and ensure that we're prepared for anything!"

The Sentinel-2A satellite completed integration at IABG, in February and will be shipped to Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, in mid-April for launch expected on 12 June.

More information

More Sentinel-2 launch campaign images via Flickr

Last look at Sentinel-2A

Copernicus

ESOC

Spacecraft Operations

Close view of a 228 x 228 m region on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as seen by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera during Rosetta’s flyby at 12:39 UT on 14 February 2015. The image was taken six kilometres above the comet’s surface, and the image resolution is just 11 cm/pixel. Rosetta’s fuzzy shadow, measuring approximately 20 x 50 metres, is seen at the bottom of the image.

For more information, see the blog: Comet flyby: OSIRIS catches glimpse of Rosetta’s shadow

Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

This single frame Rosetta navigation camera image was taken from a distance of 98.2 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 27 February 2015. The 1024 x 1024 pixel image frame has a resolution of 8.4 m/pixel and measures 8.6 km across. The image is processed to bring out the details of the comet's activity.

More information and the original image via the blog: CometWatch 25-26-27 February

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The Soyuz ST-B launcher for the 27 March 2015 launch of two European Galileo navigation satellites taking shape at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. 

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti floats in the International Space Station's US Destiny laboratory with a special patch presented to ISS crew members on reaching their 100th day in orbit. Together with NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, Samantha launched to the ISS at 20:59 GMT on 24 November 2014 with the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft. The crew arrived at the orbital outpost some six hours later. Samantha’s mission is named ‘Futura’ to highlight the science and technology research she is running in weightlessness to help shape our future.

Connect with Samantha and the Futura mission at: samanthacristoforetti.esa.int

This image shows the huge galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223, whose light took over 5 billion years to reach us.

The huge mass of the cluster and one of the galaxies within it is bending the light from a supernova behind them and creating four separate images of it. The light has been magnified and distorted due to gravitational lensing and as a result the images are arranged around the elliptical galaxy in a formation known as an Einstein cross.

A close-up of the Einstein cross is shown in the inset.

Read more: An explosive quartet - Hubble sees multiple images of a supernova for the very first time

Six teams of app developers participated in the 2015 ESA App Camp in Barcelona. The App Camp offered access to the latest Earth observation data and the SAP HANA Cloud Platform to the developers, who worked to make the information accessible to a broad audience.

Read more about how ESA App Camp brings satellite date to mobile devices: