At 11:12 GMT (13:12 CEST), 6 June 2018, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst was launched into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch went as planned as the 50-m tall Soyuz rocket propelled the astronauts to their cruising speed of around 28 800 km/h. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft accelerated 50 km/h on average.

The spacecraft is an improved model from the last time Alexander was launched into space in 2014 with many technological upgrades to make the spacecraft lighter and more modern. For example, halogen lights have been replaced with LEDs, and newer and larger solar panels increase power generation.

Over the next two days, while circling Earth 34 times, the trio will catch up with the International Space Station where they will spend the next six months. The journey is relatively smooth and quiet after the rigours of launch. With no Internet or satellite phones, the crew relies on radio to communicate at set intervals with ground control.

The German astronaut is a returning visitor to the International Space Station, the first of ESA’s 2009 class of astronauts to be sent into space for a second time. During the second part of his mission Alexander will take over as commander of the International Space Station, only the second time an ESA astronaut will take on this role so far.

At 11:12 GMT (13:12 CEST), 6 June 2018, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst was launched into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch went as planned as the 50-m tall Soyuz rocket propelled the astronauts to their cruising speed of around 28 800 km/h. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft accelerated 50 km/h on average.

The spacecraft is an improved model from the last time Alexander was launched into space in 2014 with many technological upgrades to make the spacecraft lighter and more modern. For example, halogen lights have been replaced with LEDs, and newer and larger solar panels increase power generation.

Over the next two days, while circling Earth 34 times, the trio will catch up with the International Space Station where they will spend the next six months. The journey is relatively smooth and quiet after the rigours of launch. With no Internet or satellite phones, the crew relies on radio to communicate at set intervals with ground control.

The German astronaut is a returning visitor to the International Space Station, the first of ESA’s 2009 class of astronauts to be sent into space for a second time. During the second part of his mission Alexander will take over as commander of the International Space Station, only the second time an ESA astronaut will take on this role so far.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter captured this view of part of the south polar ice cap on Mars on 13 May 2018.

The poles of Mars have huge ice caps that are similar to Earth’s polar caps in Greenland and Antarctica. These caps are composed primarily of water ice and were deposited in layers that contain varying amounts of dust. They are referred to as the martian Polar Layered Deposits (PLD).

Thanks to massive canyons that dissect the layered deposits, orbiting spacecraft can view the layered internal structure. The ExoMars orbiter’s Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System, CaSSIS, viewed this 7 x 38 km segment of icy layered deposits near the margin of the South PLD, which extend as far north as 73ºS.

Here, CaSSIS has imaged remnant deposits within a crater at this margin. The beautiful variations in colour and brightness of the layers are visible through the camera’s colour filters. It highlights the bright ice and the redder sandy deposits toward the top of the image.

The ExoMars programme is a joint endeavour between ESA and Roscosmos.

For World Oceans Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over the Atlantic Ocean and the Republic of Cabo Verde.

Several of the small islands that make up the archipelago of Cabo Verde can be seen peeking out from beneath the clouds. These volcanic islands lie in the Atlantic Ocean about 570 km off the west coast of Senegal and Mauritania, which frame the image on the right.

The most striking thing about this image, however, is the dust and sand being carried by the wind towards Cabo Verde from Africa. The sand comes mainly from the Sahara and Sahel region. Owing to Cabo Verde’s position and the trade winds, these storms are not uncommon and can disrupt air traffic.

However, this sand also fertilises the ocean with nutrients and promotes the growth of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plants that sustain the marine food web. The iron in the dust is particularly important. Without iron mammals cannot make haemoglobin to transport oxygen around the bloodstream and plants cannot make chlorophyll to photosynthesise. Research has shown that around 80% of iron in samples of water taken across the North Atlantic originates from the Sahara. It can be assumed, therefore, that life in the deep ocean depends on this delivery of fertiliser from one of the world’s most parched regions.

World Oceans Day takes place on 8 June each year and celebrates the ocean, its importance in all our lives, and how we can protect it.

This image, which was captured on 30 May 2018, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Fallen trees at Tunguska, Imperial Russia, seen in 1929, 15 km from epicentre of aerial blast site, caused by explosion of a meteor in 1908 (Photo N. A. Setrukov, 1928).

Near-Earth objects are asteroids or comets, metres to tens of kilometres in size, that orbit the Sun and whose orbits come close to that of Earth’s. Of the more than 600 000 known asteroids in our Solar System, over 16 000 are classified as NEOs.

On 30 June 1908, above the skies of Tunguska in Russia, such an object 30–40 m in diameter and travelling at approximately 100 000 km/hour penetrated Earth's atmosphere.

It heated to approximately 10 000C and exploded between six and ten km above the ground. The blast released the equivalent energy of 10–15 megatons of TNT, destroying 2200 square km of forest and leaving few traces of life.

On 30 June, the United Nations observes International Asteroid Day, which aims to raise awareness about asteroids and the need to take action to protect Earth, humankind and future generations.

Near-Earth objects could potentially hit our planet and, depending on their size, produce considerable damage. While the chance of a large object hitting Earth is very small, it would produce a great deal of destruction.

ESA is in the forefront of global efforts to observe the skies and detect asteroids, share information and warnings, develop ways to deflect any that are predicted to hit us, and take action to mitigate risk and hazards when deflection is not possible.

On 30 June 2018, join ESA and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for the live Asteroid Day webcast, packed with expert interviews, news and updates and some of the most recent asteroid science results starting at 13:00 CEST.

#AsteroidDay2018

#SaferSpace

#ProtectingOurPlanet

One of the two Galileo satellites 25 and 26 being unloaded from their Boeing 747 cargo jet at Cayenne – Félix Eboué Airport in French Guiana on 1 June 2018. The satellites travel inside protective air-conditioned containers.

ESA microwave engineers took apart an entire Galileo satellite to reassemble its navigation payload on a laboratory test bench to run it as though it were in orbit – available to investigate the lifetime performance of its component parts, recreate satellite anomalies, and test candidate technologies for Galileo’s future evolution.

Located in the cleanroom environment of the Galileo Payload Laboratory – part of ESA’s Microwave Lab based at its ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands – the new Galileo IOV Testbed Facility was inaugurated this week with a ceremony attended by Paul Verhoef, ESA Director of Navigation and Franco Ongaro, ESA Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality.

Paul Verhoef congratulated the team and underlined the importance of ESA having these capabilities: ”Such a navigation payload laboratory does not exist in industry. We foresee the testing and validation a number of very innovative ideas for the next series of Galileo satellites, before entering into discussions with industry in the context of the procurement of the Galileo Transition Satellites that has recently begun. This shows the added value of ESA as the design agent and system engineer of the Galileo system.”

“Our Lab has always been very responsive to the testing needs of the Navigation Directorate,’ comments microwave engineer César Miquel España.

“Now this unique facility allows performance of end-to-end testing of a Galileo payload as representatively as possible, using actual Galileo hardware. We can also support investigations of any problems in orbit or plug in future payload hardware as needed. And because each item of equipment is separately temperature controlled we can see how environmental changes affect their performance.”

The Testbed began as an ‘engineering model’ of a first-generation Galileo In-Orbit Validation (IOV) satellite, built by Thales Alenia Space in Italy for ground-based testing. It was delivered to ESTEC in August 2015, along with four truckloads of ground support equipment and other hardware.

That began a long three-year odyssey to first take the satellite apart, then put it back together – akin at times to space archaeology, since the satellite had been designed more than 15 years ago.

“We found lots of documentation on how to integrate the satellite, but nothing on how to take it apart,” adds technician Gearóid Loughnane. “We had to dismantle it very carefully over several weeks to remove the smaller items safely and take out the electrical harness, which ended up as a big spaghetti pile on the floor.”

The next step was to extricate the navigation payload from the satellite platform, and then begin to lay it out to connect it up again. A parallel effort tracked down supporting software from the companies involved, to be able to operate the payload once it was complete, as if it is orbiting in space.

Valuable help came from Surrey Satellite Technology Limited in the UK, Dutch aerospace company Terma that developed Galileo software, and Rovsing in Denmark, supplying ground support equipment.

“A big challenge was tailoring the spacecraft control and monitoring system to work only with the payload units while having to emulate the platform equipment” comments technician Andrew Allstaff.

Comprising equipment produced by companies in seven separate European companies, the Testbed generates navigation signals using actually atomic clocks co-located in the lab, which are then upconverted, amplified and filtered as if for transmission down to Earth.

The idea came from a GIOVE Payload Testbed already in the Lab, which simulates the performance of a test satellite that prepared the way for Galileo. As a next step the team hopes they can one day produce a Galileo ‘Full Operational Capability’ Payload Testbed – the current follow-on to the first-generation IOV satellites.

The next four Galileo FOC satellites are due to be launched by Ariane 5 in July.

This abstract image is a preview of the instrumental power that will be unleashed once the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will be in space.

The image was acquired during testing of the Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument, which is part of ESA's contribution to the international observatory. NIRSpec will be used to study astronomical objects focussing on very distant galaxies. It will do so by splitting their light into spectra – separating the light into components allows scientists to investigate what these objects are made of. 

Created using one of the instrument’s internal calibration lamps as the light source, the image shows many spectra as horizontal bands that were recorded by two detectors,. The wavelengths are spread from left to right; the pattern of dark stripes, called absorption lines, is characteristic of the light source, much like a fingerprint. 

The image was produced by sending commands to open over 100 of the instrument's micro-shutters – minuscule windows the width of a human hair – that will be used to study hundreds of celestial objects simultaneously. The thin strips in the upper and lower parts of the image are spectra created by light that passed through the micro-shutters, while the thicker bands at the centre of the images were produced by light that enters the instrument through five slits at the centre.

Once in space, the micro-shutters will be opened or closed depending on the distribution of stars and galaxies in the sky.

This calibration image was obtained in 2017 during testing in the giant thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The tests demonstrated that the combined structure, comprising the Webb telescope and its four science instruments, operated flawlessly at temperatures of around –233°C, similar to those they will experience in space.

The telescope and instruments are now at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California, where they will be integrated with the spacecraft and sunshield for further tests and launch preparations. The launch is targeted for 2020. 

More about the testing campaign: Tests, moving to a new home, and more tests

Before ESA’s Aeolus satellite is packed up and shipped to French Guiana for liftoff in August, media representatives had the chance to see this wind measuring Earth Explorer satellite standing proud in the Airbus Defence and Space cleanroom in Toulouse, France.

Aeolus will not only advance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics, but will also provide much-needed information to improve weather forecasts. The satellite carries the first wind lidar in space, which can probe the lowermost 30 km of the atmosphere to provide profiles of wind, aerosols and clouds along the satellite’s orbital path. The laser system emits short powerful pulses of ultraviolet light down into the atmosphere. The telescope collects the light that is backscattered from air molecules, particles of dust and droplets of water. The receiver analyses the Doppler shift of the backscattered signal to determine the speed and direction of the wind at various altitudes below the satellite. These near-realtime observations will improve the accuracy of numerical weather and climate prediction and advance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and processes relevant to climate variability.

Launched on 25 April 2018, Sentinel-3B has already delivered some impressive first images from its ocean and land colour instrument, from its altimeter and from the optical channels of its radiometer. With the radiometer’s thermal-infrared channels now turned on, the satellite completes its set of firsts with an image that depicts thermal signatures over southern Italy, the Mediterranean Sea and Sicily – with the hotspot of Mount Etna clearly visible. This image shows the ‘brightness temperature’, which corresponds to radiation emitted from the surface. Further processing is needed to turn this into an actual temperature map. The land surface is shown in red–orange colours, corresponding to a brightness temperature range of 296–320K. The blue colours over the ocean correspond to a range of 290–295K. The dark blue–black areas correspond to clouds, which are opaque to thermal-infrared radiation and so prevent a view of the ocean or land surface.

Mount Etna, Europe’s largest and most active volcano, appears much hotter than the surrounding land. In a state of almost continuous unrest, the volcano is currently classified as having ‘minor activity’.

Over the oceans, the Sentinel-3 radiometer is important for providing sea-surface temperature measurements for oceanographic and weather forecasting centres. Over land, the instrument can be used, in particular, to monitor urban heat islands and wildfires.

Sentinel-3B joins its identical twin, Sentinel-3A, in orbit. This pairing of satellites increases coverage and data delivery for the European Union’s Copernicus environment programme.

On 3 June 2018, the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite measured sulphur dioxide in the plume spewing from the Fuego volcano in Guatemala. The eruption has already claimed 25 lives and injured several hundred. It is reported to be Guatemala’s deadliest such event since 1902 when the Santa Maria volcano erupted and killed thousands of people. The Fuego volcano, which is less than 40 km southwest of the capital Guatemala City, also erupted in February this year and sent ash almost 2 km high. Yesterday’s event was much bigger with ash reaching 6 km high and hot rock and gas engulfing nearby villages.

Launched in October 2017, the Copernicus Sentinel-5P data products are still being validated before their release to the public. However, this image clearly shows high amount of sulphur dioxide being ejected into the atmosphere. The satellite carries the state-of-the-art Tropomi instrument to map a multitude of trace gases such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone, formaldehyde, sulphur dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide and aerosols – all of which affect the air we breathe and therefore our health, and our climate.

After the completion of CanSat national competitions in Europe, ESA Education announced the finalist teams of the European CanSat Competition 2018!

This year, a record high 18 different ESA Member or Associate States will participate in the European CanSat competition. This will be hosted on ESA’s behalf by the Fundo Regional para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FRCT) and partners on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores, Portugal, from 27 June until 1 July.

Get the full list of finalists here.

A ripple of bright blue threads through this galaxy like a misshapen lake system. The foreground of this image is littered with nearby stars with their gleaming diffraction spikes. A keen eye can also spot a few other galaxies that, while masquerading as stars at first glance, reveal their true nature on closer inspection.

The central galaxy streaked with colour, IC 4870, was discovered by DeLisle Stewart in 1900 and is located approximately 28 million light-years away. It contains an active galactic nucleus, or AGN: an extremely luminous central region so alight with radiation that it can outshine the rest of the galaxy put together. AGNs emit radiation across the complete electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma-rays, produced by the action of a central supermassive black hole that is devouring material getting too close to it. IC 4870 is also a Seyfert galaxy, a particular kind of AGN with characteristic emission lines.

IC 4870 has been imaged by Hubble for several studies of nearby active galaxies. By using Hubble to explore the small-scale structures of AGN in nearby galaxies, astronomers can observe the traces of collisions and mergers, central galactic bars, nuclear starbursts, jets or outflows, and other interactions between a galactic nucleus and its surrounding environment. Images such as this can help astronomers understand more about the true nature of the galaxies we see throughout the cosmos.