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Protecting our Planet

OUT NOW: ESA's brand-new poster series explores the Agency's mission to protect our Pale Blue Dot...

Tough love

Operations image of the week: On Valentine's Day, the message is clear - loving our planet means cleaning it up, and that includes the orbital pathways on which much of our modern way of life depends

ESA's detection expertise

What's the difference between monitoring asteroids in space and debris in orbit? As part of ESA's Space Safety & Security activities, the Agency brings together experts in natural and artificial object detection

Watch the replay!

Watch the plenary and opening discussion from ESA's first-ever joint asteroid and debris detection conference, 'Exploiting Synergies', held on 22 January

Spotted in space

Operations image of the week: China’s Tinagong-1 space station seen in orbit in a radar image just days before its expected reentry

Heavenly palace

Operations image of the week: A faint white streak shows China’s Tiangong-1 space station, spotted in orbit from the south of France

Space debris results

The proceedings from the 7th European Conference on Space Debris, 18-21 April 2017, are now freely searchable and downloadable

Space debris 2017

Replay of media briefing: findings and outcomes from ESA’s space debris conference 21 April

Journey to Earth

A voyage from outer space to our home planet highlights the challenges of space debris and how mitigation and removal measures are urgently required

Impact chip

Operations image of the week: A debris impact chip in a Space Station window illustrates the risk presented by space debris

Exit wound

Technology image of the week: How hypervelocity space debris would tear through the Kevlar-Nextel fabric protecting ESA's ATV space freighter

Latest News

Hundreds of impacts crater ESA’s Columbus science laboratory23 January 2019

Hundreds of impacts crater ESA’s Columbus science laboratory23 January 2019 On 6 September 2018, the 17-metre arm attached to humankind’s most distant outpost began to move. Its instructions were to survey the spaceship’s European science laboratory for signs of impact damage from marauding bits of space rock or space debris.

‘Space debris – a journey to Earth’ nominated for design award12 September 2018

‘Space debris – a journey to Earth’ nominated for design award12 September 2018 ‘Space debris – a journey to Earth’ takes viewers on a voyage from the outer Solar System back to our home planet, passing some of the thousands of now defunct human-made objects that surround it. Produced for the 7th European Conference on Space Debr...

Latest report on space junk06 July 2018

Latest report on space junk06 July 2018 ESA’s Annual Space Environment Report is full of facts, figures and tables that provide a detailed picture of how the space debris environment around Earth has evolved.

Asteroids and space debris come together for the first time13 June 2018

Asteroids and space debris come together for the first time13 June 2018 (Updated December 2018) In January 2019, ESA will hold its first-ever joint technology conference that brings together two fundamental pillars of space safety and security: the hunt for near-Earth objects, like asteroids, and the need to detect space...

Space smash: simulating when satellites collide24 April 2018

Space smash: simulating when satellites collide24 April 2018 Satellites orbiting Earth are moving at many kilometres per second – so what happens when their paths cross? Satellite collisions are rare, and their consequences poorly understood, so a new project seeks to simulate them, for better forecasting of fu...

ESA reentry expertise30 March 2018

ESA reentry expertise30 March 2018 Every week, on average, a substantial, inert satellite drops into our atmosphere and burns up. Monitoring these reentries and warning European civil authorities has become routine work for ESA’s space debris experts.

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