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Contents Europe’s astronautsAdding to the Space StationSpace medicineTo Mars and beyondLife on Mars?A habitable UniverseRecipes for lifeLife among the stars?Services Subscribe
|  | | | | | | Life in space
Look out for the gleam of the International Space Station, crossing the sky after sunset. ESA plays a distinguished part in this global project, which confirms the human ability to live and work beyond the confines of our planet. In addition, ‘life in space’ may incorporate extraterrestrial biology taking place on other worlds. There are several ESA science projects aimed at seeking out the telltale signs of alien biology. At ESA they are the theme of a programme called Aurora. Interest in both kinds of life, human and alien, comes together on the planet Mars. ESA’s Mars Express charts the water that may once have nurtured martian microbes and may one day quench the thirsts of visiting astronauts. The future course of such exploration of the Solar System is emerging in ESA’s Robotic Exploration Programme, with a pair of ExoMars missions focused on investigating the habitability of the Red Planet.
Adding to the Space Station
| | ESA’s new astronauts get a taste of zero gravity | |
Europe’s astronauts
Nine of ESA’s Member States have sent astronauts into space. [big deletion] ESA’s own European Astronaut Corps, based in Cologne, Germany, has provided crew for the US Space Shuttle, Russia’s Mir Space Station and the International Space Station. Six new ESA astronauts (from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom) were selected in May 2009 following a yearlong recruitment campaign. They are now in training. Towards the end of 2010, Paolo Nespoli will be the third European astronaut to spend 6 months on the ISS.
| | | A view of the European Columbus laboratory installed in its new home on the International Space Station |
Adding to the Space Station
As a partner of the USA, Russia, Japan and Canada, one of ESA’s contributions to the International Space Station is the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), a large, innovative cargo carrier. This unmanned space ‘truck’ took its first flight to the ISS in 2008. Another contribution is the Columbus Laboratory, designed to host many scientific experiments under weightless conditions, and installed on the ISS in February 2008. Russian Soyuz craft routinely ferry European astronauts to and from station, for tours of duty.
| | 520 days in isolation - a test of human endurance | |
Space medicine
‘Space adaptation syndrome’ is similar to seasickness and affects about half of all astronauts, whilst long exposure to living without gravity has adverse effects on human hearts and bones. On top of these, confinement in cramped living quarters brings on psychological problems. Astronauts also have to be alerted to, and shielded from, flares on the Sun that throw out dangerous radiation. Medical teams within ESA and its Member States are working hard to understand and cope with all these challenges, which become more pressing as plans evolve to send astronauts on long flights – for example to Mars.
ESA is participating in Mars500, the first full-length simulated mission to Mars, which began in June 2010. Six volunteers are in an isolation facility in Moscow, under conditions as close possible to a real space voyage without leaving the ground.
| | | ExoMars scenario |
To Mars and beyond
Studies are now in progress to help determine the role of human spaceflight in exploring the Solar System. Possibilities under review include manned expeditions to the Moon, Mars, the asteroids and beyond. However, the relevant technologies have to be nurtured while unmanned missions prepare the way. One of the Aurora programme’s early projects will be ExoMars, a joint ESA/NASA endeavour to put robotic rovers on the Martian surface in 2018. This could lead to a later mission to bring back samples of martian rocks to Earth.
| | Residual water ice in Vastitas Borealis Crater | |
Life on Mars?
The discovery of abundant frozen water, detected in 2004 by ESA’s Mars Express , is encouraging to planners of manned missions. It also sustains the hope that alien bacteria may be alive on Mars, as does the detection of methane gas there, which may be produced by microbes living underground today. Mars Express and other spacecraft, now studying the planet more thoroughly than ever before, may soon turn up the long-sought-for evidence of life on Mars – if it’s really there. If not, there may be microfossils from a former era, when Mars was warmer and wetter.
| | | Herschel reveals the hidden side of star birth |
A habitable Universe
We are children of the Universe. For reasons yet to be fully understood, violent eruptions and cool chemistry created the conditions in which life began. To help astronomers grasp this amazing story ESA builds world-beating space telescopes. XMM-Newton (1999) and Integral (2002) scrutinize the hot Universe of exploding stars and black holes, while ISO (1995-98) revolutionized knowledge of the cool, dusty Universe. Herschel and Planck (2009) continue the cosmic quest at longer wavelengths. Meanwhile ESA is NASA’s partner in the Hubble Space Telescope (1990) and in its infrared successor, the James Webb Telescope, which should to see the earliest stars of the cosmos.
| | Huygens parachutes onto Titan | |
Recipes for life
When ESA’s infrared space observatory ISO (1995-98) explored interstellar space, it found riches in the form of mineral grains fit to build rocky planets like the Earth, and water and carbon compounds appropriate for life. In January 2005, ESA’s Huygens probe parachuted through the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. This world is thought to preserve the chemistry that led to the emergence of life on the warmer Earth. Other clues to our origins come from primordial materials detected in comets. ESA’s Rosetta (launched in March 2004) will spend many months in 2014 examining Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko at close quarters, and analysing its chemical cargo.
| | | Hipparcos spies a massive planet |
Life among the stars?
Do other Earths orbit around other stars, and teem with life? This old question acquired new urgency with the discovery of planets that cause stars to wobble. Major projects are contemplated by ESA for the second decade of the 21st century, which should accelerate the search. As a successor to the very successful Hipparcos, the star-mapping satellite Gaia will detect thousands of alien planets, and identify stars likely to harbour planets as small as the Earth. Beyond simply finding planets, ESA are also investigating ‘next generation’ mission concepts that would able to characterise them, looking for atmospheric components that may hint at the presence of distant life.
Last update: 22 October 2010 | |
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