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Europe in Space

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Credits: ESA

Jobs for Europe

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Newly created multinational aerospace companies are big and skilful enough to secure their own future by innovations, and to relieve ESA of some responsibility for project management.

Eyes on Planet Earth

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Launched in 2002, Envisat is a truly advanced Earth Observation satellite with a unique combination of sensors that vastly improve the range and accuracy of scientific measurements of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. Its total range of capabilities far exceed those of any previous or planned Earth observation satellite.

Credits: ESA/Denmann production

Guaranteed access to space for Europe

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Ariane 5 is very much a new-generation launcher for commercial geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) satellites.
The mighty Ariane 5 launcher, making its very first commercial launch, hurled the 3.9-tonne XMM-Newton spacecraft into a far-ranging orbit in December 1999.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace-Service Optique CSG

Cosmic insights

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Energy may escape from a black hole when it is in a strong magnetic field which exerts a braking effect.
This artist's impression illustrates how the MCG-6-30-15 system may look.

Credits: ESA

The true nature of the Sun

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These SOHO images, obtained in near-real time, with invisible ultraviolet light, give the scientists their routine weather maps of the Sun.

Credits: ESA/NASA

Europe and the ISS

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Artist's impression of the International Space Station.

Credits: ESA/D.Ducros

Connecting the world

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This is the first Medium resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) image obtained via ESA’s Artemis data-relay satellite.

The image was acquired on the morning of 13 March over northern Russia. The area shows the coastline around the White Sea, with the City of Archangel to the southwest, opening up into the Barents Sea.

The most prominent aspect of the image is the differentiation between the sea ice, clouds and the open water. Open water in the image is shown as black, where the white/grey areas in the sea represent sea ice. The sea ice can be made out clearly against the land masses particularly around the Kanin Peninsula and to the northeast.

Technical Information:
Instrument: MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS)
Date of Acquisition: 13 March 2003
Orbit number: 05400
Instrument features: Reduced Resolution image (1200 - metre resolution)

Credits: ESA 2003

Finding our way

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Developed by ESA in collaboration with the European Union and co-funded by the two organisations on a 50-50 basis, Galileo is a complete civil system, designed to be operational from 2008 and to provide the world in general and Europeans in particular with an accurate, secure and certified satellite positioning system.

Credits: ESA-J. Huart

Last update: 5 October 2004

The Space Dimension

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