Tag: European Space Agency

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Orbiter detects signs of hidden lake on Mars

Mars Express
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, shown in this artist’s conception, has been circling Mars since 2003. (Spacecraft image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab; Mars: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

Radar readings from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter point to the location of what appears to be a 12-mile-wide lake of liquid water, buried under about a mile of ice and dust in the Red Planet’s south polar region.

The find is consistent with what scientists have been saying for years about the prospects for subsurface water on Mars, and is likely to give a boost to the search for Red Planet life.

“There are all the ingredients for thinking that life can be there,” Enrico Flamini, project manager for the MARSIS radar instrument on Mars Express, said today during a Rome news conference to discuss the results. “However, MARSIS cannot say anything more.”

The analysis of the MARSIS readings were published today by the journal Science.

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Scientists go gaga over Gaia’s galaxy survey

Gaia view of Milky Way
A newly released image from the European Space Agency’s Gaia star-mapping mission shows a full-sky view of our Milky Way galaxy and neighboring galaxies in color. (ESA / Gaia / DPAC)

The European Space Agency has released the world’s most exhaustive star catalog, pinpointing the positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars.

Today’s release, based on 22 months’ worth of data from ESA’s Gaia sky-mapping satellite, follows up on an initial version of the catalog that was released in 2016. This second release adds readings from the period between September 2015 and May 2016.

The Gaia mission’s second data release was presented at the ILA Berlin Air and Space Show in Germany. In addition to the positional data, the new catalog lists parallax and velocity readings for 1.3 billion stars — making it easy for astronomers to plot their distances and motions with respect to Earth.

“The observations collected by Gaia are redefining the foundations of astronomy,” Günther Hasinger, ESA’s director of science, said in a news release.

Astronomy fans agreed, and gushed over the treasure trove on Twitter.

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French astronaut enjoys sax in space

Thomas Pesquet
French astronaut Thomas Pesquet shows off his sax on the International Space Station. (NASA / ESA Photo)

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had his guitar, and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman had her flute: Now French astronaut Thomas Pesquet has his sax in space.

The saxophone was included in the SpaceX Dragon cargo shipment that arrived at the International Space Station on Feb. 23, and Pesquet’s crewmates kept it hidden until his 39th birthday four days later.

Now the sax is out of the bag, thanks to a series of tweets that came out this week.

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Blue lightning caught on video from space

Blue jet
An image captured from the International Space Station shows an electrical discharge known as a blue jet shooting up toward space from a cloud. (ESA / NASA Photo / Andreas Mogensen)

For years, scientists have been piecing together evidence of peculiar phenomena known as red sprites, blue jets, pixies and elves – exotic types of electrical discharges that emanate from thunderstorms.

Just one week after his arrival on the International Space Station, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured the best evidence that blue jets exist. Mogensen’s 160-second video documented 245 blue flashes as the space station flew 250 miles above the Bay of Bengal.

Now the findings have been published in Geophysical Research Letters. “According to the researchers, this is the first time they’ve ever seen this blue lightning shoot up like that,” Mogensen said.

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Mars orbiter sees lander’s crash in color

Schiaparelli crash site
Blackened streaks and bright bits of debris can be seen in this image of the crash zone for the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona)

High-resolution color images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show the spot where the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander crashed – in black and white and red all over.

The 8-foot-wide Schiaparelli spacecraft was deployed from ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter and descended to the Red Planet’s surface on Oct. 19, but a glitch caused the descent to go awry in its final minutes.

Rather than making a controlled landing with the aid of its parachute and thrusters, Schiaparelli slammed into the surface at more than 180 mph, leaving a pattern of black streaks and a scattering of light-colored debris.

Those bits of debris show up particularly well in the latest pictures from MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE.

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Mars orbiter spots blackened remains of lander

Mars orbiter image
This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the landing zone for the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli probe on Mars. Analysts say the bright spot shows where the lander’s parachute fell, and the black spot shows where the lander hit. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has caught sight of the blackened spot where a European lander apparently hit the Martian surface, providing the first visual evidence that the Schiaparelli probe did indeed bite the dust.

Before-and-after pictures from the orbiter’s low-resolution Context Camera also showed the appearance of a brand-new bright spot in the expected landing zone in Mars’ Meridiani Planum region. That bright spot is thought to be Schiaparelli’s 40-foot-wide parachute, which was apparently ejected earlier than intended.

The “before” image was taken in May, and the “after” image was taken on Oct. 20, a day after the lander’s descent.

The pictures will help guide follow-up observations to be made next week using MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE. The European Space Agency’s ExoMars team says even the low-resolution imagery is consistent with a high-speed impact that would have destroyed the lander.

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What went wrong with Europe’s Mars lander?

Schiaparelli lander
An artist’s conception shows the Schiaparelli lander at the end of its parachute. (Credit: ESA)

The European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander apparently crashed after its parachute was ejected too early and its thrusters switched off too soon, according to data relayed back from its orbiting mothership.

“We have data coming back that allow us to fully understand the steps that did occur, and why the soft landing did not occur,” David Parker, ESA’s director of human spaceflight and robotic exploration, said today in a news release.

However, ESA emphasized that the analysis was still continuing, and the conclusions were only preliminary.

The good news is that the saucer-shaped lander’s mothership, the Trace Gas Orbiter, entered its intended orbit around Mars and is in good health.

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Orbiter reaches Mars, but lander is lost

Trace Gas Orbiter and Schiaparelli lander
An artist’s conception show the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter releasing the Schiaparelli lander for its descent to Mars. (Credit: D. Ducros / ESA)

For the first time in 13 years, the European Space Agency has put a spacecraft in orbit around Mars – and has sent a piggyback lander to an unknown fate on the Red Planet’s surface.

Flight controllers at ESA’s operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, cheered the news that the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter was back in contact after rounding Mars today. The last time an ESA orbiter arrived at the Red Planet was back in 2003, with Mars Express.

“We have two satellites around Mars,” flight director Michel Denis declared.

Denis and the rest of his team were still waiting to hear from the Schiaparelli lander, which was launched along with the orbiter in March, and was released on Oct. 16 for its descent.

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Messages beamed to aliens amid debate over perils

Cebreros Station
The European Space Agency’s Cebreros Station in Spain transmitted an 866-second encoded radio message in the direction of Polaris, 434 light-years away. (Credit: ESA)

More than 3,000 messages were beamed toward the North Star today by a powerful radio telescope – and although the exercise was largely symbolic, it serves to revive a debate over whether we should be trying to contact aliens.

Today’s transmission by the European Space Agency’s Cebreros deep-space tracking station in Spain was the culmination of a yearlong effort known as “A Simple Response to an Elemental Message,” spearheaded by Irish-born artist Paul Quast.

With support from ESA and other organizations, Quast and his collaborators solicited 3,775 text-only messages from around the world in response to this question: How will our present environmental interactions shape the future?

The 14-minute digital transmission with all those answers was beamed toward Polaris, the North Star, at 8 p.m. GMT (1 p.m. PT).

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Mission to a comet ends with bittersweet bang

Rosetta cartoon
The Rosetta probe inspired a series of kid-friendly cartoons. (Credit: ESA)

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe today descended to a mission-ending impact on the comet that it followed for more than two years.

The car-sized probe continued to transmit data as it dove toward the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 446 million miles from Earth. When the data stream flatlined, scientists and engineers at ESA’s mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, knew it was all over.

The end was greeted at 1:19 p.m. CEST (4:19 a.m. PT) with a prolonged “Ohhh,” followed by applause and hugs.

“This is it,” said Rosetta mission manager Patrick Martin. “I can announce the full success of this historic descent of Rosetta toward 67P, and I declare hereby the mission operations ended for Rosetta. … Farewell, Rosetta. You’ve done the job.”

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