ESApod, audio and video from space

Steins is Rosetta's first nominal scientific target. Based upon ground-based observations, it has been classified as an 'E-type' asteroid, composed mainly of silicates and basalts, but its properties…

The conference began at 08:30 with breakfast, followed at 09:00 by a press briefing to review the Agency’s activities in 2007 and look ahead to those of 2008, a year set to be full of events and mark…

Rosetta, ESA's comet-chasing spacecraft, is due to swing-by Earth tomorrow, 13 November, making closest approach at 21:57 CET. The next three days promise to be intensely busy at ESOC, ESA's Space Op…

A 15 September meteorite strike in Peru highlights the need to expand scientists' understanding of asteroids, meteoroids and other NEO, or Near-Earth Objects. Scientists still don't know the precise …

Telemetry, tracking and command systems are complex networks of ground tracking stations supported by sophisticated signal processing that enable ground controllers to send up commands and receive la…

As part of the Astrolab Mission post-flight tour, ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter is joined by his ISS Expedition 13 and 14 colleagues, Pavel Vinogradov (Russia), Jeffrey Williams (NASA), Michael Lopez-A…

As spacecraft and space missions expand in number and sophistication, building and operating the complex ground infrastructure required to operate in space is also becoming more demanding. ESA is suc…

Since Huygens' January 2005 descent to Titan's surface, scientists have gained a new understanding of the Saturn moon's complex, 1300-km-thick atmosphere. Some of the most intriguing data returned by…

On the afternoon of 14 January 2005, the European Space Agency probe Huygens made a stunning descent through Titan's 1300-km-thick atmosphere. Titan, a moon of Saturn, was then some 1.4 thousand mill…

On 14 January 2005, the European Space Agency probe Huygens made a spectacular touch-down on Saturn’s enigmatic moon titan, and an international team of scientists continues to analyse data radioed b…

ESA's space safety interests are growing as the Agency's own near-Earth missions increase and as space tourism and commercial flights worldwide take off. At this year's IAASS conference, delegates wi…

On April 17th, the European Union will host a high-level conference in Munich to define a roadmap for the future of GMES, Europe's global monitoring for environment and security initiative. The GMES …

Yesterday, engineers at ESA's Space Operations Centre confirmed that Rosetta had successfully swung by Mars in the second of four critical gravity assists in its ten-year voyage to comet 67P Churyumo…

Since 2004, ESA has gathered over 150 imaginative ideas for new investigations proposed by scientists worldwide. The team preparing the Cosmic Vision plan has identified areas where major progress ca…

In addition to those mentioned above, questions included, How high is the ISS? And one audience member was also curious as to what time it is on the ISS; since it orbits several times per day, the ti…

Giuseppe Piccioni is co-Principal Investigator for the VIRTIS science team. The instrument's initial results are helping scientists create a detailed, 3-dimensional map of the Venusian atmosphere. Kn…

French scientist Jean-Loup Bertaux oversees the Ultraviolet and Infrared Atmospheric Spectrometer on Venus Express. After the first month in nominal orbit, he's already found haze much higher in the …

ESA's Thomas Reiter is set to join the International Space Station for up to seven months. The 48-year-old German astronaut shares his thoughts on the view from space, living weightless, what astrona…

ESA Project Scientist Hakan Svedhem on the first-ever clear views of a mysterious vortex taken during Venus Express' initial capture orbit. The orbit was a not-to-be-repeated opportunity to image the…

Seen from a distance, a blind man guided by his dog in the streets of Madrid seems quite sure of his way. In fact, he is not listening to music with his headphones but receiving directions to his des…