european space agency

(National Physical Laboratory) National Physical Laboratory wins European Space Agency contract for European nanomaterials survey.

The European Space Agency is about to launch the most sophisticated mission ever to investigate the Earth's gravitational field and to map the reference shape of our planet -- the geoid -- with unprecedented resolution and accuracy.

(European Space Agency) The European Space Agency is about to launch the most sophisticated mission ever to investigate the Earth's gravitational field and to map the reference shape of our planet -- the geoid -- with unprecedented resolution and accuracy.

(European Space Agency) GOCE, the first of a series of Earth Explorer satellites to be launched into orbit, has taken off aboard an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft for its flight to the Arkhangelsk Airport in Russia, en route to Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow.

(European Space Agency) ESA and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales will be co-hosting, in cooperation with NASA and the International Mars Exploration Working Group, an international conference on July 9 and 10 in the auditorium of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris to discuss the next step in the exploration of Mars.

(European Space Agency) The first thing an alien race is likely to hear from Earth is chirps and whistles, a bit like R2-D2, the robot from Star Wars.

In reality, they are the sounds that accompany the aurora. Now ESA's Cluster mission is showing scientists how to understand this emission and, in the future, search for alien worlds by listening for their sounds.

(European Space Agency) The ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft has just discovered its 1,500th comet, making it more successful than all other comet discoverers throughout history put together.

Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission.

(European Space Agency) For the second time since April, ESA's Jules Verne ATV was used to raise the orbit of the International Space Station yesterday.

A record boost from the 20 minute burn of the Automated Transfer Vehicle's main engines successfully lifted the altitude of the 300-ton station by around 7 km to an altitude of around 345 km above the Earth's surface.

(European Space Agency) Advanced ground penetration radar, originally developed to investigate the soil structure on the moon and other planets on ESA planetary missions, is now being used in Canadian mines to spot hidden cracks and weaknesses in mine roofs.

(European Space Agency) ESA's Jules Verne ATV was used for the first time yesterday to transfer in one step 811 kg of refuelling propellant to the International Space Station while the two vehicles orbited Earth at 28 000 km/h.

With this premiere for Europe, Jules Verne becomes the first western spaceship to succeed in refuelling another space infrastructure in orbit.