June 5, 2017 – Last year was the hottest on record, Arctic sea ice is on the decline and sea levels continue to rise. In this context, satellites are providing us with an unbiased view of how our climate is changing and the effects it is having on our planet. Estimates show that the global […]
European Space Agency
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Larsen, cracked (video)
April 20, 2017 – The Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission is monitoring the growing crack in Antarctica’s Larsen-C ice shelf. When the ice shelf breaks off or ‘calves’, it will create one of the largest icebergs ever recorded – but exactly how long this will take is difficult to predict. This animation demonstrates how scientists analyse […]
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Hubble takes close-up portrait of Jupiter
April 6, 2017 – On 7 April Jupiter will come into opposition, the point at which the planet is located directly opposite the Sun in the sky. This means that the Sun, Earth and Jupiter line up, with Earth sitting in between the Sun and the gas giant. Opposition also marks the planet’s closest approach […]
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Etna erupts
March 16, 2017 – This image of the lava flowing from Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy, was captured today at 10:45 GMT (11:45 CET) by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite. Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and has one of the world’s longest records for continuous eruption. Today, however, there was a sudden […]
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Swirling spirals at the north pole of Mars
February 2, 2017 – A new mosaic from ESA’s Mars Express shows off the Red Planet’s north polar ice cap and its distinctive dark spiralling troughs. The mosaic was generated from 32 individual orbit ‘strips’ captured between 2004 and 2010, and covers an area of around a million square kilometres. The ice cap is a […]
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Cold plasma freshens up French fries
November 30, 2016 – Bad smells from deep-fat frying in restaurants and take-away food venues could soon be eradicated thanks to experiments funded by ESA on the International Space Station. Cooking food such as French fries in hot fat or oil releases malodorous molecules that are extremely hard to remove or disperse. These odours are […]
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Arctic sea-ice growth slower than ever
November 30, 2016 – ESA’s CryoSat satellite has found that the Arctic has one of the lowest volumes of sea ice of any November, matching record lows in 2011 and 2012. Early winter growth of ice in the Arctic has been about 10% lower than usual. CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that can measure the […]
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Satellites confirm sinking of San Francisco tower
November 25, 2016 – The Sentinel-1 satellites have shown that the Millennium Tower skyscraper in the centre of San Francisco is sinking by a few centimetres a year. Studying the city is helping scientists to improve the monitoring of urban ground movements, particularly for subsidence hotspots in Europe. Completed in 2009, the 58-storey Millennium Tower […]
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Hubble reveals observable universe contains ten times more galaxies than previously thought
October 13, 2016 – Astronomers using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopes and other telescopes have performed an accurate census of the number of galaxies in the Universe. The group came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times as many galaxies in the observable Universe as previously thought. The results […]
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Philae: Goodbye from Comet 67P (Video)
September 7, 2016 – Thank you all for being a part of the journey! From #CometLanding to #GoodbyePhilae.
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Hubble discovers rare fossil relic of early Milky Way
September 7, 2016 – Terzan 5, 19 000 light-years from Earth, has been classified as a globular cluster for the forty-odd years since its detection. Now, an Italian-led team of astronomers have discovered that Terzan 5 is like no other globular cluster known. The team scoured data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the […]
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Philae found!
September 5, 2016 – Less than a month before the end of the mission, Rosetta’s high-resolution camera has revealed the Philae lander wedged into a dark crack on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The images were taken on 2 September by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera as the orbiter came within 2.7 km of the surface and clearly show […]
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Hubble’s fireball
August 15, 2016 – This dramatic burst of colour shows a cosmic object with an equally dramatic history. Enveloped within striking, billowing clouds of gas and dust that form a nebula known as M1-67, sits a bright star named Hen 2-427 (otherwise known as WR 124). This star is just as intense as the scene […]
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Solar eruption larger than Earth
August 1, 2016 – A gigantic ribbon of hot gas bursts upwards from the Sun, guided by a giant loop of invisible magnetism. This remarkable image was captured on 27 July 1999 by SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Earth is superimposed for comparison and shows that from top to bottom the loop of gas, or […]