05/06/08: XMM-Newton Finds Part of the Universe’s Missing Matter.

ESA’s orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has been used by a team of international astronomers to uncover part of the missing matter in the Universe. 10 years ago, scientists predicted that about half of the missing ‘ordinary’ or normal matter made of atoms exists in the form of [...]

03/16/08: STS-123: Linnehan and Foreman Install Dextre.

Astronauts Rick Linnehan and Mike Foreman spent more than seven hours outside the International Space Station today, attaching the two arms of the Canadian Space Agency’s Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, or Dextre. Dextre’s arms, each 11 feet long, provide the robot with the ability to work outside the station [...]

03/11/08: STS-123 Crew Begins Mission to International Space Station.

Space shuttle Endeavour delivered an early sunrise to the Florida coast this morning, lifting off at 2:28 a.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center to begin a 16-day mission to the International Space Station. Aboard the shuttle are Commander Dominic Gorie, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission [...]

02/01/08: Progress 27 to Undock from Station on Monday.

The Progress 27 (P27) cargo ship will undock from the Pirs docking compartment of the International Space Station on Monday at 22:30 UT (5:30 a.m. EST). Loaded with trash, the P27 will undock and deorbit to later burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. This sets the stage [...]

08/31/07: SMART-1: Mission Highlights. One Year After Impact.

Know-how from SMART-1 is helping prepare the ground for future science and exploration missions. With its unrivalled resolution, in colour and with various illumination angles, the satellite has mapped the polar regions, surveyed lunar resources and investigated potential landing sites and outposts. – ESA

08/28/07: Titan: Lessons on Atmospheric Turbulence.

Turbulence plays an important role in Earth’s weather system, and can be more than an inconvenience – hundreds of injuries have occurred on commercial flights due to turbulence. It is studied both in Earth’s atmosphere and in that of Saturn’s moon, Titan, aided by data from ESA’s Huygens probe. The [...]

08/27/07: ESA Satellites Reveal European Hot Spots and Fires.

Hot spots across Southeastern Europe from 21 to 26 August have been detected with instruments aboard ESA satellites, which have been continuously surveying fires burning across the Earth’s surface for a decade. Working like thermometers in the sky, the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) on ESA’s ERS-2 [...]

08/22/07: SMART-1: Wrinkles and Excess Weight on the Moon.

‘Lunar crust is like a fragile skin, wrinkled due to local mascons or its thermal history’, says Bernard Foing, ‘as doctors, we searched for these skin-imprints but some may be masked underneath the last layers of basalt.’ For the first time, strike-slip faults have been observed with [...]

08/07/07: Thomas Reiter Appointed to German Space Agency Executive Board.

Thomas Reiter is to take on a new role on the Executive Board of the German Space Agency (DLR), with responsibility for space. Reiter is the European astronaut who has acquired the longest experience of space. In two missions (179 days on the Euromir 95 mission [...]

08/03/07: Saturn: Possible Origin of G Ring.

With data from the Cassini spacecraft, an international team of scientists may have identified the source of one of Saturn’s more mysterious rings. The enigmatic G ring is likely produced by relatively large, icy particles that reside within a bright arc on the ring’s inner edge. – ESA