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ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is set to go back to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on 22 April 2021.

Watch the replay of the media Q+A session held on 19 April with Thomas (in English and French) to learn more about his upcoming Alpha mission to the ISS.

If you have been following International Space Station news, you know that hundreds of scientific experiments are performed in low-Earth orbit and the pace is only increasing. This is great news for scientists, especially those that have been preparing for years to send their experiment to the orbital outpost, but what does it mean for people on Earth? 

If you are not into plasma nanoparticles, subjective time measurement in microgravity or traveling to Mars in the future, what benefit does space science have for you?

Potentially a lot. Experiments performed on the International Space Station could in fact help

Washington (AFP) April 19, 2021
NASA successfully flew the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars on Monday, according to data and images sent back to Earth. "Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight - the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet," announced an engineer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the control room cheered. A short clip sent back by the Perseverance rover showed

At ESA, every day is Earth Day. As we humans continue to subject our home planet to increasing pressures, we are better placed than ever to understand and monitor the consequences of what we inflict. Astronauts onboard the International Space Station give us the human perspective of how beautiful Earth is, while satellites orbiting above return systematic measures to take the pulse of our planet 24 hours a day.

These measurements allow us to understand how Earth works as a system and how human activity is changing natural processes, leading to climate change. This information is fundamental to global climate

Image: Alpha poster

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Apr 16, 2021
Eleven billion miles away - more than four times the distance from us to Pluto - lies the boundary of our solar system's magnetic bubble, the heliopause. Here the Sun's magnetic field, stretching through space like an invisible cobweb, fizzles to nothing. Interstellar space begins. "It's really the largest boundary of its kind we can study," said Walt Harris, space physicist at the Univers

Washington DC (SPX) Apr 16, 2021
Research shows that a new telescope could detect a potential signature of life on other planets in as little as 60 hours. "What really surprised me about the results is that we may realistically find signs of life on other planets in the next 5 to 10 years," said Caprice Phillips, a graduate student at The Ohio State University, who will share preliminary findings at a press conference dur