Week in images: 12 - 16 April 2021

Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:02:18

In 2008, Thomas Pesquet applied to become an ESA astronaut. On 22 April 2021, he will fly his second mission to the International Space Station. In this video Thomas shares how he found his way to space, and encourages viewers to follow their passions as ESA seeks its next class of astronauts.

Nobody is perfect on their first attempt at a task, but Thomas says the only way to improve is to try and keep trying. Though becoming an astronaut seemed a distant dream when he was younger, by continuing to challenge himself and learn along the way

The first quarter of 2021 flew by almost as fast as the International Space Station itself. Get up to speed with some March highlights from our orbital outpost as an astronaut prepares to be launched into space on a Dragon.

West Lafayette IN (SPX) Apr 15, 2021
For astronauts to go on long missions to the moon or Mars, they need a refrigerator. But today's fridges aren't designed to work in zero gravity - or upside down if oriented that way when a spacecraft lands on another planet. A team of engineers from Purdue University, Air Squared Inc., and Whirlpool Corporation is working on building a fridge for zero gravity that operates in different or

Boston MA (SPX) Apr 15, 2021
Ultralight bosons are hypothetical particles whose mass is predicted to be less than a billionth the mass of an electron. They interact relatively little with their surroundings and have thus far eluded searches to confirm their existence. If they exist, ultralight bosons such as axions would likely be a form of dark matter, the mysterious, invisible stuff that makes up 85 percent of the matter

Littleton CO (SPX) Apr 14, 2021
Lockheed Martin is addressing the accelerating demand for space-enabled warfighting capabilities with a new line of rapid, integrated and affordable tactical Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) satellites. These satellites, based on Lockheed Martin's LM 400 mid-size bus, enable tactical warfighters to track moving targets at long ranges and operate in contested and denied e

On 22 April 2021, on Earth Day, Thomas Pesquet is planned to return to the International Space Station for his second mission, Alpha. Ahead of his launch, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Cape Canaveral, USA, in a region known as the Space Coast.

Image: False-colour images captured by Copernicus Sentinel-2 show the aftermath of the explosive volcanic eruption that took place on 9 April 2021 on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent.