ESA is excited to announce a revolutionary new technology that could bring luck to people all over the world: four-leaf clover detection from space.

The launch of the first commercial satellites in AST SpaceMobile’s cellphone-compatible broadband constellation has slipped into 2024, the company said March 31 as it disclosed rising costs for developing the network.

The Making of Juice series takes the viewer behind the scenes of the European space industry, space technology and planetary science communities around ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission.

Juice has a state-of-the-art science payload comprising remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. This episode focuses on the geophysics instruments, which will explore the moons’ surface and subsurface, probe the atmospheres of Jupiter and its moons, and measure their gravity fields.

The GAnymede Laser Altimeter (GALA) will study the tidal deformation of Ganymede and the topography of the surfaces of the icy moons. The Radar for Icy Moons

Astra is still planning to conduct a first launch of its Rocket 4 vehicle before the end of the year as it scales up production of spacecraft electric propulsion systems.

The idea behind ESA’s GENESIS mission is simple: a fixed framework is needed to chart the relative positions of locations across our planet, and satellites in orbit serve as the foundation of this framework. Fix a satellite’s own position in space accurately enough and you can measure Earth under it much more precisely too.   

The flag of Belgium flew proudly over ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands as ESTEC was honoured with a visit by Thomas Dermine, Belgium’s State Secretary for Science Policy, Recovery Program and Strategic Investments, accompanied by new Belgian astronaut Raphaël Liégeois.