A pretty special gift unwrapping will soon take place – a piercing tool built by ESA will open a Moon soil container from Apollo 17 that has gone untouched for nearly 50 years. The opening will allow the extraction of precious lunar gases which may have been preserved in the sample.

Ahead of the upcoming Ariane 5 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Kourou – home to Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, an overseas department of France.

Video: 00:45:03

Replay of the 16 December 2021 online press briefing about the James Webb Space Telescope.

Speakers:

-          Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science

-          Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA Director of Space Transportations

-          Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s Associate Administrator for science

-          Antonella Nota, ESA Webb Project Scientist

-          Gillian Wright, European Principal Investigator for the MIRI instrument

Developed and constructed over more than 30 years, Webb is a remarkable feat of engineering and technology – with the largest astronomical mirror ever flown in space, sophisticated new scientific instruments, and a sunshield the size of a tennis court.

Webb is designed to answer outstanding questions about the

Year in images 2021

Our year through the lens: a selection of our favourite images for 2021

Paris (AFP) Dec 17, 2021
For Hollywood A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, their new end-of-the-world comedy was a chance to send a little respect back to scientists. In "Don't Look Up", released on December 24 on Netflix, they play two astronomers who discover a comet will wipe out life on Earth within six months, but then try in vain to get politicians and the media to take the threat seriously.

Huntsville AL (SPX) Dec 17, 2021
NASA's newest X-ray observatory - the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE - extended its boom successfully Dec. 15, giving IXPE the ability to see high-energy X-rays. The mission, which launched on Dec. 9, is one step closer to studying some of the most energetic and mysterious places in the universe in a new way. The IXPE observatory features thre

Manoa HI (SPX) Dec 17, 2021
Sophisticated analysis of a rock sample taken from the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission revealed new information about the complex cooling and evolutionary history of the Moon. The findings, from University of Hawai'i (UH) at Manoa researchers, were published in Nature Communications. Apollo 17 astronauts collected the rock sample troctolite 76535 from the Moon's surface in 1972, and it r

Paris (ESA) Dec 17, 2021
The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has spotted significant amounts of water at the heart of Mars' dramatic canyon system, Valles Marineris. The water, which is hidden beneath Mars' surface, was found by the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO)'s FREND instrument, which is mapping the hydrogen - a measure of water content - in the uppermost metre of Mars' soil. While water is known to exi

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 17, 2021
Six months ago, we began the dedicated investigation of the Jezero crater floor, and now in December 2021 we are more than halfway through this first science campaign. Since our first sampling experience at Roubion and our first sample pair from the Rochette rock, we have collected a second sample pair, this time from a region of the crater floor called Seitah at the Brac rock. As we now gear up

Binghamton NY (SPX) Dec 17, 2021
Rivers and streams once flowed across the surface of Mars, etching channels still evident on the planet's surface today. Water in lakes once lapped ancient shores. All told, the geological evidence adds up to an ocean's worth of water, noted Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies Professor David Jenkins. But today, Mars' red sands appear bone-dry. Where did all that water go?