An exciting initiative based at ESA’s facility in the UK will give student researchers the opportunity to quickly investigate key challenges associated with space exploration.

Image: Spacesuit design: Flavio Gentile

Video: 00:04:20

ESA’s Euclid space telescope is nearly ready for launch. The spacecraft arrived in Florida on 30 April for final tests and checks, and now being integrated with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will carry it into space.

For the team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, this means that the most intense phase of their work is about to begin. To prepare themselves, the team has simulated the launch operations, tackling issues ranging from team members falling ill to a computer mouse being taped over.

Euclid is ESA’s space telescope designed to explore the

Dutch firm ISISPACE has manufactured more than 600 cereal-box sized ‘CubeSat’ satellites, plus nearly 200 deployment systems used to release them into orbit. Of all of these, the pair of Deep Space Deployers it has overseen for ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence have been by far the most challenging. The two systems need to keep their nanosatellite cargo alive and healthy, before releasing them on a precisely staged basis – at a velocity of just a few centimetres per second. Any faster and Hera’s CubeSats would risk getting lost in space.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jun 28, 2023
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Toronto, Canada (AFP) June 29, 2023
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Paris (AFP) June 29, 2023
Europe's Euclid space telescope is scheduled to blast off Saturday on the first-ever mission aiming to shed light on two of the universe's greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. The launch is planned from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 11:11 am local time (1511 GMT) on a Falcon 9 rocket of the US company SpaceX. The European Space Agency was forced to turn to the rival firm of bi

Paris (AFP) June 29, 2023
Astronomers across the world announced on Thursday that they have found the first evidence of a long-theorised form of gravitational waves that create a "background hum" rumbling throughout the universe. The breakthrough - made by hundreds of scientists using radio telescopes in North America, Europe, China, India and Australia after years of work - was hailed as a major milestone that ope

Washington DC (UPI) Jun 28, 2023
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