esa
Latest
Hubble captures a fantastical view of the Veil Nebula
See that diaphanous cylinder of gas above? That's the Veil Nebula -- the supernova remnant of a star that exploded 5,000 to 8,000 years ago -- as captured by the Hubble telescope. This shot of the gossamery structure looks a lot more detailed compared to previous attempts, thanks to Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, which used six fields of view for magnification. That's the same camera that was attached to the space telescope during its last servicing mission in 2009, and the same one used to take a clearer, haunting photo of the Pillars of Creation earlier this year.
Astronaut drives a rover on Earth from aboard the ISS
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen was tasked to put a metal peg into a hole in a task board, which would have been really easy -- if he weren't in low-Earth orbit and 248 miles away from the setup. Mogensen controlled a rover from aboard the International Space Station using a force-feedback control system developed by the ESA. The system's force-feedback joystick allowed him to feel when the robot meets resistance on the ground, giving him better control of its limbs without that capability. Due to the astronaut's distance from the setup, there was a one-second lag, but the ground crew used "sophisticated software" to make sure the controller and the rover are in sync. It took Mogensen 45 minutes to accomplish the task for the first time, but the second attempt was more promising and took only 10 minutes.
ESA craft will prove that you can measure gravity waves in space
Scientists have spent ages searching for gravity waves from the safety of Earth, but they haven't had the chance to study those waves in space, where they could help make sense of black holes and other objects that distort spacetime. They're one step closer to getting that shot, though. The European Space Agency is almost ready to launch a vehicle, LISA Pathfinder, that will demonstrate the viability of measuring gravity waves in space. When it begins testing in March, Pathfinder won't actually measure gravitational effects at all. It'll instead look for extremely minute (picometer-level) changes between two test masses within the spacecraft, proving that you can achieve the extreme level of precision needed for a gravity wave detector.
ISS astronaut will get to drive and 'feel' a rover on Earth
It's going to be a little while before humanity sets foot on Mars, but in the meantime NASA has a bundle of robots exploring the planet for us. The data they're collecting is valuable, but now researchers want to give their operators greater control. Specifically, they're interested in force feedback -- timely vibrations that would help astronauts carry out difficult tasks remotely. The European Space Agency (ESA) has developed a new rover with this in mind -- the "Interact Centaur," which has an onboard camera and two force-sensitive arms. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen is headed to the International Space Station (ISS) on September 2nd and, five days later, he'll be controlling one that's back on Earth.
ISS astronauts mimic nature to turn urine into drinking water
Recycling water is key for astronauts on the International Space Station since sending water to the crew is heavy and expensive. The current systems work well and the tech is being used here on Earth in places where clean drinking water is in short supply. In an effort to increase efficiency, astronauts will test a new filtration system from Aquaporin Space Alliance. The so-called AquaMembrane employs nanotechnology and proteins to transform waste water (sweat and urine) into clean drinking water, proteins that regulate water in living things like human kidneys and bamboo shoots. Those aquaporin proteins are situated on a membrane and as water passes through tiny protein tubes, an electrostatic charge stops things like salt from getting through. The water flows continuously from side to side without using extra energy thanks to forward osmosis.
Mars Express videos the red planet from orbit
Here's something for those tired of looking at rock-and-dust photos of Mars: an entrancing video clip of the planet spinning taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express. ESA's Mars Express mission is comprised of a lander called Beagle 2 and an orbiter, which was responsible for the video embedded below the fold. The orbiter used its Visual Monitoring Camera on May 25th and 26th, 2015 to record from an orbit close enough to make some of the planet's surface features visible. While it's great that we now know what Mars looks like from up close, we appreciate a dreamy full-orbital movie like this, as well.
Philae delivered crucial comet data despite its bumpy landing
Philae had a bumpy landing on the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet last November, but that didn't stop it from relaying some important data back to Earth. Papers published in the journal Science reveal how scientists, using the data collected by Philae's onboard instruments, have been able to identify the internal structure of the comet, its daily fluctuations in temperature and organic compounds that could help support life.
Earth's orbiting observatories and their literally awesome images
While the Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977, cruises into interstellar space (the farthest man-made object from Earth) and missions like New Horizons capture snaps from the outskirts of the solar system, we've been keeping the heavy hitters close to home. Massive space telescopes that scan the cosmos with augmented eyes have been orbiting the Earth for years to get a clear view of the universe without atmospheric distortion. The Hubble Space Telescope's 1990 launch set a new precedent for these space-based observatories in terms of scale and abilities. These new instruments have helped scientists gather an incredible amount of data and mind-bending photos from deep space. With Pluto hogging the spotlight lately, we decided to take a look back at some of these powerful orbiting eyes and their visual achievements. [Image credit: JPL]
Scientists use lasers to find out why astronauts have bad skin
A team of German scientists are employing advanced imaging technology to help understand one of the unusual effects of long-term space habitation — thinning skin. Led by Professor Karsten Koenig of Saarland University, the study is an offshoot of the European Space Agency's Skin B project detailing the effects of skin aging in space. According to Reuters, his team has documented three astronauts, scanning their skin cells before and after their time on the ISS using multiphoton tomography (MPT). Koenig's company JenLab, the developer of the system, claims that its femtosecond laser pulses provide a "spatial resolution a thousand times higher than that of ultrasonic devices." It also eliminates the need for lengthy biopsy processes, instead serving up results in seconds.
Philae comet lander goes silent once again
It looks like the Philae comet lander's moment in the sun was short-lived. Just weeks after getting back in touch, the European ground crew has once again lost contact with its celestial explorer -- the lander is sending irregular bursts of data, but that's about it. It's not clear as to what went wrong, but scientists suspect that comet gas or some other unexpected phenomenon moved Philae and blocked it from collecting that all-important, energy-giving sunlight. To make matters worse, one of its transmitters also appears to be out of commission.
The Big Picture: Nitrogen-rich star left a beautiful corpse
A small minority of enormous stars explode in a fiery supernova after they run out of fuel and collapse. Regular stars die less spectacularly, but the remnants can still be gorgeous. Case in point is NGC 6153, a nebula about 4,000 light-years from Earth. The ethereal blueish, ellipse-shaped cloud (imaged by Hubble, above) was ejected by a sun-sized star after it burned up its fuel. However, the nebula contains an unusually large amount of elements like neon and argon, and five times the nitrogen of our sun. Why? Likely because its star formed in a corner of the Milky Way with a completely different composition than our own neck of the woods.
NASA takes to the sea to test new space tools
What's the best way to simulate the conditions of outer space here on Earth? Go to the bottom of the ocean, of course. NASA has actually been sending astronauts to an underwater habitat for years under the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) program, and the 20th expedition is slated to begin soon. On July 20th, a team of NASA, ESA (Europe) and JAXA (Japan) astronauts will start testing new tools and techniques for future spacewalks to get them used to different surfaces and gravity levels on asteroids, the moon and Mars.
Rosetta comet probe will continue its mission until September 2016
The Rosetta comet probe just got a new lease on life... if not a terribly long one. The European Space Agency has extended the space explorer's mission from its original December end to September 2016. That's only nine months, but it'll give scientists a shot at studying Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko close-up as it flies away from the Sun for some of that period. There's even a chance that Rosetta will get visual confirmation of where the Philae lander touched down, which hasn't been practical with the probe's relatively distant orbit.
Europe's Philae comet lander finally wakes up
After seven months of not-so-voluntary deep sleep, the comet lander Philae has finally woken up in earnest. The European Space Agency got in contact with its explorer for 85 precious seconds late on June 13th, receiving 300-plus data packets that shed light on what happened following the machine's bumpy touchdown. As it turns out, Philae came back to life at least temporarily during its forced hibernation -- it just couldn't get back in touch with its Rosetta host ship and thus the ground crew.
Europe's space agency is still looking for the Philae comet lander
The European Space Agency apparently hasn't given up on Philae that's currently hibernating on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In a new post on its website, the agency has detailed a highly technical game of "Where's Waldo?" that it's been playing since last year. See, the lander's harpoons failed to deploy upon touchdown, and it ended up bouncing away from its landing site until it reached underneath one of the comet's cliffs. In addition to being hidden in the shadows, the lander is relatively tiny -- even if Rosetta's (its partner spacecraft) cameras managed to catch it on film, it would appear as a small bright speck and nothing more.
How an astronaut shook hands with someone on Earth from space
NASA astronaut Terry Virts is part of the current ISS crew, while ESA telerobotics specialist André Schiele is in the Netherlands. Thanks to two special joysticks with force feedback in both locations, though, they were able to "shake hands" during a recent demo of the first space-to-ground remote control. They took turns to move their respective joysticks, while the other felt the movement through theirs. Schiele said "[i]t felt as though Terry was extending his arm down from space to shake [his] hand." This is the first time the technology was tested between two people -- astronaut Butch Wilmore tried it alone in the past -- and it seemed to work great even if the ISS was in orbit, flying over 3,000 miles away from the Netherlands at that moment.
The Big Picture: Hubble peeks at the Milky Way's densest star cluster
Some parts of space are a little more crowded than others. The Arches Cluster, located 25,000 light-years from Earth, is currently the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way. For comparison, if you measured the distance between our sun and its nearest star, and used that as a radius for a section of the Arches Cluster, you would find more than 100,000 stars twinkling back at you. These balls of gas burn brightly -- NASA says 150 are among the brightest it's ever recorded -- which limits their natural lifespan to a few million years. Once their nuclear fuel has been depleted, they explode in breathtaking supernovas which create abnormally high volumes of heavy elements in the gas between the remaining stars. The image above was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in infrared; due to enormous dust clouds, the cluster is otherwise obscured and difficult to observe.
UK to put space seeds in the hands of schoolkids
If we're ever to inhabit other planets in our solar system, we must first make sure that we can grow our own food in order to survive. While space scientists have been experimenting with this for decades, the UK Space Agency, with help from the Royal Horticultural Society, is calling on Britain's kids to help it understand more about growing food on different worlds. Rocket Science, as it's known, will involve sending two kilograms of rocket seeds to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of British astronaut Tim Peake's six-month Principa mission.
Researchers find new 'most distant' galaxy in the universe
Peering through the voids of space is a lot like time travelling: the deeper we gaze into a seemingly endless Universe, the further back in time we can see. Now, a team of researchers led by astronomers from Yale University and UC Santa Cruz have announced that they've discovered the most distant galaxy to date. In fact, the galaxy, known a EGS-zs8-1, is so ludicrously far from Earth that light just now reaching us from it is about 13 billion years old. To put that in perspective, the Universe itself is 13.8 billion years. That means this galaxy began forming stars when the Universe was only 5 percent of its current age -- barely 670 million years after big banging into existence.
Scientists spot runaway galaxies
It's well established that runaway stars and planets are a cosmic reality, but runaway galaxies? Yes, amazingly enough, those exist. Scientists have discovered at least 11 galaxies moving so quickly (up to 6 million miles per hour) that they're escaping the gravitational tug of their host clusters. Most likely, these wayward celestial bodies are the result of three-way interactions -- a small elliptical galaxy tied to a larger counterpart will fly off into space when another big galaxy gets close enough. It could take a long time before astronomers have a better sense of how common stray galaxies might be, but it's already apparent that the universe is messy at its grandest scale. [Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team]
