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| COROT COROT is a CNES project with ESA participation. The other major partners in this mission are Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany and Spain. |
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COROT
started its science mission
Feb. 09, 2007 COROT, the satellite to probe into the interiors of stars and to look for extra-solar planets, has completed its in-orbit verification and started its science observations on 3 February this year. |
| DAWN Dawn is to become the first spacecraft ever planned to orbit two different bodies after leaving Earth, will orbit Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest asteroids in the solar system. |
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The
Prius of Space
Sept. 13, 2007 "Dawn will be history's first mission to go out into the solar system, orbit and explore a distant body, and then go on to a totally different celestial body and explore that one," said Dawn project manager Keyur Patel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "To do all that you need a spacecraft with a lot under the hood." |
| GALEX Mapping the history of star formation in the universe. |
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Galaxy
Evolution Explorer Celebrates Five Years in Space
Apr. 28, 2008 Since its launch five years ago, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) has photographed hundreds of millions of galaxies in ultraviolet light. M106 is one of those galaxies, and from 22 light years away, it strikes a pose in blue and gold for this new commemorative portrait. The galaxy's extended arms are the blue filaments that curve around its edge, creating its outer disk. |
| INTEGRAL The International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral) is the most sensitive gamma-ray observatory ever launched. |
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Faint
gamma-ray bursts do actually exist
Oct. 13, 2008 Gamma-ray bursts, powerful glares of high-energy that wash through the Universe once every day or so are, for a brief time, the brightest objects in the gamma-ray sky. ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has observed several low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts, confirming the existence of an entire population of weaker bursts hardly noticed so far. |
| Mars Express Mars Express, so called because of the rapid and streamlined development time, represents ESA's first visit to another planet in the Solar System. |
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Mars
Express zeros in on erosion features
Mar. 19, 2009 Mars Express has uncovered geological evidence suggesting that some dispositional process, revealed by erosion, has been at work on large scales in the equatorial regions of the planet. If so, this would provide another jigsaw piece to be fitted into the emerging picture of Mars’ past climate. The evidence comes from the mineralogical composition of the Aram Chaos region, a crater 280 km in diameter lying almost directly on the Martian equator. |
| MESSENGER The MESSENGER mission, spacecraft, and science instruments are focused on answering six key outstanding questions that will allow us to better understand Mercury as a planet. |
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Second
Group of Mercury Craters Named
Nov. 27, 2008 The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to name 15 craters on Mercury. All of the newly named craters were imaged during the mission’s first flyby of the solar system’s innermost planet in January 2008. The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919. |
| MER The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. |
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Five
Years on Mars
Dec. 31, 2008 The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 13 miles, climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them. |
| Mars Odyssey This orbiter is mapping the mineralogy and morphology of the Martian surface. |
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NASA's
Mars Odyssey Shifting Orbit for Extended Mission
Oct. 10, 2008 The longest-serving of six spacecraft now studying Mars is up to new tricks for a third two-year extension of its mission to examine the most Earthlike of known foreign planets. NASA's Mars Odyssey is altering its orbit to gain even better sensitivity for its infrared mapping of Martian minerals. During the mission extension through September 2010, it will also point its camera with more flexibility than it has ever used before. Odyssey reached Mars in 2001. |
| MRO Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched August 12, 2005, is on a search for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time. |
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NASA
Orbiter Finds Martian Rock Record With 10 Beats to the Bar
Dec. 05, 2008 Climate cycles persisting for millions of years on ancient Mars left a record of rhythmic patterns in thick stacks of sedimentary rock layers, revealed in three-dimensional detail by a telescopic camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Researchers using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera report the first measurement of a periodic signal in the rocks of Mars. |
| New Horizons New Horizons began its journey across the solar system to conduct flyby studies of Pluto and its moon. |
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NASA
Spacecraft Sees Changes in Jupiter System
Oct. 09, 2007 New Horizons used Jupiter's gravity to boost its speed and shave three years off its trip to Pluto. Although the eighth spacecraft to visit Jupiter, New Horizons' combination of trajectory, timing and technology allowed it to explore details never before observed. |
| Planck Planck will make the most accurate maps yet of the microwave background radiation that fills space. It will be sensitive to temperature variations of a few millionths of a degree |
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Planck
highlights the complexity of star formation
Apr. 26, 2010 New images from ESA's Planck space observatory reveal the forces driving star formation and give astronomers a way to understand the complex physics that shape the dust and gas in our Galaxy. Star formation takes place hidden behind veils of dust but that doesn’t mean we can’t see through them. |
| Rosetta Mission Rosetta will orbit comet 67P and accompany it on its journey to the Sun. |
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Rosetta
And New Horizons Watch Jupiter In Joint Campaign
Mar. 30, 2007 ESA's Rosetta and NASA's New Horizons are working together in their joint campaign to observe Jupiter. A preliminary analysis of the data from Rosetta's Alice ultraviolet spectrometer indicates that the data quality is excellent and that good science is expected to follow. |
| SOFIA The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy--or SOFIA--is an airborne observatory that will complement the Hubble, Spitzer, Herschel and James Webb space telescopes, |
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SOFIA
Airborne Observatory Begins Flight Test Phase
Oct. 12, 2007 NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, has begun a series of flight tests intended to confirm the structural integrity and performance of the highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft. |
| THEMIS The 2-year mission of Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms (THEMIS) is to track these violent, colorful eruptions near the North Pole. |
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Launch
Week Arrives for THEMIS
Feb. 12, 2007 On Feb. 3, THEMIS was transported from Astrotech payload processing facility near NASA Kennedy Space Center to Pad 17-B. The five satellites and their rocket were then subjected to a combined systems check to ensure everything is ready for the flight into space on launch day. Following the test, technicians installed the Delta II rocket's protective payload nose fairing around THEMIS. |
| Venus Express Venus Express is a follow on from the Mars Express mission. Many of the instruments on the mission are simply upgraded versions of those on the Mars Express platform. |
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Watching
Venus glow in the dark
Feb. 25, 2009 ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has observed an eerie glow in the night-time atmosphere of Venus. This infrared light comes from nitric oxide and is showing scientists that the atmosphere of Earth’s nearest neighbor is a temperamental place of high winds and turbulence. |
| WISE The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, will scan the entire sky in infrared light, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. |
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NASA's
WISE Mission Releases Medley of First Images
Nov. 14, 2008 X-ray and gamma-ray data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and Integral orbiting observatories has been used to test, for the first time, the physical processes that make magnetars, an atypical class of neutron stars, shine in X-rays. Neutron stars are remnants of massive stars (10-50 times as massive as our Sun) that have collapsed on to themselves under their own weight. |
| XMM-Newton The Mirror Modules on this x-ray observatory allow XMM-Newton to detect millions of sources, far more than any previous X-ray mission |
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XMM-Newton
and Integral clues on magnetic powerhouses
Nov. 14, 2008 X-ray and gamma-ray data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and Integral orbiting observatories has been used to test, for the first time, the physical processes that make magnetars, an atypical class of neutron stars, shine in X-rays. Neutron stars are remnants of massive stars (10-50 times as massive as our Sun) that have collapsed on to themselves under their own weight. |
