The Exploration Company has announced it has secured the European Space Agency as an anchor client - via a new contract secured in a competitive tender process - to develop a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Cargo Return Service.

Satellite launch company RFA UK has received £3.5 million to support its plans to launch from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

Proba-3 will achieve, for the first time, a high-precision formation flight between two platforms in space, demonstrating the feasibility of technologies that will allow large telescopes sharing distant elements to be developed.

The first satnav receiver designed to operate in lunar orbit has been delivered to satellite maker Surrey Satellite in the UK for integration aboard the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft.

An initiative of the European Space Agency and the European Commission, Copernicus Data Access Service for Earth observation, has been kicked off.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is using the precision of Yokogawa’s optical wavelength meters to ensure accurate tuning of lasers used in Earth to space communications.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is using the precision of Yokogawa’s optical wavelength meters to ensure accurate tuning of lasers used in Earth to space communications.

For solving the challenges of building and deploying telerobotic systems for extraterrestrial missions, like system design, systems integration and long-distance communication, the European Space Agency (ESA) opted for the software framework from Real-Time Innovations (RTI). They use RTI Connext DDS for communication and video to demonstrate long-distance object control from aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The ExoMars mission will see Rosalind Franklin the rover and its surface platform Kazachok land on the Red Planet in 2021. 

The ExoMars rover’s Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD) was integrated into the rover at Airbus, Stevenage, UK in May 2019. The video is shown at 18 times real speed; in reality the sequence of events took around 11.5 minutes.

Satellites provide vast quantities of data. While these data are processed and used by scientists and analysts to understand and monitor Earth, they are also carefully archived.

For World Water Day ESA take a look at ways that space can help this global challenge.

The second part of the ExoMars programme is ongoing. In Stevenage, UK, a rover is being built that will carry a drill and a suite of instruments dedicated to exobiology and geochemistry research.

The European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) is an educational micro-satellite, which involved European university students during the whole project life cycle.

Known to the crew as an EVA (extravehicular activity), each spacewalk provides a valuable opportunity to carry out repairs, test new equipment and even perform science experiments beyond the confines of a spacecraft.

Some of the rarest, most precious materials on Earth originated very, very far away, and are only available to us now because of the Hayabusa mission of JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

We often hear from astronomers and other scientists about 'near-earth asteroids' - lumps of rock and metal that orbit through our Solar System, and pass close enough to our planet to pose an impact risk.

As part of ESA’s Expose-R2 project, 46 species of bacteria, fungi and arthropods were delivered by a Progress supply ship to the International Space Station in July 2014. Spacewalking cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev attached the package to the outside of the Zvezda module on 18th August 2014, where it stayed until it was retrieved 18 months later.

Discover more about our planet with the Earth from Space video programme.

In a world-first, an ESA-led team has built and fired an electric thruster to ingest scarce air molecules from the top of the atmosphere for propellant, opening the way to satellites flying in very low orbits for years on end. ESA’s GOCE gravity-mapper flew as low as 250 km for more than five years thanks to an electric thruster that continuously compensated for air drag. However, its working life was limited by the 40 kg of xenon it c...