Gaia status update—safe mode and recovery

Last month, ESA's Gaia satellite experienced a technical anomaly followed by a 'safe mode' event. After thorough examination, the spacecraft was successfully recovered and resumed normal scientific operations, while the mission ...

The road to Orion's launch

NASA's Orion spacecraft aims to send humans further into space than ever before, and ESA's European Service Module will provide the essentials for keeping the astronauts alive and on course.

Lockheed Martin powers up next Orion spacecraft for first time

Engineers at Lockheed Martin and NASA breathed life into the next Orion crew module when they powered up the spacecraft for the first time at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Designed for human spaceflight, this Orion will ...

Glasses generate power with flexible organic solar cells

Organic solar cells are flexible, transparent and lightweight, and can be manufactured in arbitrary shapes or colors. Thus, they are suitable for a variety of applications that cannot be realized with conventional silicon ...

Image: Lunar module at Tranquility Base

This photograph of the Lunar Module at Tranquility Base was taken by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission, from the rim of Little West Crater on the lunar surface. Armstrong's shadow and the shadow of the camera are ...

Seeing the forest through the trees with a new LiDAR system

Shortly after lasers were first developed in the 1960s, LiDAR—whose name originated as a combination of "light" and "radar"—capitalized on the newly unique precision they offered for measuring both time and distance. ...

Ultra-compact phase modulators based on graphene plasmons

Modulating the amplitude and phase of light is a key ingredient for many of applications such as wavefront shaping, transformation optics, phased arrays, modulators and sensors. Performing this task with high efficiency and ...

Orion frame work

Set to be shipped to the USA around the New Year, ESA's contribution to NASA's Orion spacecraft is taking shape at Airbus in Bremen, Germany. This is no test article: the service module pictured here will fly into space by ...

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