#esa

#esa

The Ultimate House Tour: Float Through the International Space Station with a 360 Degree CameraThe International Space Station may perhaps be the most challenging place to go to. For one, you have to be an astronaut to live there, and being an astronaut requires a lot. To be one, you'd need a master's degree in a STEM field and at least two years of related, professional experience. Last but not least, you need to be able to pass the NASA astronaut physical. It is without saying that there are only a few people qualified to go to the ISS. The rest of us, meanwhile, are left wondering what it is like inside the orbital outpost.ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet shows us around the station with a 360 camera. And what's inside the station, you ask? Well, it's mostly wires and lots of monitors.(Video Credit: European Space Agency, ESA)#NASA #ESA #InternationalSpaceStation #ISS #Space

Hear Mercury for the First Time: ESA BepiColombo's First Sound from the Planetary FlybyThe ESA's BepiColombo spacecraft did a successful Mercury flyby earlier this October. During its flyby, the spacecraft not only captured some stunning photos of the planet's surface. It also captured some audio from the journey. Engineers from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have transformed this audio data from the spacecraft into a sonification, and now we can hear it with our own ears.It is clarified, however, that these sounds are not acoustic waves. In reality, they are spacecraft vibrations captured by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) instrument aboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), one of the satellites that comprise the BepiColombo spacecraft.Still, it's really cool!(Image Credit: Europlanet via Twitter)#Astronomy #Space #ESA #JAXA #Mercury #BepiColombo #Sonification

BepiColombo's First Pictures of MercuryBepiColombo has successfully pulled off a flawless flyby to Mercury recently, and it was able to take some pictures of the planet. Unfortunately, the spacecraft arrived on the planet's night side, and so the closest image was from a distance of about 1000km. However, the pictures were detailed enough to capture the impact craters on the Mercury's surface.Valentina Galluzzi, the co-investigator of BepiColombo’s SIMBIO-SYS imaging system, was excited to meet Mercury finally, after years of studying the planet.Here are the photos captured by the spacecraft. See the captions of each image over at The European Space Agency (ESA).(All Images: ESA)#Astronomy #Flyby #ESA #BepiColombo

Like a Galactic Lightsaber Piercing a Celestial Heart: Hubble's Wide Field Camera3 Captured a Herbig-Haro ObjectThe unusual celestial phenomenon seen in this stunning picture is known as a Herbig-Haro Object. This specific object is named HH111 and was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 or WFC3. These picturesque objects are formed under specific conditions where newly formed stars are very active and, in some cases, expel narrow jets of rapidly moving ionized charges. The stream of ionized gas then collides with the clouds of gas and dust around the newly formed stars at insane speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second.Herbig-Haro objects emit a lot of visible light, but they are surrounded by gas and dust, which absorb the light. WFC’s ability to observe at both optical and infrared wavelengths mean that it is able to observe the Herbig-Haro objects as infrared is not affected by the gas and dust.#Space #Hubble #Astronomy #Camera #HerbigHaro #NASA #ESAImage Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini

Spacecraft BepiColombo Took a Snapshot of Venus During a Gravity Assist ManeuverThe spacecraft BepiColombo, a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan's space agency JAXA, flew by Venus on its way to Mercury.Earlier this week, while performing a "gravity assist maneuver," BepiColombo took a snapshot of Venus in black and white. The spacecraft was 1,573 km (977 miles) away from the planet - at its closest, the spacecraft was just 552 km (342 miles) away.In the photo, you can see the high-gain antenna on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter at the top-left corner of the image.If you're wondering about the name, BepiColombo is named after Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo (1920 - 1984), a scientist at the University of Padua, Italy, who first suggested the gravity assist maneuver.Image: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM#spaceexploration #venus #BeliColombo #spacecraft #MercuryPlanetaryOrbiter #mercury #ESA #JAXA

Simulating a Satellite's Destruction During Atmospheric Reentry with a Plasma Wind TunnelTo avoid creating space junk that could be hazardous, the European Space Agency (ESA) is testing ways to create satellites that are sturdy enough to do its job but also safely burn up while falling back to Earth once its mission is complete.The way to do this is pretty cool: ESA purposely destroyed a model satellite component called the solar array drive mechanism (SADM), which is one of the bulkiest part of the satellite, inside a plasma wind tunnel.#ESA #satellite #plasma #windtunnelVideo clip credit: ESA/DLRView the full clip below: