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It's time for the #ESAquiz!

Do you know what's happening in this video?

Write your answers in the comment section and stay tuned to our @instagram Story for the answer and a shout out!

GrapheneSail team

In the desert you cant remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain...

Considered one of the driest places on Earth there are some parts of the desert where rainfall has never been recorded the Atacama and specifically the area featured in this image in the Tarapaca Region, in northern Chile, is where some of the largest caliche deposits can be found. Here, nitrates, lithium, potassium and iodine are mined.

Iodine, for example, is extracted in a process called heap leaching which is widely used in modern large-scale mining operations. Leach piles are visible as rectangular shapes dotted around the image, although the exact reason for the different shades of colour is uncertain. Some leach piles could appear lighter or darker owing to the varying water content or soil type concentration.

The geometric shapes in the right are large evaporation ponds. Brine is pumped to the surface through a network of wells into the shallow ponds. The dry and windy climate enhances the evaporation of the water and leaves concentrated salts behind for the extraction of lithium which is used in the manufacturing of batteries.

The bright, turquoise colours of the evaporation ponds are in stark contrast with the surrounding desert landscape making them easily identifiable from space. Distinctive black lines visible in the image are roads that connect to the various construction sites.

contains modified @copernicus_eu Sentinel data (2019), processed by @europeanspaceagency, @creativecommons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

What do you see in this image taken by @hubbleesa!

A colourful star-forming region is featured in this stunning new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 2467. Looking like a roiling cauldron of some exotic cosmic brew, huge clouds of gas and dust are sprinkled with bright blue, hot young stars.

Strangely shaped dust clouds, resembling spilled liquids, are silhouetted against a colourful background of glowing. Like the familiar Orion Nebula, NGC 2467 is a huge cloud of gas mostly hydrogen that serves as an incubator for new stars.

This picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys through three different filters (F550M, F660N and F658N, shown in blue, green and red). These filters were selected to let through different colours of red and yellow light arising from different elements in the gas. The total aggregate exposure time was about 2000 seconds and the field of view is about 3.5 arcminutes across. These data were taken in 2004.

@europeanspaceagency/@hubbleesa & @NASA, Orsola De Marco (@macquarieuni); @creativecommons CC BY 4.0

18 years old and rocking

Our oldest operational Earth observation mission, Proba-1, captured this unusual image of plentiful parked airliners at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, usually the busiest airport in India, on 7 May 2020.

The cubic-metre-sized satellite has been in orbit for more than 18 years. It left Earth from India: Proba-1 was launched from the countrys Satish Dhawan Space Centre by Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on 22 October 2001.

The first in our family of Project for On-Board Autonomy missions, Proba-1 began life as a technology demonstration satellite, subsequently becoming an Earth observation mission. Its main hyperspectral Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer is accompanied by the monochromatic High Resolution Camera, which took the 5-m spatial resolution image shown here.

Overseen from our centre in Belgium, the highly-automated Proba-1 introduced various then-novel but now mainstream technologies to space, including lithium ion batteries, gallium arsenide solar panels, the use of startrackers for gyro-free attitude control and ESA-developed ERC-32 microprocessors running its flight computer.

Proba-1 continues to deliver imagery to scientific teams around the globe, while also providing useful data on the longevity of space systems and components.
@europeanspaceagency

#TBT to the announcement of our 2009 astronaut class
11 years and 1 day ago, the six individuals who would become our 2009 astronaut group were presented at a press conference at our Headquarters in Paris, France.

What memories do you have of 2009? Tell us in the comment section

@europeanspaceagency - S. Corvaja, 2009

Hoping everyone stays safe down there

This image of the Cyclone Amphan making landfall over Bangladesh was captured today by the @copernicus_eu Sentinel3 mission.
A cloud-free Indian peninsula on the west gives us a sense of the size of the cyclone. This wide view was produced using images from both Sentinel-3A & Sentinel-3B.

contains modified @copernicus_eu Sentinel data (2020), processed by @europeanspaceagency, @creativecommons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

As the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted lives across the globe, Earth-observing satellites take the pulse of our planet from space. While the global lockdown has had a massive impact on daily life and the economy, there have been environmental benefits that are visible from space. How can we preserve these positives when returning to business as usual?

@europeanspaceagency

#ESA
#Environment
#Covid19

We have landed on the @kerbalspacep

Kerbonauts will receive a free update to their space simulator to build an Ariane 5 rocket and tackle our real missions in Shared Horizons from 1 July.

Kerbal Space Program is a widely acclaimed physics-based simulation game that was first launched in 2015. Within this update, space enthusiasts take charge and reenact these two missions from launch to landing in the world of an alien race known as the 'Kerbals'. All aspects of the game are based on realistic aerodynamic and orbital physics.

Shared Horizons features all the stages, engines and systems of Europes Ariane 5 launch vehicle, so players can build a perfect replica, recombine stages in whatever creative ways they wish or build an imaginary hybrid using a combination of parts from multiple types of rockets.

Once their rocket is launched, players can navigate two new scenarios based on some of Europes well-known science missions.

The first new scenario is based on BepiColombo, an ongoing joint mission between us and @jaxajp, launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in 2018 and currently en route to Mercury. The game scenario recreates Europes first mission to the innermost planet of the Solar System to map its surface and magnetosphere to investigate the fascinating mysteries about this scorched celestial body. Players attempt to reach orbit and land on Moho, the equivalent of Mercury in the Kerbal universe, while performing various scientific tasks from the actual mission.

Rosetta, the second new scenario for the popular game, pays tribute to our iconic mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Launched in 2004, also on an Ariane 5 rocket, Rosetta travelled through the Solar System for ten years before reaching its destination, a Jupiter-family comet, dropping the Philae lander on its surface and studying the famously two-lobed comet from orbit for over two years. The mission gathered large amounts of data as the comet swung around the Sun, helping scientists learn more about the role of these puzzling objects in the evolution of the Solar System.

Go to esa.int to learn more.

@squaddevs / @privatedivision

Hubble Time!

Approximately 85 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Libra, is the beautiful galaxy NGC 5861, captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
NGC 5861 is an intermediate spiral galaxy. Astronomers classify most galaxies by their morphology. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy. An intermediate spiral galaxy has a shape lying in between that of a barred spiral galaxy, one that appears to have a central bar-shaped structure, and that of an unbarred spiral galaxy, one without a central bar.
Two supernovae, SN1971D and SN2017erp, have been observed in the galaxy. Supernovae are powerful and luminous explosions that can light up the night sky. The brightest supernova ever recorded was possibly SN 1006. It shone 16 times as bright as Venus from April 30 to May 1, 1006 AD.

@europeanspaceagency/@hubbleesa & @NASA, A. Riess et al.; @creativecommons CC BY 4.0

More time to reach perfection

The second ExoMars mission, scheduled for launch to the Red Planet in 2022, is taking advantage of the extra time to upgrade some of the rovers instruments and get ready for the next parachute high-altitude drop tests.

New deployment bags for the parachutes of the ExoMars mission are cleared to go for final high-altitude drop tests. However, travel restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic have forced to postpone these tests from May to September 2020 at the earliest.

The dynamic extraction test campaign was a success. The updated design with eased lines and canopy exit proved to avoid tears at extraction velocities of 200 km/h, similar to the high speeds at which the parachutes will be pulled from their bags during the descent towards the surface of Mars.

The solar panels that will help the rover survive the cold Martian nights will gain in strength. After some cracks were detected during the environmental tests earlier this year, new fasteners will be installed to reinforce the interface between panels and holding brackets at the Airbus facilities in Stevenage, in the UK.

One of the cameras on top of the rovers drill designed to acquire high-resolution and colour images of the rocks and soil around the rover the Close-Up Imager, CLUPI is having a software upgrade

Go to esa.int to learn more.

@NASA / @nasajpl - @caltechedu

When all connection is gone, you can always count on @britneyspears

Dr. Stijn Thoolen, our sponsored medical doctor who's spending 12 months at Concordia research station in Antarctica wrote a blog post talking about the day the last plane took off from the station. Here's an excerpt:

"At this moment I am just plain excited. Next to me the rest of the DC16 crew are having their own emotions. Our freshly inaugurated station leader Alberto, draped in the colours of our three national flags, came up with the idea to have our national anthems playing while the last Basler plane of the summer campaign leaves Dome C. So here I stand, hearing my own voice on maximum volume pronouncing a Dutch translation of too patriotic sentences from the stations speakers, and with the Dutch Wilhelmus screaming over the Antarctic plateau as an official start of our winter over. Haha, such an unrealistic scenario! And while those sounds are quickly overruled by the roaring engines of the plane, and with snow blowing in our faces, I can only smile. There goes our last connection to the rest of the earth, disappearing into the distant sky. Unbelievable!"

"Waving at that last plane on that February 7, all of us truly seemed to be left alone, and not just physically. So, after some awkward looks at each other, just like when we first met as a crew during our training in Europe (so, it is you who I am spending the next nine months with), we decided that there was only one real solution. And there we stood, while the plane disappeared slowly into that distant sky, dancing, on Britney Spears Toxic."

Go to blogs.esa.int/concordia/ to read the full post.

IPEV/PNRA/ESAS. Thoolen

Nature is a powerful sculptor

Features on Mars often trick the eye. It can be difficult to tell if the ground has risen up towards you, or dropped away. This is a common phenomenon with impact craters especially, and is aptly named the crater/dome illusion; in some images, craters appear to be large domes arching up towards the viewer but look again, and they instead become a depression in the surrounding terrain, as expected.

Such a phenomenon is at play in this image from Mars Express, which shows part of Tempe Fossae, a series of faults that cuts across the region of Tempe Terra in Mars northern highlands.

Upon first glance, it is difficult to tell if ground is rising up, sinking down, or a mix of both. The landscape here is scratched, scored, and wrinkled: ridges slice across the frame, interspersed with the odd impact crater, and the entire region is full of cliffs and chasms.

The terrain here belongs to the volcanic Tharsis province, also known as Tharsis rise, which is located close to the planet equator, at the boundary between low plains in the Northern hemisphere and highlands in the South, and displays a complex geology originating from the processes involved in its formation.

Tempe Fossae is a great example of terrain featuring two key martian features: grabens and horsts. In a way, these are opposites of one another grabens are slices of ground that have dropped down between two roughly parallel faults, while horsts are ground that has been uplifted between faults.

Go to esa.int to learn more.

@europeanspaceagency/ @germanaerospacecenter/ @fu_berlin; @creativecommons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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