ESA Blogs

Your comment lead me down a rabbit hole of space micromanagement. OSTPV (onboard short-term planner viewer) is the software they use to basically schedule every minute of your space flight. Basically every day someone from earth decides what you do, when you eat, when you exercise and will make changes in realtime. Great read here with a video of someone using the actual software: https://blogs.esa.int/iriss/2015/09/09/playing-with-playbook/

The upper stage gets left behind in Earth orbit. The Briz-M stage provides the kick to propel the payload to a higher orbit and then usually there's a kick motor that follows up, in this case, delivering a Trans-Mars Injection maneuver to set the spacecraft on its way to Mars. EDIT: Actually realised I'm wrong since the Briz-M is the 4th stage, not the 3rd. The 3rd stage remains in orbit and then splashes down and the 4th stage actually provides the entire kick for TMI [1] [1] http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2016/03/13/why-exomars-ride-to-spac…

It's being described as a "triangular orbit" :-) "Rosetta will, follow, at least for now, a three-legged triangular orbit that requires a small thruster burn at each apex. The legs are about 100 km long and it will take Rosetta between three and four days to complete each one." http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/08/04/whats-happening-in-rosetta-mis…

André Kuipers is also blogging from the ISS: http://blogs.esa.int/andre-kuipers/?lang=en His Flickr stream also has some great pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/astro_andre/

Here's a blog post by ESA that talks about what controlled reentry means. https://blogs.esa.int/cleanspace/2018/11/16/basics-about-controlled-an… Controlled requires precise aiming towards a targeted location. Not just the operator deciding to do something. By ESA's definition Starlink de-orbits aren't even "semi-controlled". This generally involves landing at a precise location of the Earth. It goes by a nickname, Point Nemo. A patch of ocean in the south pacific farthest away from any land. It's also far from standard shipping lanes. If you can't achieve this type of targeting it, definitionally, is not a controlled re-entry. > It simply means aiming for a certain latitude by adjusting the orbit accordingly You cannot aim a satellite for a "certain latitude" as orbits cannot follow lines of latitude. That's not how orbital dynamics work. I'm not quite sure what you meant to convey here. > This also means that the target is not "all over the world" as you put it - it's a very narrow, well defined stripe/trace (remember the scale we're talking about here!) and that's exactly what a controlled de-orbit is about. No it's all over the world, definitionally, because low earth orbits cross the entire planet as the Earth rotates. The possible locations the satellite can re-enter span a large portion of the globe from the negative to the positive latitude equivalent to the spacecraft's inclination. I think you have a major misunderstanding yourself.…

> how do they radiate the heat from the capsule with humans going to the moon https://blogs.esa.int/orion/2018/01/18/keeping-cool-while-staying-warm… https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/a51a54b9-9700-4724-a… Looks like the regular exterior of the service module provides enough area for heat exchange.

This almost certainly just shows its usual orbit. I've had no luck finding a source of real-time info. The European Space Agency (ESA) publishes occasional updates here: https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/05/07/reentry-prediction-sovi… . The most recent one is from about 1h20m ago: "10 May 09:56 CEST. As the descent craft was not spotted by radar over Germany at the expected 07:32 UTC / 09:32 CEST pass, it is most likely that the reentry has already occurred." This was published about 20 minutes ago, but basically just quotes ESA: "Kosmos-482: Out-of-control Russian spacecraft probably just fell to Earth, experts say" https://www.independent.co.uk/space/kosmos-482-russian-spacecraft-sate…

It seems that ESA tracked the craft over Germany on its final pass, and failed to track it on its next expected pass (0732 UTC), and so it is assumed that it went down at some time before that. But there are no recordings or reports of sightings yet. https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/05/07/reentry-prediction-sovi…

Yeah, the debris removes itself with time. But there is still some uncertainty around how deorbiting harms the atmosphere [1]. Immediate effects of a single deorbit seem to be quite low but having such deorbiting scenarios at a higher frequency could have some negative effects. [1] https://blogs.esa.int/cleanspace/2022/08/11/on-the-atmospheric-impact-…

Here is ESA information regarding the asteroid [0] [0] https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/04/asteroid-2024-yr4-lates…

ESA says 2.8%. Note how they also indicate the percentages for these strikes are not like a weather forecast that ebb and flow; the likelihood if impact will increase as the prediction corridor narrows until Earth moves out of the projection corridor and the chance drops to 0%. Of course, that's not a reason for monitoring agencies to be complacent or for us to just assume there is no danger here. https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/04/asteroid-2024-yr4-lates…

>James Webb Space Telescope will study asteroid 2024 YR4 https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/10/james-webb-space-telesc…

IIRC Gaia had a performance degradation because of stray light, probably ice on the border of it's aperture[1]. How has that affected this result? [1] https://blogs.esa.int/gaia/2014/06/16/preliminary-analysis-of-stray-li…

Current delay is ~11 minutes, but minimum is much lower (~4 minutes, per https://blogs.esa.int/mex/2012/08/05/time-delay-between-mars-and-earth… ). We were last at that closest point in October, and the various voyages (this one, UAE's Hope, China's Tianwen-1) were timed so the closest pint was during the transit; we're a bit past it now.

Seems at least plausible. Comet Rosetta's perihelion was August 13, 2015 [1] and there was a big outgassing event February 2016 [2]. Takes time for heat to propagate through stuff. But yeah, I'd rather it was due to radiation pressure on an alien solar sail. [1] https://www.space.com/30237-rosetta-spacecraft-comet-closest-to-sun.ht… [2] http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/08/25/rosetta-captures-comet-outburs…

Apparently a 1.5mm puncture due to a meteor/debris strike in the Russian Soyuz MS-09 module. More information: http://blogs.esa.int/alexander-gerst/2018/08/30/slow-leak-detected-abo… https://twitter.com/RussianSpaceWeb?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5E… http://www.russianspaceweb.com/soyuz-ms-09.html#leak

Thanks, very good presentation! There's also a link to the "cleanspace" blog there at the end: http://blogs.esa.int/cleanspace/ Last post July 6, 2018, the project lives. Then from there, "The Clean Space Industrial Days 2018" event https://indico.esa.int/event/234/ will happen: "23-25 October 2018 ESTEC"

Generally caves have elevated CO2 levels not because of human respiration, but because of outgassing - they're generally eroded out of carbonate minerals, and so the water flowing in carries CO2 inside at higher concentrations than the outside world. The smaller the subsystem the human is isolated in, the faster they perturb that equilibrium toward an even higher CO2 level. The ESA, of all groups, has a pretty good write-up on this: http://blogs.esa.int/caves/2014/11/19/the-science-of-caves-environment… They use cave exploration for astronaut team-building, process/workflow training, and acculturation.

The FAQ gives a good overview of what's going on here: http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2018/01/16/tiangong-1-frequently-as… TL;DR is a Chinese space lab (Their 1st) is going to crash into Earth sometime end of March, Mid April... probably Northern Europe.

I found this FAQ very informative: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_gran… Also, the per-instrument bitrate breakdown for the last minutes: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/09/28/science-til-the-very-end/ Goodbye Rosetta!

It was aimed at a flat spot, but when it failed to attach to the surface it bounced and floated for almost 2 hours, hitting the surface again 1 km away[1][2]. Its speed of 38 cm/s during that time was below escape velocity but not by much. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ2eqH3Bz4c [2] http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/14/three-touchdowns-for-rosettas_…

>with no hope of doing an update To be fair, space probes occasionally do get software updates, eg http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/03/28/software-upgrade-at-655-millio… In the case of the Curiosity Rover, it didn't even "ship" with the software of what it was supposed to do on Mars until it had landed there http://www.space.com/17034-mars-rover-curiosity-software-upgrade.html Edit: I'm not saying this was possible in 1969. I posted this because I was genuinely curious if it was ever done.

Anyone know much about the GUI for their control system? http://blogs.esa.int/mex/2012/08/05/time-delay-between-mars-and-earth/…

Right, but it hasn’t spoken to Rosetta in over 3 weeks: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/20/rosetta-and-philae-status-upda…

It would seem this publication in Science pertains to the original science suite performed on Philae's landing: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/30/science-on-the-surface-of-a-co… Which is not to detract from the magnificence of the accomplishment, simply to note that this isn't from Philae's recent reawakening.

The submitted title was "Rosetta first results: ocean water not from comets". Since the article's own title is not very informative, we changed it to the first sentence, which is. We also changed the url from http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/12/10/rosetta-fuels-debate-on-origin… which points to this.

The official rosetta blog has details of the movement of the panels http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/15/our-landers-asleep/ Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla has a Tumblr that had very good coverage of what went on: http://elakdawalla.tumblr.com/ ... details of the movement, the solar charging requirements etc

It seems to me that this shot is missing: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/16/philae_spotted_after_first_lan… However, there seems to be a confusion about the time. If it’s indeed one hour after touchdown the bright and dark blobs are probably just dust.

The pic you linked to was taken with a different camera (NAVCAM), the pictures in this article (OSIRIS) are much better, and clearly show the lander before and after touchdown along with marks where it first landed/bounced. What they don't show unfortunately is the final resting place, but that's a bit tricky because of comet rotation, comet shape (not a flat surface), and the parabolic trajectory of the lander. What's the confusion about the time? Touchdown was at 15:34 UTC (NB UTC), I doubt anyone at ESA is confused about the time, though some of the commenters seem pretty confused on the ESA blog post this BBC article is based on: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/17/osiris-spots-philae-drifting-a…

"Philae's planned mission is expected to come to an end when batteries are exhausted sometime on Saturday; future contacts are possible if the illumination conditions change as the comet orbits closer to the Sun, enabling solar power to flow again." http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/15/turning-philae/ (Note: that was written before the sucessful reorientation occurred)