ESA at 50: looking back and launching forward
The European Space Agency marked its 50th anniversary in May, kicking off a landmark year of mission launches and strategic planning. With the ESA Ministerial Council set to meet in November, Director General Josef Aschbacher reflected on five decades of progress and outlined the agency's future in exploration, climate science, navigation, and global collaboration.
Since its founding in 1975, ESA has contributed to a broad range of scientific and technological areas. One of its most notable moments came in 2014 with the Rosetta mission, when the Philae lander became the first human-made object to land on a comet. The event drew global attention and is considered a major milestone in robotic space exploration.
Copernicus and Galileo
ESA has also developed long-running programmes such as Copernicus and Galileo, which continue to serve scientific, environmental, and practical purposes. Copernicus, the European Union's Earth observation programme, uses satellite data to monitor environmental changes. According to ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, 'Without those satellites that we have built - and Europe has built many of those - we would not understand the extent of climate change.'
Ariane 6 rocket debuts successfully restoring Europe's space independence
New objectives?
Read more on RFI EnglishRead also:Vega-C launch marks milestone for Europe's space programmeEurope's new Ariane 6 rocket set for inaugural launch from French Guiana
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Yahoo
6 hours ago
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ESA at 50: looking back and launching forward
The European Space Agency marked its 50th anniversary in May, kicking off a landmark year of mission launches and strategic planning. With the ESA Ministerial Council set to meet in November, Director General Josef Aschbacher reflected on five decades of progress and outlined the agency's future in exploration, climate science, navigation, and global collaboration. Since its founding in 1975, ESA has contributed to a broad range of scientific and technological areas. One of its most notable moments came in 2014 with the Rosetta mission, when the Philae lander became the first human-made object to land on a comet. The event drew global attention and is considered a major milestone in robotic space exploration. Copernicus and Galileo ESA has also developed long-running programmes such as Copernicus and Galileo, which continue to serve scientific, environmental, and practical purposes. Copernicus, the European Union's Earth observation programme, uses satellite data to monitor environmental changes. According to ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, 'Without those satellites that we have built - and Europe has built many of those - we would not understand the extent of climate change.' Ariane 6 rocket debuts successfully restoring Europe's space independence New objectives? Read more on RFI EnglishRead also:Vega-C launch marks milestone for Europe's space programmeEurope's new Ariane 6 rocket set for inaugural launch from French Guiana
Scientific American
8 hours ago
- Scientific American
New Doubts about Milky Way–Andromeda Collision, Explanation of 2023 Marine Heat Wave and Worms That Build Towers
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Let's kick off the week with a quick roundup of some science news you may have missed. You've probably heard that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is doomed to collide with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy sometime around 5 billion years from now. But according to new research, maybe we shouldn't count on this multigalactic merger deal going through. In a study published last Monday in Nature Astronomy, researchers who analyzed data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope and NASA's Hubble say the event is more of a coin flip than a given: the team's 100,000 computer simulations suggest there's just about a 50/50 chance of the two galaxies colliding within the next 10 billion years or so. When you look at the next 4 to 5 billion years, that chance drops down to around 2%. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. In other space news, scientists are buzzing about a tiny star that punches way above its weight. TOI-6894 is a red dwarf that's roughly 20% as massive as our sun. But in a study published last Wednesday in Nature Astronomy, researchers say they've spotted the signature of a giant planet orbiting the little guy. The planet, called TOI-6894b, is described as a low-density gas giant—it is a little bigger than Saturn, but only has around half as much mass. Astronomers say the presence of a gas giant around such a small star is so surprising that it challenges the most widely accepted theory of planet formation. That theory, called core accretion, suggests that giant planets are born when their solid cores get massive enough to start pulling in lots of gas. Smaller stars generally lack enough gas and dust in their protoplanetary discs to allow for such a process, but this red dwarf ended up with a gas giant anyhow. Because red dwarf stars are super common in our galaxy, this could mean gas giants are more plentiful than we thought. The researchers will use the James Webb Space Telescope to study the planet's atmosphere, which should provide more clues about its formation. Now let's move on to some environmental news. Back in the summer of 2023 an extreme marine heat wave hit the North Atlantic Ocean, affecting water temperatures from Greenland to the Sahara and all the way over to the Americas. A study published last Wednesday in Nature aimed to explain why. The researchers say the summer temperature surge was equivalent to around 20 years of typical warming in the North Atlantic. While climate change, of course, played a role, the new study pinpoints some other factors that made water temperatures particularly hot that summer. For starters, in June and July of that year, the winds over the North Atlantic were weaker than at any other period on record, which meant less churning to mix sun-warmed surface waters. As a result heat was more concentrated and rose more quickly. The researchers also note that it's possible a reduction in sulphur emissions led to fewer clouds in some areas, so more sunlight hit the water. But the scientists were quick to add that weak wind was the primary driver—and that climate change is likely to make things worse. Reducing pollution from the atmosphere, generally speaking, remains a great thing to do. In a news release, the study's lead author noted that if we don't cut down our fossil fuel emissions, extreme marine heat waves like the one we saw in 2023 will only get more common and more intense. And that's bad news for everyone: warm water releases heat into the atmosphere, contributing to heat waves and severe rainstorms. Warmer oceans also mean more hurricanes. And higher water temperatures are tied to increases in coral bleaching as well. But another study, published last Thursday in Frontiers in Marine Science, offers some hope for ailing coral—not from bleaching but from a disease that can be just as devastating to a reef. Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, was first identified off the coast of Florida just over a decade ago and has now been spotted on reefs throughout the Caribbean. More than 20 species of coral can catch it. SCTLD quickly destroys a coral's soft tissue, with some species dying within weeks of symptoms appearing. It's not clear exactly what causes SCTLD, but it seems likely that bacteria at least play a part because treating affected corals with an antibiotic paste has been shown to help them survive. The issue with this treatment is that it's a temporary fix, and it opens the door for the potential evolution of a resistant strain of whatever bacterium is involved. This new study reports on the promising results of treating coral with pro biotics instead. Corals have microbiomes just like we do, and a boost of good bacteria seems to help keep them healthy. The researchers behind the new study started by testing more than 200 strains of bacteria from disease-resistant corals and ultimately focusing on a particularly promising strain from great star corals in the lab. In 2020 the scientists took their experiment into the ocean, applying a solution of seawater and probiotics to a Florida reef impacted by SCTLD and using weighted plastic bags to create a sort of in-ocean aquarium that kept the treatment from floating away. After two and a half years, the probiotics seemed to be preventing the spread of SCTLD without causing any other disruptions to the reefs' microbiome. More research is needed to see how this treatment might impact coral in other regions, but probiotics could prove to be an important tool for fighting this devastating disease. We'll wrap up today's episode with something fun, if maybe also a little bit creepy: an act of 'collective hitchhiking' featuring a living tower of worms. Nematodes are tiny worms that you probably don't spend much time thinking about, but they're actually the most abundant animals on Earth, making up an estimated four-fifths of all animal life on our planet. According to a study published last Thursday in Current Biology, these creatures might sometimes use their vast numbers to make up for their miniscule size. Individual nematodes will sometimes stand on their tails and wave around to try to hitch a ride on a passing animal. Scientists have long suspected that they can also link together to form multi-worm 'towers' to increase their height, but this had only ever been observed in a lab setting. In the new study scientists describe seeing some of these waving worm towers inside decaying apples and pears found in the dirt of orchards. Further observations proved that, far from a chaotic pile of worms, these structures reflect the kind of superorganism behavior we see in slime molds and fire ants. While many species of nematode could be found in each piece of rotting fruit, the towers only consisted of members of the same species. Once in place, the nematodes would wave in unison as if they were one giant worm. Experiments in the lab showed that nematodes could self-assemble in just two hours and remain stable for more than 12. They could even create little arms with which to explore the space and build bridges to cross gaps to new locations. So the next time you're struggling with a group project at school or work, just remind yourself that even nematodes can figure out how to work together. That's all for this week's science news roundup. We'll be back on Wednesday. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
Yahoo
a day ago
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The Webb telescope found something exceedingly rare around a dying star
The Ring Nebula is a well-known space icon shaped like a doughnut about 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. But astronomers think it's been holding a secret that only the penetrating gaze of the James Webb Space Telescope, a joint project of NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies, could reveal. Using Webb's infrared-sensing MIRI instrument, scientists got a clear sightline to the small but scorching star at its center. The shriveled core — a white dwarf — is all that remains of the star on its deathbed, having molted its outermost layers. When researchers zoomed in, they got a surprise. Surrounding the withering star was a disk of dust, much like the kind found around new stars that are in their prime planet-birthing years. It was kind of like seeing a pregnant octogenarian in a nursing home. This is just the second time scientists have observed such a disk around a star at the end of its life. And though they can't actually see baby planets in their nebula images, they are now wondering if these space environments could trigger a second generation of planets, long after the original brood of worlds formed around the star. The discovery, published in The Astrophysical Journal, is "raising questions about their nature, formation, longevity, and potentially a second phase of planet formation," the authors wrote. SEE ALSO: Spectacular Webb telescope image shows a stellar death like never before The James Webb Space Telescope provides a clear view of the central white dwarf creating the Ring Nebula in the left image. Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Raghvendra Sahai et al. Unlike giant stars that explode into a supernova and collapse into a black hole when their time is up, a medium star gradually runs out of nuclear fuel and suffers a more prolonged death. These stars, like our midsize sun in perhaps 5 billion years, decline into so-called planetary nebulas, a confusing misnomer for the phenomenon because they have more to do with aging stars than planets. Scientists have discovered a few thousand planetary nebulas in the Milky Way. Those include the Ring Nebula, aka NGC 6720 and Messier 57. With Webb, the researchers could see a compact dust cloud around the central white dwarf creating it. "These are first seen as the gas-and-dust-rich planet-forming disks in young stellar objects, and are an integral part of the star formation process itself," the authors wrote. "Remarkably, dusty disks or disk-like structures manifest themselves again as these stars reach the ends of their lives." Such a rare sighting is believed to have happened once before, when astronomers got a look at the Southern Ring Nebula with Webb, at wavelengths far beyond what people can see with their eyes. In the first images, astronomers were amazed to spot the true source of the nebula, said Karl Gordon, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "We knew this was a binary star (beforehand), but we effectively didn't really see much of the actual star that produced the nebula," he said during a 2022 news conference. "But now in MIRI, this star glows red because it has dust around it." The James Webb Space Telescope spots a dusty disk around the central white dwarf powering the Ring Nebula. Credit: NASA GSFC / CIL / Adriana Manrique Gutierrez illustration The dust cloud around the Ring Nebula is composed of tiny grains of amorphous silicate, a glass-like substance, according to the new paper. These particles are miniscule, perhaps less than one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair. The cloud itself stretches thousands of times wider than the distance between the Earth and the sun. The researchers noticed something else intriguing at the center of the nebula. The white dwarf's brightness keeps changing. That might be a clue that another star is lurking in the shadows nearby, perhaps a small-but-feisty red dwarf star. While scientists haven't directly spotted the buddy yet, they can infer it's there from patterns in the nebula. The study could help confirm earlier findings that suggested the star had two companions — one far in the outskirts of the system and another nearby. A close star could explain the strange arcs and rings seen around the nebula.
