Another astonishing shot from ESA astronaut, Andre Kuipers, onboard the ISS.

The Orion constellation can be seen rising in the centre of this image, above the Earth at night.

For further information on Andre's mission, and for more fantastic images, please visit: www.esa.int/SPECIALS/PromISSe/index.html

Tags:   ESA European Space Agency ISS PromISSe Andre Kuipers @astro_andre Orion European Agency

© All Rights Reserved

Credit: ESA - Jürgen Mai

Tags:   Rosetta wakeuprosetta ESOC Mission Control

© All Rights Reserved

ESA’s fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle, Albert Einstein, burnt up on 2 November at 12:04 GMT over an uninhabited area of the Pacific Ocean. It left the International Space Station a week earlier with 1.6 tonnes of waste after spending five months attached to the orbital outpost.

Each ATV mission ends with the spacecraft burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere. This time, however, the ATV team organised a special departure to gain valuable data on reentries.

After undocking at 09:00 GMT on 28 October, Albert Einstein was instructed by its control centre in Toulouse, France to perform delicate manoeuvres over the course of five days to position itself directly below the Station. Astronauts on the Station observed the vessel from above as it disintegrated.

This image from the Station was taken when Albert Einstein was around 100 km directly below and had began its destructive dive. It is the first view of an ATV reentry since the first, of Jules Verne, in 2008.

ATV Albert Einstein delivered 7 tonnes of supplies, propellant and experiments to the Space Station. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano oversaw the unloading and cataloguing of the cargo, comprising over 1400 individual items.

Credit: ESA/NASA

More photos in the ATV blog: blogs.esa.int/atv/2013/11/05/atv-4-reentry-pictures/

Tags:   ATV-4 Albert Einstein spacecraft reentry streak

© All Rights Reserved

Reflection patterns off one of the gold-plated spare mirrors of ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope shows a side of the mission rarely seen.

Captivating images of supernova remnants, stellar explosions and black hole environments are just some of the high-energy phenomena that go hand-in-hand with XMM-Newton.

By contrast, this image shows the journey that light particles from these objects might make on their way to the space telescope’s detectors.

In this artistic shot patterns are created by light reflected in one of the gold-plated mirrors. XMM-Newton’s three telescopes each contain 58 mirrors like this, and are among the most powerful ever developed.

The mirrors are only one millimetre thick and nested inside one another, rather like the layers of a leek. This construction earned the mission its name: X-ray Multi-Mirrors, while also honouring the physicist Sir Isaac Newton.

The mirrors are curved in such a way to ensure that the incoming X-rays are reflected twice and focused onto a detector in a single point.

XMM-Newton was launched on 10 December 1999, exactly 13 years ago today, and is still working well in orbit around Earth.

For more information, please click here.

Credits: ESA/Patrick Dumas/Look at Sciences

Tags:   ESA European Space Agency European Space Agency XMM-Newton mirror reflection

© All Rights Reserved

'Swage' was the word of the day on Monday as ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano carried out the third spacewalk to service the cosmic ray hunting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS-02. Luca swaged, or joined, the instrument’s tubes to a new pump system that will give it a new lease on life.

Riding on the International Space Station’s robotic arm, Luca soared to the cosmic ray detector’s worksite for nearly five hours of space plumbing.

Yesterday’s spacewalk was the most critical of four spacewalks planned to service the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer that has provided scientists with invaluable data on cosmic particles long after its original three-year mission. In 2017 the decision was made to service the instrument after all four cooling systems wore out.

Luca and NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan began by passing the cooling system to each other as they inched their way from the airlock to the Space Station’s robotic arm. Luca then attached himself to the arm and – aided by astronaut Jessica Meir who operated this from inside the Station – transported the system to the hard-to-reach worksite.

Luca rode the arm into position, seen in this image, and together with Drew screwed the new pump onto AMS. The system was powered on and Luca was moved to a different location by robotic arm for the swage operations. Luca did six swages before taking the robotic arm ride again to the underside of AMS for the last two and finish the job.

The spacewalk was a success, with Luca and Drew finishing their delicate and unprecedented work ahead of schedule. They returned to the Space Station airlock ending the spacewalk at six hours and two minutes. A fourth and last spacewalk for AMS is planned at a later date.

Credits: NASA

Tags:   ESA European Space Agency Space Universe Cosmos Space Science Science Beyond Luca Parmitano Beyond Missions Mission Beyond Human Spaceflight Astronaut Astronauts ISS International Space Station SpaceWalkforAMS AMS

© All Rights Reserved