The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
The increase in visual brightness becomes very clear in this animated surface plot. Here the first and last images are taken from the animation. The brightness of image pixels seen by OSIRIS is plotted 'three-dimensionally', i.e. the brighter they are, the higher they are in the plot.
Images were taken at five-minute intervals around the impact time of 07:52 CEST (05:52 GMT/UT) on 4 July 2005.