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!
Astronomers have at last identified the distinct signatures of oxygen molecules in space, using observations made with ESA's Herschel Space Observatory. The rarity of cosmic oxygen molecules – the same molecules making up part of the air we breathe on Earth -- is still a mystery, but the new observations provide clues about why they had gone missing.
Herschel found the molecules in a dense patch of gas and dust adjacent to star-forming regions in the Orion nebula. Astronomers suspect that newborn stars heated nearby icy grains, releasing water, which was then converted to oxygen. In other parts of clouds, where oxygen molecules are not detected, the oxygen may be locked up in the icy grains.
The inset is an artist's impression of a collection of oxygen molecules, where two connected balls represent two oxygen atoms bound together as an oxygen molecule. The image of the Orion nebula was taken in infrared light by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.