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!
ESA’s Rosetta mission has revealed a unique kind of aurora, an exciting phenomenon seen throughout the Solar System, at its target comet, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This animation illustrates the mechanism by which this aurora is created: as electrons stream out into space from the Sun and approach the comet, they are accelerated and go on to break down molecules in the comet’s environment. This destructive process can throw out excited atoms, which then ‘de-excite’ to produce the aurora. To characterise this process, researchers used a suite of detectors aboard Rosetta from a number of instrument packages (indicated at the bottom-centre of the frame: RPC, Rosina, Virtis, Miro and Alice).