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 topicA presentation of the cooperative ESA/NASA mission to send a spacecraft out of the elliptic plane and over an unexplored pole of the Sun. No spacecraft has ever ventured so far from the elliptical plane. To do so requires Ulysses to travel first to Jupiter, using the gravitational pull of the giant planet to propel itself towards the southern solar pole.
A shadow eclipses the face of a star. Darkness falls where once there was light leaving only the faint trace of the solar corona.
Deep inside the straís core gravitationnal pressures raise the temperatures so high that ions of hydrogen are fused together to formions of Helium, releasing vast amounts of energy.
This energy forms a heliosphere, a zone of solar influence in which the solar wind and its magnetic field dominate interstellar space.
How far this starís heliosphere actually extends is not known. Perhaps 7500 million kilometers; maybe up to 15,000 millions kilometers.
The star shakes and vibrates as it furiously resists the forces of its own gravitational mass. It has engaged in this titanic struggle since it was first formed more than 4,5 billion years ago.
Eventually, it will lose ballooning outwards to become a Red Giant and consuming all before it.
One day it will shrink again ending its days as a tiny, burnt out, stellar remnant, known as a White Dwarf.
This is no ordinary star, this is