Press Releases — 2006

Space Shuttle Discovery landed in Cape Canaveral, Florida tonight at 23:32 CET (22:32/GMT), completing one of the most complex assembly missions to the International Space Station to date, and bringing back ESA's two astronauts, Christer Fuglesang and Thomas Reiter. 

On 8 and 9 January, in the historic city of Edinburgh, ESA and BNSC are to hold a workshop to kick off the first in a series of consultations with key stakeholders. The aim is to define European long-term strategy for space exploration and set the scene for the decisions to be taken at the ESA Council meeting at ministerial level scheduled for 2008. 

On 27 December, COROT is to be launched into space on a unique astronomy mission: its twin goals are to detect exoplanets orbiting around other stars and to probe the mysteries of stellar interiors as never before. COROT is a French national space agency (CNES)-led mission to which the European Space Agency and European partners are adding a particularly strong international flavour. 

With results that the Principal Investigator of the Mars Express MARSIS radar, Giovanni Picardi, of the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, describes as unprecedented, Mars is showing scientists that it has an older, craggier face buried beneath its surface. The results were obtained by MARSIS, the pioneering sounding radar onboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, and provide important new clues about the still-mysterious geological history of Mars. 

Christer Fuglesang was launched last night onboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery on a mission to proceed with the assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) and to bring back to Earth another ESA astronaut, Thomas Reiter, who has been working in the orbital outpost for five months. 

After more than a decade of fascinating discoveries, the Hubble Space Telescope will soon be given the new beginning it deserves. Today, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has given the green light for a Shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the permanent space-based observatory.

With NASA’s launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on flight STS-116 scheduled for the night of Thursday 7 to Friday 8 December at 01:38 GMT (02:38 CET) at the earliest, ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang of Sweden is set to become the first citizen of a Nordic country to fly to the International Space Station. Fuglesang is currently undergoing intensive training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to prepare for the mission. 

For Europe, the spotlight is currently on the International Space Station. With construction of the ISS once more under way, a press conference has been organised at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany for 22 September to highlight present and forthcoming European human spaceflight missions to the Station. There will be missions involving four ESA astronauts in 2006/07, together with the launch of two ISS modules built in Europe, the Columbus laboratory and Node 2. The Columbus laboratory is one of the cornerstones of Europe’s contribution to the Station, along with the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) - the European ISS cargo spacecraft - also due for launch in 2007. The press conference will highlight the important role of Germany and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and more specifically of the Columbus Control Centre at Oberpfaffenhofen; this is at present supporting the European Astrolab mission on the ISS with ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter of Germany, and will become the command and control centre for the European Columbus laboratory once the latter has been launched. 

Early this morning, a small flash illuminated the surface of the Moon as the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 spacecraft impacted onto the lunar soil, in the ‘Lake of Excellence’ region. The planned impact concluded a successful mission that, in addition to testing innovative space technology, had been conducting a thorough scientific exploration of the Moon for about a year and a half. 

Now Europe too can say it has been to the Moon. In the early morning of 3 September this year (at 07:41 Central European Summer Time, as currently estimated), the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 mission will end its exploration adventure through a small impact on the lunar surface. 

On 3 August at 15:55 hours CEST, ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter will step out of the International Space Station to begin a 6½ hour spacewalk (extra-vehicular activity). During this time, he and fellow NASA crew member Jeff Williams will install items of hardware in preparation for future ISS assembly work and will also set up for deployment a number of instruments and experiments mounted on the outside of the Station. This will be Reiter’s third EVA, having already carried out two spacewalks on his EuroMir 95 mission in 1995. 

ESA astronaut Hans Schlegel of Germany has been named today to fly on the Space Shuttle mission that will deliver the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station in September/October 2007. ESA’s Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain announced the assignment on the occasion of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s official visit to ESA’s Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. 

On Thursday, 20 July, German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel and the Prime Minister of Germany’s Hesse region, Roland Koch, will address ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, currently on board the International Space Station (ISS), from ESA's operations centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. This first live “Space-to-Earth discussion” between Chancellor Merkel and Thomas Reiter will start at 12:30 CEST and last 20 minutes. 

Thanks to the resumption of Space Shuttle flights, the permanent crew of the International Space Station is now back up to three. Joining Russian commander Pavel Vinogradov and NASA flight engineer Jeffrey Williams onboard is ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter. 

As the Shuttle returns to flight and prepares the way for the resumption of International Space Station assembly, a European astronaut is - for the first time ever - heading for the orbital outpost to take up duty as a member of its permanent crew. His mission, dubbed Astrolab, is planned to last through to the end of the year. 

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli, of Italian nationality, was today assigned to the crew of the Space Shuttle flight which in summer 2007 will launch Node 2, an Italian-built U.S. connecting module, to the International Space Station. 

With NASA’s announcement today of the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on 1 July, ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, from Germany, is set to spend six to seven months in space as a member of the permanent crew of the International Space Station. 

The Columbus laboratory is Europe’s cornerstone contribution to the International Space Station. Final integration has been successfully completed in Bremen. Columbus will be shipped to Cape Canaveral at the end of May, from where it will be flown on a Space Shuttle to the ISS in the second half of 2007. 

This morning, at the end of a 153-day and 400-million km cruise into the inner solar system beginning with its launch on 9 November 2005, ESA’s Venus Express space probe fired its main engine at 09:17 CEST for a 50-minute burn, which brought it into orbit around Venus. With this firing, the probe reduced its relative velocity toward the planet from 29,000 to about 25,000 km/h and was captured by its gravity field. This orbit insertion manoeuvre was a complete success. 

After its five-month, 400 million kilometre journey inside our solar system following its lift-off on 9 November 2005, ESA’s probe Venus Express will finally arrive on 11 April at its destination: planet Venus. 

The European Robotic Arm (ERA), one of ESA's most important contributions to the International Space Station, will be delivered to Russia this summer in preparation for a launch to the ISS in 2007. ESA and Dutch Space have organised the European Robotics Media Day for 5 April 2006 to provide the media with the opportunity to become acquainted with ERA and the engineers behind this ambitious project (see attached programme). 

The heads of space agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on March 2, 2006, to review International Space Station (ISS) cooperation and endorse a revision to the ISS configuration and assembly sequence. At today’s meeting, the Heads of Agency were also briefed on the status of ongoing ISS operations and flight hardware development activities across the partnership. The partners reaffirmed their agencies’ commitment to meet their mutual obligations, to implement six person crew operations in 2009, and an adequate number of Shuttle flights to complete the assembly of ISS by the end of the decade. The partners also affirmed their plans to use a combination of transportation systems provided by Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States in order to complete ISS assembly in a timeframe that meets the needs of the partners and ensures full utilization of the unique capabilities of the ISS throughout its lifetime. 

ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter from Germany will soon become the first European to undertake a long-duration mission onboard the International Space Station following his dispatch on the next Shuttle mission (STS-121), currently scheduled for May. That mission, which is due to last six to seven months, will mark many important milestones for European astronauts, European science and European control centres. 

A high-capability new infrared satellite, ASTRO-F, was successfully launched last night by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). In a collaborative effort involving ESA and scientists across Europe, the spacecraft is now being prepared to start its mapping of the cosmos. Orbiting the Earth, ASTRO-F (to be renamed Akari (light) now that it is in orbit) will make an unprecedented study of the sky in infrared light, to reveal the distant phenomena hidden from our eyes that tell the story of the formation and evolution processes taking place in the universe.