Press Releases - February 2008
29 February 2008 - ESA
Follow the launch of ATV 'Jules Verne' live from ESA sites across Europe
With ESA’s Columbus laboratory successfully attached and operating on the International Space Station, the time has now come for another European milestone mission to leave for the ISS - that of the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), named 'Jules Verne'.
28 February 2008 - ESA
Space Sentinels: new ‘tools’ in space to improve European environment and security policies
ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and European Commission Director General for Enterprise & Industry Heinz Zourek today signed in Brussels an agreement which establishes the allocation of an EC budget of €624 million to ESA as a contribution to the implementation of the GMES Space Component (GSC).
26 February 2008 - ESA
Galileo satellite GIOVE-B presented at ESA/ESTEC
Europe is building its own satellite navigation system, Galileo, which will deliver a new, advanced global civil positioning service for the benefit of citizens in Europe and throughout the world.
20 February 2008 - ESA
After successfully delivering Columbus, Atlantis is back on earth
NASA's space shuttle Atlantis, which successfully delivered ESA's Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station, has safely returned to earth with its crew of seven. Landing took place at 15:07 CET on 20 February on the shuttle landing strip of Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
11 February 2008 - ESA
ESA astronaut Frank De Winne to spend six months on the ISS in 2009
With the Columbus mission well under way, the space station programme has assigned crews for the next flight opportunities. Belgian ESA astronaut Frank De Winne joins Expedition 19 and will spend six months on the ISS in 2009. In May 2009, he will fly together with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS.
11 February 2008 - ESO
Light echoes whisper the distance to a star
Taking advantage of the presence of light echoes, a team of astronomers have used an ESO telescope to measure, at the 1% precision level, the distance of a Cepheid - a class of variable stars that constitutes one of the first steps in the cosmic distance ladder.
11 February 2008 - ESA
Jules Verne ATV launch approaching
After the successful launch of ESA's Columbus laboratory aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on Thursday (7 February), it is now time to focus on the next imminent milestone for ESA: the launch of Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to be sent to the International Space Station.
7 February - ESA
Europe's Columbus laboratory leaves Earth
Columbus, ESA's advanced science laboratory in space, has just been launched into orbit and is now on its way to dock with the International Space Station (ISS).
7 February - ESA
The European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Spain, ESA's new scientific heart, inaugurated by Spanish royalty
Their Royal Highnesses The Prince and Princess of Asturias inaugurated this afternoon ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), located on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain.
5 February 2008 - EMBL
Europe's most common genetic disease is a liver disorder
In a joint effort, researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] and the University of Heidelberg, Germany, have now discovered that the genetic iron overload disorder hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is a liver disease.