Press Releases - June 2006

28 June 2006 - ESO
The Hooked Galaxy
Life is not easy, even for galaxies. Some indeed get so close to their neighbours that they get rather distorted. But such encounters between galaxies have another effect: they spawn new generations of stars, some of which explode. ESO's VLT has obtained a unique vista of a pair of entangled galaxies, in which a star exploded.

27 June 2006 - ESA
ESA donates mosaic of global images taken by its Envisat satellite to United Nations as a testimony to the state of our planet
The European Space Agency today donated a composite satellite image of global land cover provided by its Envisat satellite to the United Nations in Geneva, as a testimony to the current state of our planet, to be handed down to future generations.

26 June 2006 - ESA
Vega's Second Stage Motor Roars to Life
ESA's Vega small satellite launch vehicle has made a new step toward its maiden flight, late next year, with the success of the first firing test on its second stage motor, the Zefiro 23.

23 June 2006 - CERN
CERN confirms LHC start-up for 2007
First collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will happen in November 2007, said LHC project leader Lyn Evans at the 137th meeting of the CERN1 Council held in Geneva today. A two month run in 2007, with beams colliding at an energy of 0.9 TeV will allow the LHC accelerator and detector teams to run-in their equipment ready for a full 14 TeV energy run to start in Spring 2008.

22 June 2006 - ESA
Reappointment of ESA Director General and other Directors
Today the Council of the European Space Agency announced the renewal of the mandate of Mr Jean-Jacques Dordain as Director General of ESA for a further period of four years.

19 June 2006 - ESO
ESO and Chile: 10 Years of Productive Scientific Collaboration
ESO and the Government of Chile launched today the book "10 Years Exploring the Universe", written by the beneficiaries of the ESO-Chile Joint Committee. This annual fund provides grants for individual Chilean scientists, research infrastructures, scientific congresses, workshops for science teachers and astronomy outreach programmes for the public.

19 June 2006 - ESA
ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli assigned to crew for Shuttle flight STS-120
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.

17 June 2006 - ESA
First ESA long-duration mission onboard the ISS given 1 July start
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.

16 June 2006 - EMBL
Cracking a virus protection shield
16 June 2006 Cracking a virus protection shield Ebola, measles and rabies are serious threats to public health in developing countries. Despite different symptoms all of the diseases are caused by the same class of viruses that unlike most other living beings carry their genetic information on a single RNA molecule instead of a double strand of DNA. Now researchers from the Institut de Virologie Moléculaire et Structurale (IVMS) and the Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble have obtained a detailed structural picture of a protein that allows the rabies virus to withstand the human immune response and survive and replicate in our cells.

13 June 2006 - EFDA
ITER pioneers receive prestigious Russian energy prize
On the 13th of June in Saint Petersburg, three pioneers of the international fusion project ITER received the Russian prize "Global Energy" from Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation. The laureates - the Russian academician Evgeniy Velikhov, the Japanese Dr. Masaji Yoshikawa and the French Dr. Robert Aymar - received the award for their contributions to the development of the scientific and technological foundation of the ITER project.

8 June 2006 - ESO
The Toucan's Diamond
The Southern constellation Tucana (the Toucan) is probably best known as the home of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. But Tucana also hosts another famous object that shines thousands of lights, like a magnificent, oversized diamond in the sky: the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. More popularly known as 47 Tuc, it is surpassed in size and brightness by only one other globular cluster, Omega Centauri.

6 June 2006 - ESO
Do 'Planemos' Have Progeny?
Two new studies, based on observations made with ESO's telescopes, show that objects only a few times more massive than Jupiter are born with discs of dust and gas, the raw material for planet making. This suggests that miniature versions of the solar system may circle objects that are some 100 times less massive than our Sun.