Press Releases - March 2008
28 March 2008 - ESA
Follow live Jules Verne ATV's first attempt to dock with the International Space Station
After several days spent in a parking orbit 2000 km ahead of the ISS, Jules Verne ATV is now ready to join up with the International Space Station. This first docking attempt can be followed live on 3 April 2008 from 15:30 CEST onwards from one of the European participating centres.
26 March 2008 - ESA
Endeavour brings ESA astronaut back to earth
Returning from its 16-day STS-123 mission to the International Space Station, NASA's Shuttle Endeavour has safely returned to earth, with a crew of seven onboard, including ESA astronaut Léopold Eyharts of France, who spent nearly 49 days in space on a mission to dock and commission Europe's Columbus laboratory.
25 March 2008 - ESO
A Giant of Astronomy and a Quantum of Solace
Cerro Paranal, the 2600m high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert that hosts ESO's Very Large Telescope, will be the stage for scenes in the next James Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace".
20 March 2008 - ESA
GOCE Media day at ESA/ESTEC
ESA's Gravity field and steady state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite is designed to provide unique models of the Earth's gravity field and of the geoid, on a global scale and with unprecedented accuracy and spatial resolution.
14 March 2008 - ESA
Spanish Chair for ESA Council
Maurici Lucena, Director General of CDTI (the Spanish Innovation Agency, which belongs to the Ministry of Industry Tourism and Trade) will chair the ESA Council for the next two years effective from 1 July.
9 March 2008 - ESA
Europe launches its first re-supply ship - Jules Verne ATV - to the ISS
Jules Verne, the first of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV), a new series of autonomous spaceships designed to re-supply and re-boost the International Space Station (ISS), was successfully launched into low Earth orbit by an Ariane 5 vehicle this morning. During the coming weeks, it will manoeuvre in order to rendezvous and eventually dock with the ISS to deliver cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the orbital outpost.
7 March 2008 - ESO
Seeing through the Dark
Astronomers have measured the distribution of mass inside a dark filament in a molecular cloud with an amazing level of detail and to great depth. The measurement is based on a new method that looks at the scattered near-infrared light or 'cloudshine' and was made with ESO's New Technology Telescope. Associated with the forthcoming VISTA telescope, this new technique will allow astronomers to better understand the cradles of newborn stars.
6 March 2008 - EMBL
New revelations in epigenetic control shed light on breast cancer
Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] in Heidelberg now gained new insight into one crucial epigenetic mechanism and reveal that it acts much faster than assumed.
3 March 2008 - ESA
Jules Verne ATV launch rescheduled to 9 March
Arianespace and the European Space Agency confirm today that the launch of Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle, is delayed 24 hours due to a technical concern about the ATV/Ariane 5 launcher separation system.