ESA Operations, Engineering & Space Safety

📣 TT&C Workshop 2025: Apply for student sponsorship!  ESA Academy is pleased to sponsor up to 4 tertiary education students to attend the TT&C Workshop 2025, a unique forum dedicated to the evolution of Tracking, Telemetry, and Command (TT&C).  The sponsorship will cover the early bird registration fees and provide a partial reimbursement travel and accommodation expenses. To be eligible for an ESA Academy Student Sponsorship, students must individually present an accepted contribution at the conference, be enrolled as a student (Bsc, Msc, or Ph.D.) and be a citizen of an ESA Member State, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia or Slovenia. 2025 is a crucial year for ESA's TT&C with the 50-year celebration of the Estrack network and the inauguration of ESA's fourth deep-space antenna, in New Norcia.   ⏰ Deadline for application: 8 September 2025     🏛️ 10th ESA International Workshop on Tracking, Telemetry and Command Systems for Space Applications   📍 European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany   📅 25-28 November 2025     All details about student sponsorship programme 👉 https://lnkd.in/esP4F7iB 

🛰️ 💃 🛰️ #Proba3: And so the space waltz began… Earlier this week, the eclipse-making satellite duo moved a step closer to achieving autonomous formation flight. Both spacecraft aligned with the Sun for the first time and maintained their relative position for several hours without any control from the ground. At only 144 meters from each other, this is the first stage of the mission flight plan. Soon, the two satellites will be able to perform complex manoeuvres to cast a precisely held shadow from one spacecraft to the other to block out the Sun.  In the coming weeks, we will do more testing to achieve the desired precision, making Proba-3 the world’s first-ever precision formation flying mission. Launched at the end of 2024, the Proba-3 mission, composed of two spacecrafts, will demonstrate new technologies for satellite formation-flying. This formation will allow scientists to observe the Sun’s corona for a prolonged period. The operations are performed under the watchful eye of the small operations team located at the #ESEC SmallSat Operations Centre in Redu, Belgium. The interface between the operations centre and the ground stations is provided by ESA's European Space Control Centre (#ESOC). Learn more about the first steps of the space waltz 👉 https://lnkd.in/eRGsp5eA Redwire Space Europe | Sener Aerospace & Defence | ESA Technology 

👋🛰️ Farewell #Gaia! We will miss you! On 27 March, ESA's mission control at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre carefully switched off the spacecraft’s subsystems and sent it into a ‘retirement orbit’ around the Sun. Gaia far exceeded its planned lifetime of five years, and its fuel reserves are dwindling. The Gaia team carefully considered how best to dispose of the spacecraft in line with ESA’s efforts to responsibly dispose of its missions:   🔥 A large, 120 m/s burn inserted the spacecraft into its final orbit. 🔭 Instruments and subsystems were safely switched off and deactivated one by one. 🧮 Software were deliberately corrupted and overwritten. 🛜 The communication subsystem and the central computer were the last to be deactivated.   “Gaia was designed to withstand failures such as radiation storms, micrometeorite impacts or a loss of communication with Earth. It has multiple redundant systems that ensured it could always reboot and resume operations in the event of disruption," says Gaia Spacecraft Operator Tiago Nogueira. By deorbiting the spacecraft, ESA will avoid any harm or interference with other spacecraft in orbit around Lagrange point 2. This is a strong demonstration the Agency’s commitment to ensuring a #ZeroDebris space environment. Though the spacecraft’s operations are now over, Gaia’s prolific contributions to science and astronomy will continue for many years to come. The ESA Gaia flight operations team will continue working on the many exciting, current and future space missions operated from #ESOC. Relive Gaia's last instants 👉 https://lnkd.in/eVNBcgnt

🛰️ ☄️ How to find your way around an asteroid when you don't have a map? Hera's answer is autonomous navigation In 2022, DART charted Didymos, only to unchart it by ramming into it. Now, the Hera planetary defense mission is set to explore the unknown regions of Didymos and Dimorphos, sometimes orbiting as close as two kilometers. At this point autonomous surface tracking becomes essential to navigate: by imaging the same features – such as boulders and craters – in successive pictures Hera will be able to derive its own altitude and trajectory with respect to Dimorphos. Earlier this month, Hera performed a full-scale test of its technology during a Mars flyby. It successfully locked onto dozens of impact craters and other prominent surface features, tracking them over time. This technique will be employed to navigate around its target asteroids. “Landmark tracking has been demonstrated before with previously charted features but tracking unmapped markings in this way is really unprecedented," explains ESA’s Jesus Gil Fernandez, Hera’s guidance, navigation and control engineer. "Thankfully the system performed really well, giving us high confidence in the phase of Hera’s mission when it will use this technique to autonomously navigate around its asteroids and acquire close-up images of the crater”. The Hera autonomous surface feature tracking system is developed by teams from GMV in Spain and Romania. Learn more about this technology 👉 https://lnkd.in/e2J4Ecbh ESA Technology | ESA Space Safety

📣 Join us online to find out about planetary defence and spacecraft operations! On 27 March, the Association for Project Management is giving you the opportunity to exchange with two of our experts from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Europe's centre of excellence for satellite operations. ☄️ Richard Moissl, Head of the ESA Planetary Defence Office, will explain how to keep a planet safe from asteroids and the role of ESA Space Safety. 🛰️ Thomas Ormston, Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager for #Sentinel1 at ESA, will take us behind the scenes of satellite operations, sharing insider stories of how missions are flown, the challenges faced, and the lessons learned along the way.   🗣️ How to keep a planet safe from asteroids, and Tales from a spacecraft cockpit webinar 📅 Thursday 27 March, starting at 15:00 CET 📍 Online The webinar is free of charge.   Book now 👉 https://lnkd.in/ebkahmh2

🛰️🔢 Celebrating AI innovations in Ground Segment Engineering, Operations, and Space Safety!   On 13 March, ESOC proudly welcomed AI specialists to explore how artificial intelligence can revolutionise our activites. With 290 participants from over 20 countries, including 120 on-site attendees, the AI Symposium was a gathering of experts and innovators.   On the agenda: 🔹 Insights about current and future AI applications at #ESOC, covering Spacecraft Operations, Ground Stations Operations, Digital Twins, Space Debris, and Mission Analysis. 🔹Live demonstrations and hands-on sessions around three cutting-edge ESOC AI software applications.   Participants had the opportunity to network with ESA, space agencies, industry leaders, and academia, discussing the benefits of AI and its challenges in deploying it.   𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬…   The highlight of the event was the three-hour hackathon where participants used ESA’s Anomaly Detection Dataset to develop new algorithms to enhance anomaly detection automation.   With 56 submissions, the competition was fierce. Impressively, the top three participants, all working solo, surpassed the best baseline within the limited timeframe. Congratulations to the winner, Simon Hans Schaefer, from Telespazio Germany!   📸 Channels of spacecraft telemetry with anomalies highlighted in red. 𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭…   ESA, with support of KP Labs and Università di Pisa, also launched an AI Spacecraft Anomaly Challenge on Kaggle that will run until mid-June! AI practitioners are sought! 👉 https://lnkd.in/eMmTWZGt   Interested in what ESA is doing with AI? 👉 https://lnkd.in/ekPGAbhP

🛰️ #Biomass unboxed and under inspection, similations ongoing! Over the last weeks, the Biomass satellite crossed the Atlantic to reach Europe’s Spaceport in French Guyana where it is being thoroughly inspected to ensure that it is in good health. In parallel, at #ESOC, a large 'team of teams' of engineers and scientists - working on the ground segment, flight dynamics, software and networks - is advancing with the simulations of the satellite's first and most critical moments in space This phase will be completed shortly before the launch and culminate with a dress rehearsal. The Biomass mission will provide invaluable insights into Earth’s forests and the carbon cycle. Learn more 👉 https://lnkd.in/ee--KCmn 📸 ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–S. Martin

Today, we’re launching ‘Strategy 2040’, laying out ESA’s future activities and priorities, with a clear and ambitious vision to cement Europe’s leadership in space. #Strategy2040 will evolve and grow over the years ahead. Read more👉https://lnkd.in/epK6HczG

Apply now for a unique Mission Operations Hands-On Experience and get a to know the fascinating world of spacecraft operations with its unique challenges and need for excellent teamwork.   🏛️ 4th ESA Mission Operations Hands-On Experience 📍 European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany 📅 19-23 May 2025 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eNDcvfuA   Apply by 21 April!

🌌 🛰️ Congratulations to #ESAEuclid for releasing its first batch of astronomical data! This colossal collection of Euclid's high-resolution images of the sky is also a significant achievement for #Estrack, ESA’s network of deep space antennas. Every day about 100 GB are being downlinked via ESA's deep space antennas and complex ground systems leading to its mission control at the European Space Operations Centre (#ESOC). Check out the latest release of data 👉 https://lnkd.in/dfDjWH_a Find out more about the ingenious engineering that made Euclid’s ground systems ready to ‘download the Universe’ 👉 https://lnkd.in/dW7v3SvZ Explore the images in the highest resolution 👉 https://lnkd.in/ezEAkT_j