Welcome

on my webpage! I’m a spacecraft analyst at the European Space Operations Centre via Telespazio Germany GmbH. In particular, I am a member of a large team operating Earth Explorer spacecrafts. In the past I have worked as an astrophysicist studing accreting neutron stars and cosmological neutrino sources. For more details please have a look at the “About me” menu.

ESA Space Science News

The following news are a copy of the ESA space science news, for which I thank ESA for authorization. In order to read the full articles please follow the corresponding links.

Integral spots giant explosions feeding neutron star jets 

27/03/2024

ESA’s gamma-ray space telescope Integral has played a decisive role in capturing jets of matter being expelled into space at one-third the speed of light. The material and energy were liberated when huge explosions occurred on the surface of a neutron star. This world-first observation proved to be 'a perfect experiment' for exploring astrophysical jets of all descriptions.
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SOHO reaches 5000 comets

27/03/2024

A citizen scientist digging through data from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has found the mission’s 5000th comet.
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Mars Express celebrates 25 000 orbits

27/03/2024

ESA’s Mars Express recently looped around Mars for the 25 000th time – and the orbiter has captured yet another spectacular view of the Red Planet to mark the occasion.
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Marvel at stunning echo of 800-year-old explosion

26/03/2024

In the year 1181 a rare supernova explosion appeared in the night sky, staying visible for 185 consecutive days.
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Euclid's sight restored

26/03/2024

A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible ‘VIS’ instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument’s complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission’s calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34 degrees, Euclid's sight was restored.
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Cluster explains spiral dance seen over Norway

25/03/2024

Photo of auroral spiral
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Saturn's moon Enceladus top target for ESA

25/03/2024

A fresh, icy crust hides a deep, enigmatic ocean. Plumes of water burst through cracks in the ice, shooting into space. An intrepid lander collects samples and analyses them for hints of life.ESA has started to turn this scene into a reality, devising a mission to investigate an ocean world around either Jupiter or Saturn. But which moon should we choose? What should the mission do exactly? A team of expert scientists has delivered their findings.
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Gaia unravels the ancient threads of the Milky Way

21/03/2024

ESA’s Gaia space telescope has further disentangled the history of our galaxy, discovering two surprising streams of stars that formed and wove together over 12 billion years ago.
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Gaia maps largest ever collection of quasars in space and time

18/03/2024

Astronomers have created the largest yet cosmic 3D map of quasars: bright and active centres of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes.
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Laser light sabre

15/03/2024

What looks like a light sabre is actually a laser beam guided in its path through a hair-thin jet of water, in the same manner as conventional fibre optics.
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Galactic Chloé - the Gaia mission

19/12/2023

For Gaia’s 10-year anniversary, ESA champion Galactic Chloé and the ESA Gaia team are very happy to collaborate to tell the space mission's story.
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Space Team Europe for Euclid: Laurent Brouard

30/11/2023

Focus on Euclid with Laurent Brouard: “I’m going to show you what a telescope that we send into space looks like.
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Space Team Europe for Euclid: Guadalupe Cañas Herrera

29/11/2023

Focus on Euclid with Guadalupe Cañas Herrera: “I’m exactly where I’ve always wanted to be.
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Space Team Europe for Euclid: Henk Hoekstra

28/11/2023

Henk Hoekstra, professor of observational cosmology at Leiden University, the Netherlands, shares his professional trajectory linked to weak gravitational lensing, a technique used by ESA’s Euclid mission.
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Space Team Europe for Euclid: Jean-Charles Cuillandre

27/11/2023

Focus on Euclid with Jean-Charles Cuillandre: “What we see in the first Euclid images is a promise of what will come in the future.
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