Latest Envisat Podcast Episodes
Galileo - the way forward
ESApod, audio and video from space - April 23, 2008 14:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThe European Union and the European Space Agency are taking to implement Galileo and achieve the full deployment of the first civil satellite navigation system. ESApod video programme
GIOVE-B
ESApod, audio and video from space - April 23, 2008 13:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingGIOVE-B will be a satellite very close to the satellites planned for the operational Galileo system to be deployed by 2013. In particular it will carry a high precision atomic clock which, once on orbit, will be the most accurate clock ever flying in space. With this launch the European Space Ag...
ATV: Closing in on the target
ESApod, audio and video from space - April 01, 2008 16:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingJules Verne ATV's laser rendezvous sensor will emit a signal and receive a reflection back from the International Space Station. Engineers at the ATV Control Centre and the astronauts on board ISS will monitor the spacecraft as it approaches for docking, making sure it follows a predefined corri...
ATV orbital rehearsals for ISS docking
ESApod, audio and video from space - March 28, 2008 14:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn 14 March, ATV successfully demonstrated the crucial Collision Avoidance Manoeuvre, or CAM, in which an automated system successfully took over control of the vessel and moved to a safe location. Now, two more 'Demonstration Days' are scheduled prior to the actual docking. The first, 29 March,...
Moons
ESApod, audio and video from space - March 18, 2008 15:00 - 5 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingA number of missions have spent time exploring these unknown worlds in the solar system. In January 2005, the European lander, Huygens stunned the world as it landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, revealing unexpected data. Missions such as ESA's SMART-1, which compiled the first comprehensiv...
Jules Verne ATV's space cargo
ESApod, audio and video from space - March 06, 2008 14:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingProvided by Thales Alenia Space in Italy, Jules Verne ATV’s Integrated Cargo Carrier is about half the volume of ESA’s Columbus laboratory. Around 180 kg of European cargo was first packed in Italy before being transported to Kourou, in French Guiana. Before the cargo was loaded into the spacecr...
ATV: A new generation space vehicle
ESApod, audio and video from space - March 04, 2008 12:00 - 3 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThe 48 cubic meter pressurised cargo module gives the ATV a capacity three times greater than existing space freighters. Its racks can be packed with more than 1300 kg of food, clothes, and equipment. Reservoirs can carry several hundred litres of drinking water and gases. Other tanks are loaded...
ATV: Rendezvous in space
ESApod, audio and video from space - February 29, 2008 10:30 - 6 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingFrom 1998, the International Space Station has required regular visits - to date 58 dockings - of the Shuttles, Soyuz crew, and Progress supply ships. Unmanned - but man-rated – ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) has the unique capability to perform automatic rendezvous in a fully autonomous...
ATV Control Centre readies for Europe's first-ever automated docking
ESApod, audio and video from space - February 22, 2008 14:30 - 5 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingEquipped with its own propulsion and navigation system, the unmanned ATV "space truck" - dubbed 'Jules Verne' - has a sophisticated automatic navigation system. Even though the ATV is an automatic space vehicle, ground control experts from ESA and CNES, the French space agency, will be heavily i...
SMOS: Helping Europe respond to climate change
ESApod, audio and video from space - February 15, 2008 12:30 - 3 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThree-quarters of the globe is covered in water and its influence is felt everywhere. It’s not only oceans, rivers and lakes that affect the climate but water in all its forms, such as soil moisture and its evaporation. SMOS, ESA’s water mission, will provide a uniform dataset for understanding ...
The Rosetta Odyssey
ESApod, audio and video from space - February 05, 2008 14:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingBefore each manoeuvre, the mission control team at ESA's Space Operations Centre simulates all aspects of the upcoming operation and practices identifying and solving problems that could arise. The multinational team must work as one to react immediately and effectively. Once at its target comet...
ESAC – Europe’s window to space
ESApod, audio and video from space - February 01, 2008 09:30 - 5 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThe European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) receives data from deep-space ground stations worldwide. The huge volume of data that comes back to Earth from space has to be calibrated and translated into a format that can be exploited by scientists. ESApod video programme
Very Long Baseline Interferometry - the sharpest views of the invisible
ESApod, audio and video from space - January 25, 2008 09:30 - 5 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingRadio telescopes must be very large in size to achieve the same resolution as optical telescopes. The only way to do this is by coupling two or more of them, the further apart the better, and to analyse their combined signals. An interferometer is a system which can avoid increased expenses due ...
Boosting capability: Santa Maria station joins ESTRACK tracking station network
ESApod, audio and video from space - January 18, 2008 09:30 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThe Santa Maria station (SMA) tracking footprint covers a large portion of the Atlantic ocean. The first launch to be tracked from Santa Maria will take place in early 2008, when Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to be sent to the International Space Station, lifts off from...
ESA annual press briefing. Listen to the conference with ESA Director General
ESApod, audio and video from space - January 14, 2008 14:30 - 2 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThe conference began at 08:30 with breakfast, followed at 09:00 by a press briefing to review the Agency’s activities in 2007 and look ahead to those of 2008, a year set to be full of events and marked by several major launches (ATV, Giove-B, GOCE, Herschel and Planck, SMOS, Vega), as well as a ...
GIOVE: Solid foundation for Galileo
ESApod, audio and video from space - December 18, 2007 09:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingToday, the specialists at the European Space Agency's Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands are able to confirm that the GIOVE-A mission is a success. This is an essential result for the next step in the programme: the launch of GIOVE-B, the second experimental satellite, scheduled f...
ISS update November 2007
ESApod, audio and video from space - December 04, 2007 09:00 - 6 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingHarmony, also known as Node 2, was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) by the STS-120 Shuttle mission last October. After STS-120 returned to Earth, the ISS Expedition 16 crew continued work to move Harmony to its final destination and get it ready to receive the next stage of the...
Health alert via satellite
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 30, 2007 09:00 - 6 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThis project is co-funded by the European Space Agency as part of a programme dedicated to telemedicine. The aim is to test a satellite communication system, the only technology that would remain fully operational in the event of a natural disaster. The exercise demonstrates the efficiency of sa...
Venus Express Update
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 29, 2007 16:00 - 6 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingVenus Express is the first mission dedicated to the study of the composition and dynamics of the planet’s atmosphere. The European orbiter has identified broad meteorological regimes, all influenced by the gigantic hurricane-like vortices at the poles. From these double-eyed vortices, swirling i...
The Columbus Mission
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 27, 2007 09:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingColumbus, with its planned operational lifetime of ten years, is Europe's first laboratory for long-term research in space conditions. Scientific experiments will be performed on board in the weightlessness of orbit. Once in orbit, Columbus will be taken out of the cargo bay by the Shuttle’s rob...
Hans Schlegel prepares for Columbus Mission
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 23, 2007 13:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingSchlegel has been preparing for his upcoming mission to deliver Columbus since starting his training as mission specialist with the NASA astronaut class of 1998 at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. All astronauts have to go through this extensive training to prepare for any given situation that...
ESA astronaut Leopold Eyharts ready to make space history
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 20, 2007 14:30 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingImagine a multifunctional high-tech laboratory, suspended some 400 km above our heads, dedicated to the achievement of scientific, technological and educational benefits for the citizens of Europe. Well, this dream actually exists, and it's called Columbus. In December, the Space Shuttle will ca...
ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli paves the way for Columbus
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 16, 2007 14:30 - 6 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn 23 October 2007, Italian ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli prepared for take-off on the outbound trip on Space Shuttle Discovery to the ISS. This mission, named Esperia, was exceptional because of the very special payload astronaut Nespoli was responsible for delivering: Node 2. The 'Harmony' Node ...
Earth swing-by: Rosetta operations update
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 12, 2007 14:00 - 4 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingRosetta, ESA's comet-chasing spacecraft, is due to swing-by Earth tomorrow, 13 November, making closest approach at 21:57 CET. The next three days promise to be intensely busy at ESOC, ESA's Space Operations Centre, in Darmstadt, Germany. On 12 November, ESApod spoke with Andrea Accomazzo, the S...
Rosetta's second Earth swing-by
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 09, 2007 09:00 - 4 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingRosetta swung by Earth in March 2005 and Mars in February 2007. As it approaches its home planet once again, the spacecraft will have travelled more than 3000 million kilometres since launch in 2004. At ESA's Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany, mission controllers have made t...
Columbus Control Centre - heart of European ISS operations
ESApod, audio and video from space - November 07, 2007 09:30 - 5 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingESA's Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, made its successful debut as an ISS control centre in 2006, scheduling and controlling the scientific experiments conducted by ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter during the hugely successful Astrolab mission. With delivery of Europe's space la...
European Columbus laboratory is ready to launch
ESApod, audio and video from space - October 31, 2007 08:00 - 6 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThe next step is to transfer Columbus and the external payload carrier by canister to Space Shuttle Atlantis, where they will be mounted into the cargo bay in the second week of November. After a month the space laboratory will be launched into space. Once on board the Station, ESA astronaut Léo...
The Esperia Mission October 2007
ESApod, audio and video from space - October 25, 2007 16:00 - 2 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingDuring a 10-day stay at the Space Station, Paolo Nespoli will coordinate three spacewalks from inside the ISS during which Harmony will be installed. He will also be carrying out experiments on behalf of ESA and of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). In return for Europe providing high-tech nodes fo...
European Space Technology Transfer Conference 2007
ESApod, audio and video from space - October 22, 2007 10:00 - 5 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOne hundred business professionals are gathering to learn how space technologies have provided innovative solutions in non-space applications and to discuss their further potential. The conference is being organised by ESA's Technology Transfer Programme, which promotes the use and transfer of s...
Science with Integral five years on
ESApod, audio and video from space - October 17, 2007 08:00 - 6 minutes - Video ★★★★★ - 1 ratingIntegral's gamma-ray mission was originally to last just two years. Given its achievements so far, it is not a surprise that the mission has been extended to 2010. Looking beyond our galaxy, science teams have located more than a hundred super-massive black holes, a million times the mass of the...
Related Envisat Topics