Search results for:

NASA's new James Webb Telescope (JWST) is expected to revolutionise space observation. It was launched on 24 December 2021 from Kourou, French Guiana. After a 30 day journey, it reached the Lagrange point L2 at 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth in the opposite direction to the Sun. The long-awaited successor to Hubble, Webb is three times larger and has a mirror spanning more than six metres, becoming the world's largest orbital observatory. It took international teams more than 25 years to…

In this animated video, discover the SuperCam instrument, developed by teams from the CNRS, the CNES and their French and international partners, and embarked on the Perseverance rover scheduled to land on Mars on February 18, 2021.

Portrait de Pernelle Bernardi, lauréate de la médaille de cristal 2020 du CNRS. Ingénieure de recherche en astrophysique, spécialiste en développement d'instruments pour l'exploration spatiale ou installés sur de grands télescopes au sol, au Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique.

In 2004, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Rosetta mission. Its main objective is to analyse the composition of the nucleus of comet Churiumov-Guerasimenko in order to better understand the origin of water and life on Earth. After a ten-year journey through the solar system, the Rosetta probe succeeded in the double feat of orbiting the comet and then depositing the lander named Philae on the comet's nucleus. Two years of in-orbit and in-situ observations and analyses of Churiumov…

In 2000, the European and Japanese space agencies decided to jointly develop the BepiColombo mission. This mission involves two orbiters. The European-designed MPO will study the surface, interior and lower atmosphere of Mercury. The Japanese MMO orbiter's main objective will be to study the planet's magnetic field. They will cruise together, propelled by a third module MTM until they are put into orbit around Mercury. However, sending out such a mission involves major technical challenges…

After the Russian "Mars 96” mission had failed, the European Space Agency (ESA) took over the programme and created "Mars Express”. The objectives of sending this new probe to Mars are to map the planet, analyse its subsoil and study its atmosphere. It was launched on June 2, 2003 using a Russian rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, the Mars Express probe reached Mars in only 7 months. Since then, the aircraft has been making a series of rotations around Mars, at the rate of one every 7 hours…

This film is portrait of Carine Briand, astrophysics researcher at LESIA (space studies and astrophysics instrumentation laboratory) at the Paris observatory. As a specialist in solar physics, she is interested in energy transfers in the interplanetary environment. She talks about her career and her job as a researcher, dividing her time between theory, numerical simulation and satellite data observation.

Why does the solar system have eight planets instead of nine since 2006? In fact, this is because, as the furthest one, Pluto belongs to a family of small heavenly bodies whose significance has just begun to be discovered. Out there in the far frozen cold distance, its seems that there may exist millions of what one now calls Trans-Neptunian objects.

The mainly French-made Corot satellite is famous for being the first spacecraft specifically designed to detect new planets. Some of them could look like planet Earth. However, Corot was not originally intended to fulfil this mission.