All News There are 131 results. 05.10.2021 Minister Gewessler presents new Austrian space strategy : On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Austria's only manned space mission "AustroMir", the Technical Museum Vienna in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG invited to a festive event on October 1, 2021. During the event, the new space strategy was presented. 04.10.2021 Mercury spacecraft BepiColombo sends first images of Mercury : Nearly three years after its launch, the European-Japanese space probe BepiColombo has captured its first images of the planet Mercury. As the European Space Agency ESA announced on Saturday, the probe transmitted black-and-white images to Earth after its first flyby of Mercury, showing the planet's northern hemisphere. With its large craters, Mercury's surface is reminiscent of the moon. 04.10.2021 Mars simulation: Analog mission "AMADEE-20" starts today : Technologies for future space missions will be tested starting today (Oct. 4) during the Mars simulation "AMADEE-20" in the Negev Desert. The Analog mission of the Austrian Space Forum (ÖWF) will start with a one-week preparation phase before six Analog astronauts will conduct experiments for three weeks in a Mars-like environment, partially isolated from the environment, and test equipment and workflows for future Mars exploration on October 11. 24.09.2021 NASA Launches Mini Satellites to Explore Exoplanets : The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is scheduled to launch into space on Sept. 27 to study the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. The Graz Institute for Space Research (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is the main non-US partner. CUTE is 'cute' only in terms of its size; inside the satellite is high-tech at its finest. 14.09.2021 First "Austro" meteorite recovered in Styria since 1977 : On July 4, a 233-gram fragment of a meteorite was found in the municipality of Kindberg (Styria). Now called the "Kindberg meteorite," the extraterrestrial arrival is only the eighth such find in Austria in the past 250 years and the first since 1977. It is a "sensation for Austria," the curator of the meteorite collection at the Natural History Museum (NHM), Ludovic Ferrière, told APA. 12.09.2021 Graz researchers conquer W frequency band for satellite communications : Unexplored frequency bands for data traffic between Earth and satellites are in hot demand. From a handy satellite box they sent into space at the end of June, Styrian researchers received signals in the "W frequency band" for the first time worldwide. It could be used to connect large high-performance satellites to the Internet, Michael Schmidt of Joanneum Research in Graz told APA. Before that, however, they would have to get to know the frequency road in all kinds of weather. 10.09.2021 New telescope "James Webb" to be launched into space on December 18 : More than three years later than planned, the new "James Webb" space telescope is now soon to be launched into space. The joint project of the space agencies of Europe, the U.S. and Canada is scheduled to be launched Dec. 18 from the Kourou Cosmodrome in French Guiana, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Wednesday. Its destination is 1.5 million kilometers away in space. It will take about four weeks for it to get there. 06.09.2021 Styrian Space Technology - Pioneering W-Band Frequencies from Space : Radio frequencies and bandwidths are a globally hotly contested resource. It is primarily a matter of terrestrial applications, especially communication between devices (Internet-of-Things). The bandwidth demand resulting from this and from the large number of CubeSats and megaconstellations traveling in orbit is enormous. Now, for the first time, satellite signals have been received at 75 GHz from an altitude of 500 kilometers in Graz, on the roof of JOANNEUM RESEARCH. 06.09.2021 Supernova explosions donate warmth to planetary embryos : In the constellation of the Serpent Bearer, astronomers can currently observe the birth of new stars. As in the formation of our solar system, radioactive elements there provide abundant heat for the growing "planet embryos. They probably originate from the explosion of at least one supernova that existed a star generation earlier, a team of researchers with Austrian participation reports in the journal Nature Astronomy. 10.08.2021 Shooting star stream of the Perseids this year at night, but with competition : The peak of the annual meteor stream of the Perseids falls this year on Thursday (August 12). The time of maximum shooting star density between 21.00 and 00.00 o'clock promises sufficient darkness and thus very good visibility, however more and more satellites illuminated by the sun compete with the phenomenon, as it is called on the part of the Viennese working group for astronomy (WAA). 05.08.2021 Fuel tanks for ESA's Galileo satellites come from Holzhausen : Peak Technology, founded in 2007, is truly a "hidden champion": In an industrial park in Holzhausen (district of Wels-Land), a community of 1,000 inhabitants, idyllically located amidst orchards, the company has been tinkering with technology for space travel for quite some time. And now the "collection of Daniel Düsentriebs," as company founder Dieter Grebner calls his team, is to supply the fuel tanks for the satellites of ESA's European Galileo program. 04.08.2021 ESA probes almost in parallel at Venus : What seems idyllic in view of the density of satellites in Earth orbit is almost a high volume of traffic on Venus. Within a few hours on August 9 and 10, the ESA probes "Solar Orbiter" and "BepiColombo" will fly past Venus to slow down on the way to their mission destinations. With the Japanese Venus orbiter "Akatsuki", three research probes will then be at the planet closest to Earth. 27.07.2021 Christiane Helling directs ÖAW space research : The Institute for Space Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) is getting a new director. Astrophysicist Christiane Helling succeeds long-time director Wolfgang Baumjohann, who is retiring. Helling prevailed over her three competitors in a public hearing. 14.07.2021 ESA and NASA agree to collaborate on climate change : The U.S. space agency NASA and the European Space Agency ESA are joining forces in the fight against climate change. A strategic partnership has been agreed to ensure that data from Earth observation satellites is "used to advance science and ultimately for the greatest benefit of humankind," ESA announced Tuesday. 13.07.2021 Watch the grass grow with "SatGrass : Only from space can you see all 1.34 million hectares of grassland in Austria. How the data from ESA's Copernicus mission can be used for agriculture and agricultural policy is being investigated in the "SatGrass" project. 12.07.2021 Geoinformation for efficient relief operations : Geoinformatics experts in Salzburg are extracting indispensable knowledge for humanitarian aid activities from earth observation data. Thanks to BMK/FFG funding, this information can be tailored to the requirements of a wide range of aid and rescue missions in the future. 07.07.2021 NASA mission "Europa Clipper" relies on red-white-red technology : NASA plans to launch the "Europa Clipper" mission in 2024 to explore Jupiter's moon Europa and search for traces of life there. The U.S. space agency is relying on technology from Vienna to prepare for this: the transport on Earth will take place in a mobile clean room from the Viennese space technology company RUAG Space Austria, which also supplied the special equipment for rotating and turning the probe. This equipment is the second direct order from NASA, the company announced. 30.06.2021 Space heat shield from Austria enables Internet in the Arctic : Tomorrow, Thursday, another 36 small Internet satellites of the British-Indian company OneWeb will be launched into space. By the end of the year, this will bring fast Internet to the Arctic. The satellites are being protected by Thermalisolation from Austria. 29.06.2021 Impact researcher: Austria needs cameras for meteor watching : In Austria, around ten fisheye cameras will be on the lookout for fireballs from space in the future, Viennese impact researcher Christian Köberl told APA ahead of a conference on "Asteriod Day 2021" on June 30. Their videos can be used to determine where a cosmic chunk of rock may have landed and where it came from. It will also make it possible to estimate how many medium-sized, potentially dangerous objects are orbiting in the solar system. 28.06.2021 Cheops discovers unique exoplanet : In Nature Astronomy, an international team including the Graz Institute for Space Research (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences presents unusual details of a planet in the Nu2 Lupi star system, brought to light by chance by the ESA CHEOPS space telescope. 24.06.2021 464 Austrians want to become ESA astronauts : 22,589 people have submitted applications to become astronauts to the European Space Agency (ESA). The numbers after the application deadline on June 18 are not yet final, but already significantly exceed those of the last such call (2008) when 8,413 interested people registered. Among the all-aspirants are 464 Austrians, 115 of whom are women. More than 7,100 applications have been received from France, ESA announced on Wednesday.
