The telescopes of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) onboard Solar Orbiter opened their doors on May 12 2020 to photograph the Sun. This ‘First Light’ is a milestone, but also a critical step where many things can go wrong. The teams of scientists and operators are forced to work and communicate remotely.
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Within an EoS (Excellence of Science) project, Véronique Dehant, researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, participated in a study on the formation and the evolution of the atmosphere of Venus under the influence of asteroid impacts. This study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, concluded that the asteroids that contributed to the end of the accretion of Venus, and [...]
The Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched on February 10, 2020 from Cape Canaveral, carrying onboard the space telescope Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI). On February 25, EUI got the wake up call. At this stage we can happily report that EUI is awake: its temperature is ok, its computer has been successfully powered on and completed the self-tests and EUI could [...]
Brussels, February 24, 2020 – The NASA InSight mission to Mars has benefited from a significant contribution from scientists of the Royal Observatory of Belgium since its inception. They have located the landing site, reconstructed the landing trajectory and helped interpret the seismic data. The journal Nature Geoscience just published a series of articles that present these results, obtained after [...]
NASA will launch the Solar Orbiter spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, with 10 scientific instruments on board, including the space telescope Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI). Solar Orbiter is an ESA mission, with an important contribution from NASA, which will study the Sun from close up. The EUI instrument was built by a European consortium under the leadership of the Centre Spatial [...]
In 2019, 45 earthquakes and 14 induced earthquakes were located by the Royal Observatory of Belgium in or near Belgium. One earthquake, one induced event and one quarry blast were felt in Belgium. The largest event occurred on 23 June 2019 in Dessel (Belgium, ML=2.1). No damages have been reported this year in Belgium. [...]
Nervia and Eburonia are the new official names of the star HD49674 and its exoplanet. This was decided by the 1300 participants in the Belgian vote, whose purpose was to determine the winning proposal among the four pre-selected name pairs. [...]
Sébastien Le Maistre, researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, will receive the Georges Vanderlinden Prize from the Royal Academy of Belgium (Science Class). This distinction, which will be awarded to him on Saturday December 14, rewards his years of research in data processing for Martian missions. [...]
Brussels/Antwerp, 7 November 2019 – The Belgian instrument LaRa (Lander Radioscience) is accepted for integration on the Kazachok platform of the ExoMars 2020 mission. [...]
On November 2, the ESA satellite PROBA2 will be celebrating its 10th anniversary. Not too bad for this small Belgian spacecraft that was initially intended for a two-year mission! [...]