The huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn's northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-colour view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This storm is the largest, most intense storm observed on Saturn and is still active today. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
Anaglyph image of Steins, taken around the time of Rosetta's closest approach to Steins on 5 September 2008.
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen is seen here during an aircraft flight in 2010 when he enjoyed his first taste of weightlessness. Parabolic flights offer 20 seconds of zero-gravity at a time and are one of the few practical ways for humans to experience weightlessness without leaving Earth.
In this picture Andreas is waiting for the weightless period to start on the parabolic flight to practise gripping objects and moving in zero-gravity.
Uluru/Ayers Rock in the Australian outback is featured in this image from the Kompsat-2 satellite. The rock formation is anInselberg– German for ‘island mountain’ – a prominent geological structure that rises from the surrounding plain.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, this part of Australia was a shallow sea. Layers of sandstone settled on the ocean floor and were compressed. These hardened, horizontal layers were uplifted and tilted almost 90º upwards to their present position. The rock eroded slower than the surrounding softer deposits until the monolith stood high above an otherwise flat surface. From this perpendicular angle of the satellite acquisition, we can see those layers that were once horizontal and now appear to cut across the top of the formation.
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Kompsat-2 satellite acquired this image on 15 September 2011. ESA supports Kompsat as a Third Party Mission, meaning it uses its ground infrastructure and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data to users.
This image is featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Albedo – or reflecting power of a surface – over the UK and Ireland from July 2005. This image was created from processed satellite data acquired every eight days over the course of the year.
For more information, read Reflecting on Earth's albedo.
Gaia is lifted and moved inside the clean room at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Gaia will be launched from Kourou later this year on a five-year mission to map the stars of the Milky Way with unprecedented precision.
Read more about the launch preparations in the Gaia blog: http://blogs.esa.int/gaia/
Invited guests, VIPs and media watching the 'Richtkrone' being lifted into place at the Richftfest roof-topping ceremony for the new ESOC II buildings, Darmstadt, 4 September 2013.
Week in Images
02-06 September 2013