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Space exploration with Ariane: turning space fiction into space reality

To the moon and beyond

01.05.2020

Launch on board Ariane rockets is the starting point of major space missions pushing back the frontiers of knowledge about our universe.

Europe’s first deep-space mission, Giotto was the first spacecraft to take close-up images of a comet, visiting both the young, active Halley’s comet in 1986 and the old Grigg-Skjellerup comet six years later.

During its three and a half year lifetime Hipparcos created the first all-sky map. It measured the position of over 100,000 stars with high precision and over 1,000,000 stars with a lower precision, providing an invaluable tool for astronomers.

ISO observed thermal radiation from astronomical objects invisible to optical telescopes. The most sensitive infrared satellite at the time, it made important discoveries about interstellar dust, the matter between stars within galaxies.

Still going strong after 20 years, the huge and powerful XMM-Newton X-ray telescope is helping to solve many cosmic mysteries, from what happens in and around black holes to the formation of galaxies in the early universe.