Space

CO₂ concentrations in the air continue to rise rapidly, and a rapid reduction in man-made emissions is becoming increasingly important. In order to assess the effectiveness of political measures, timely and reliable emission levels are needed. However, current methods are costly. The European Space Agency ESA is therefore working on the development of new satellites which will be able to determine CO₂ emissions in the future - with the help of Empa.

Fifteen months after the successful landing of the NASA InSight mission on Mars, first scientific analyses of ETH Zurich researchers and their partners reveal that the planet is seismically active. The recorded data enables a better understanding of the interior of Mars, the primary goal of the InSight mission.

After more than ten years of preparation, ESA's Solar Orbiter mission is scheduled to start on February 10th. On board the space probe is the Swiss X-ray telescope STIX – developed at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW. The pixel detectors needed to measure the X-ray energy were provided by staff members of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI.

A new generation of low-flying satellites promises an “Internet from space”, that will be able to cover even remote regions around the world. Computer scientists at ETH Zurich are proposing a novel network design that could double the network capacity of such systems.