5 APRIL 1993

FIRST EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON SPACE DEBRIS

ESA's 1993 space debris video was produced by the Space Debris Office at ESOC for the first European Conference on Space debris. A second conference was held in 1996.

15 OCTOBER 1997

CASSINI-HUYGENS LAUNCH

NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens launches on a Titan IV-B/Centaur from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission will explore the Saturn system, and deliver ESA's Huygens lander onto the moon Titan. Operated by ESOC, Huygens is a fully automatic laboratory fitted with scientific instruments that will probe Titan's atmosphere during descent via a parachute, and its surface upon landing. It will touch down on Titan in January 2005, making the most distant landing of any spacecraft in history. Cassini continued to explore Saturn until 2017.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

10 DECEMBER 1999

XMM NEWTON LAUNCH

XMM-Newton, at the time the world's most powerful X-ray telescope, is launched from Kourou, French Guiana, by an Ariane 5 launcher. The observatory is the flagship of European X-ray astronomy. XMM observes objects such as neutron stars, black holes and active galaxies. Hundreds of scientific papers are published annually using data provided by the mission.