16 September, an event established after it was discovered in 1985 that a large part of this layer over Antarctica was destroyed every spring.

This Sunday 8 September 2024, a first satellite of the Cluster mission (Salsa-C2) will reenter the Earth's atmosphere, ending a space adventure that has lasted more than 24 years. The Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy is proud to have played a part in it.

Thanks to observations made by the Solar Occultation in the Infrared (SOIR) instrument onboard the Venus Express space probe of the European Space Agency (ESA), researchers have revealed an unanticipated increase in the abundances of two variants of water molecules – H2O and HDO – along with their ratio HDO/H2O, in the Venus mesosphere.

The third CINDI-3-campaign took place in May-June 2024 at the Cabauw observatory, located between Rotterdam and Utrecht. More than 100 persons from 16 countries, with 44 instruments, were involved in the international measurement campaign, the largest of its kind in the world to test and compare different MAX-DOAS instruments that measure air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3).

A new study reveals for the first time the presence of water frost on the peak of Martian volcanoes near the equator. This discovery was published in a recent Nature Geoscience paper, with contributions from researchers of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB).

Many people, including some scientists, think that the Moon is just a gray ball of rock in our sky and scientifically boring. However, the contrary is true. Since the Moon lacks an Earth-like atmosphere, its surface stays virtually unchanged for years. It’s like a geological time capsule…