ESA - Integral updates

[eeergo]

Some hollywoodesque excitement!

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/1450091280243970048

However positively they (deservedly) try to spin it, seems like Integral might be singing its swansong. Or not, it's recovered from dicey situations before!

[edzieba]

Some hollywoodesque excitement!

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/1450091280243970048

However positively they (deservedly) try to spin it, seems like Integral might be singing its swansong. Or not, it's recovered from dicey situations before!

And as K2 demonstrated, even complete loss of pointing control is not necessarily the end for instruments with staring sensors.

[bolun]

Some hollywoodesque excitement!

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/1450091280243970048

However positively they (deservedly) try to spin it, seems like Integral might be singing its swansong. Or not, it's recovered from dicey situations before!

Three hours to save Integral (ESA's article)

Image credit: ESA

[bolun]

Integral's 20th anniversary

Launched on 17 October 2002, ESA’s Integral mission is a world-class mission which has been observing the Universe’s violent explosions and powerful phenomena for 20 years, achieving many scientific firsts. The mission's impressive lifetime is owed to responsibility and leadership on the side of ESA science and operations. This graphic highlights some of the mission’s impressive numbers to date.

Learn more about Integral

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/10/Integral_s_20th_anniversary

Image credit: ESA

[jacqmans]

Mission accomplished for Integral, ESA’s gamma-ray telescope
28/02/2025


In brief

Today, the European Space Agency’s gamma-ray telescope ends its observations. During its 22 years in space, Integral has reshaped our view of the most dramatic events in the Universe. The high-energy observatory played a pivotal role in revealing the nature of the cosmic explosions known as gamma-ray bursts and in uncovering the origin of gravitational wave events. Recently, it delivered unique insights into how thermonuclear blasts drive jets in neutron stars and captured the giant flare from an extragalactic magnetar.

In-depth

ESA's Integral was launched on 17 October 2002, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on a mission to observe the ever-changing, powerful, and extreme cosmos.

“For over two decades, Integral has shown us time and time again how important it is to look at the sky in gamma-ray light,” notes Jan-Uwe Ness, ESA’s Integral Project Scientist. “Some of the bursts of light associated with extreme physical events in our Universe can only be fully understood if we catch the rays that come from the very core of the blasts: the gamma rays.”

Unlike visible and radio light coming from space, which we can observe from the ground, cosmic gamma rays can only be captured in space. This is because Earth's atmosphere acts as a shield to protect us from these harmful rays.

“Integral has transformed our understanding of the dynamic high-energy Universe and physics in extreme conditions,” adds Prof. Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science.

“That Integral’s spacecraft and instrumentation have performed so exquisitely well for so many years is testament to the quality of the technology developed by the European scientific community and space industry at the turn of the millennium, and the science and engineering teams at ESA who have operated this mission ever since. Congratulations to all our communities for their dedication and achievements.”

Solving mysteries and breaking new ground

Integral’s observations have been key to solving the mysteries of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the powerful flashes of energetic light that flare up somewhere in the sky about once per day. These flashes often shine brighter than all other gamma-ray sources together.

Nowadays, scientists trace the origin of ‘longer’ GRB events lasting several seconds to the runaway collapse of massive stars that go supernova, while shorter bursts are due to black holes and neutron stars smashing into each other.

“What I find impressive about Integral are its unexpected discoveries,” remarks Jan-Uwe. “It turned out that Integral was ideal for tasks not at all foreseen when the mission was conceived. An example is its ability to track down the sources in the sky that generated some of the gravitational waves and ultrahigh-energy neutrinos caught by specialised instruments on the ground.”

At the time of Integral’s launch, scientists were not even sure whether gravitational waves could ever be directly detected; the first observation of these elusive ripples in spacetime was made 13 years after Integral’s launch by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors in the US, in 2015.

Breakthroughs kept coming.

“Just in the last two years or so, I was stunned by exciting new results. Integral captured the most powerful gamma-ray flash ever observed, and the blast impacted the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer,” continues Jan-Uwe. “This GRB took place in a galaxy almost two billion light-years away – it is mind-boggling to think that Earth can be affected by an event that took place in a remote corner of the Universe, two billion years ago.”

Two more recent findings focus on an extremely rare 0.1-second magnetar outburst that emitted as much energy as our Sun produces in half a million years, and the discovery that thermonuclear explosions drive jets in a neutron star.

Sharp gamma-ray eyes

At the time of launch, Integral was the most advanced gamma-ray observatory and the first space observatory able to see celestial objects simultaneously in gamma rays, X-rays,and visible light.

Three features of Integral’s instrumentation have made these many discoveries possible: a very large field-of-view covering about 900 square degrees of the sky in the most energetic X- and gamma rays; the ability to obtain, simultaneously, detailed images and spectra at the highest energies; the monitoring capability of the X-ray and optical cameras to help pinpoint the gamma-ray sources.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Integral/Mission_accomplished_for_Integral_ESA_s_gamma-ray_telescope#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=841427fd-1f0c-48ae-ba12-9fd723283687

[lark]

Spacecraft mission model now on ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/205410760477