ETH News

Few courses of study at ETH Zurich have attracted quite as much attention as the new Master in Space Systems. Teachers and students strapped in for the programme¡¯s launch this autumn.

Thomas Zurbuchen, Director of ETH Zurich Space, explains how Switzerland can do a better job of exploring and exploiting space ¨C and how there¡¯s still enormous potential to be tapped.

ETH Zurich is involved in a number of space missions ¨C from satellite-based searches for signs of life on exoplanets to the hunt for gravitational waves with the LISA space antenna. These projects rely on strong partnerships with the aerospace industry.

ETH spin-off Terensis is able to forecast the harvest yield and climate risks such as droughts and frost with the help of satellites. This not only helps farmers to plan. Authorities and insurance companies can also predict damage more efficiently.

The Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich has been renamed the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, abbreviated to D-EAPS, effective 1 August. Head of Department Johan Robertsson explains why the renaming was both logical and necessary.

Earth seen from space: ETH spin-off askEarth facilitates access to satellite images for environmental and climate monitoring. It supports businesses in combatting deforestation.

When the Earth¡¯s ice masses melt, the way the planet rotates also changes. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now been able to show how climate change is altering the Earth¡¯s axis of rotation and the length of the day. The speed of rotation, which was hitherto mainly influenced by the moon, will now also depend much more on the climate.

An international team of researchers combine orbital imagery with seismological data from NASA¡¯s Mars InSight lander to derive a new impact rate for meteorite strikes on Mars. Seismology also offers a new tool for determining the density of Mars¡¯ craters and the age of different regions of a planet.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in detecting heavy precipitation events directly with GPS data. The results of their study could significantly improve meteorological monitoring and forecasting.

It might be that what set prebiotic chemistry in motion and kept it going in the early days of the Earth was dust from outer space accumulating in holes melted into ice sheets. Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Cambridge have used a computer model to test this scenario.

Physicists at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich wanted to know whether the planned LIFE space mission could really detect traces of life on other planets. Yes, it can. The researchers reached this conclusion with the help of observations of our own planet.

A new Master¡¯s degree programme in Space Systems will be launched at ETH Zurich in autumn 2024. Interested parties can start applying in April.

The European Space Agency¡¯s most expensive and complex mission, the LISA space antenna, has reached a major milestone: it has passed the stage of intensive testing by experts in the Mission Adoption Review process - a significant step for the LISA consortium.

Craig Walton is the first NOMIS Fellow at the Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life at ETH Zurich. With an unconventional idea, he wants to find out the conditions under which life originated on Earth.

Mars¡¯s liquid iron core is smaller and denser than previously thought. Not only is it smaller, but it is also surrounded by a layer of molten rock. This is what ETH Zurich researchers conclude on the basis of seismic data from the InSight lander.

Gravity keeps our feet firmly on the ground and Earth in its orbit around the Sun. Meanwhile, satellites in space measure the acceleration caused by the Earth¡¯s gravitational pull.

Swiss engineers are training legged robots for future lunar missions that will search for minerals and raw materials. To ensure that the robots can continue to work even if one of them malfunctions, the researchers are teaching them teamwork.