The European Space Agency (ESA) is an international organisation whose aim is to ensure and promote cooperation between Member States in space research and technology for exclusively peaceful purposes and their space applications. At the core of ESA's activities is the Science Programme, which aims to carry out astronomical, astrophysical and sometimes planetary robotic missions. The Czech Republic has been an ESA member country since 2008.

More information:

• www.esa.int

HPC facility Amálka is used by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics for extensive numerical simulations to study the plasma behavior in the interplanetary space (solar wind) and its interaction with bodies of the solar system (planets and their satellites). These results further enable a better interpretation and understanding of direct in situ measurements acquired by scientific instruments launched on board space missions (like Solar Orbiter, Messenger, Cluster II, etc.). First prototype of a parallel computing cluster was built at the Institute in 1998 and currently is being used already its 8th generation installed in 2024 with over 1300 CPU cores based on the Intel Xeon architecture.

Cluster II is a space mission of the European Space Agency ESA and NASA. The aim of the constellation of four identical satellites is to study the Earth's magnetosphere, in particular the effect of solar activity on the Earth's near-Earth environment. Thanks to the tetrahedron-shaped formation, the satellites can simultaneously measure changes on temporal and spatial scales. The mission is still active more than 20 years after its launch. The reception of selected science data is carried out at the receiving station in Panská Ves.

The daily total precipitation of 345.1 mm is the highest ever in the Czech Republic. It was achieved during a five-day rainfall event associated with a partially retrograde movement of a cyclone of Mediterranean origin across central Europe. The event caused catastrophic flooding, particularly in the northern Czech border region.