An extensive network of fault lines cut through this region of Mars, including one that slices clean through an ancient 52 km-wide crater.

The fault network is likely linked to the formation of the Tharsis Bulge, a region to the east that is home to several large volcanoes, including Olympus Mons.

Vast volumes of lava that erupted from these volcanoes in the past were deposited onto the surface, building up thick layers. The load imposed on the crust by the lava resulted in immense stress, which was later released by the formation of a wide-reaching fault and fracture system.

One 1.5 km-wide ‘graben’ cuts through the crater in this image. It also encounters numerous blocks of material that sit on the otherwise smooth crater floor, reminiscent of chaotic terrain found in many locations on Mars.

The crater has apparently been infilled by other materials, perhaps a mix of lava and wind-blown or fluvial sediments. To the top left of the crater, in particular, the sediments have been shaped into parallel features known as yardangs.

This image was first published on the DLR website on 28 April 2016.

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The position of each asteroid at 12:00 CEST on 13 June 2022 is plotted. Each asteroid is a segment representing its motion over 10 days. Inner bodies move faster around the Sun (yellow circle at the centre). Blue represents the inner part of the Solar System, where the Near Earth Asteroids, Mars crossers, and terrestrial planets are. The Main Belt, between Mars and Jupter, is green. The two orange ‘clouds’ correspond to the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter.

Read more about Gaia's data release 3 here.

Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) shows a beautiful spiral galaxy called NGC 6744. At first glance, it resembles our Milky Way albeit larger, measuring more than 200 000 light-years across compared to 100 000 light-year diameter for our home galaxy.

NGC 6744 is similar to our home galaxy in more ways than one. Like the Milky Way, NGC 6744 has a prominent central region packed with old yellow stars. Moving away from the galactic core, one can see parts of the dusty spiral arms painted in shades of pink and blue; while the blue sites are full of young star clusters, the pink ones are regions of active star formation, indicating that the galaxy is still very lively.

In 2005, a supernova, named 2005at, was discovered within NGC 6744, adding to the argument of this galaxy’s liveliness (not visible in this image). SN 2005at is a type Ic supernova, formed when a massive star collapses in itself and loses its hydrogen envelope.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0

Barranquilla, the capital of the Atlántico department in northwest Colombia, is featured in this image taken by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Barranquilla, visible in grey at the top of the image, covers an area of around 155 sq km and is the fourth-most populous city in Colombia after Bogotá, Medellín and Cali. The city of Barranquilla serves as a major trade centre for Colombia, housing the largest port along the Caribbean Sea. Thanks to this famous port, Barranquilla earned itself the nickname ‘Colombia's Golden Gate’ (or La Puerta de Oro de Colombia in Spanish).

The city lies strategically next to the delta of the Magdalena River, one of the main rivers in Colombia, flowing northwards for around 1500 km through the west half of the country before emptying into the Caribbean Sea.

Owing to large quantities of sediment, as seen by the extensive sediment plume at its mouth and the brownish colour of its waters, the Magdalena requires frequent dredging of its main channel to allow access to Barranquilla’s port for oceangoing vessels. This image, captured in March 2021, was taken just before the onset of the rainy season, which starts in April.

The urban area of Barranquilla, with airport runways visible south of the city, contrasts with the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta swampy marshes to the east visible in dark green. Selected as a Ramsar Site of International Importance, the site is important for its mangrove ecosystem, which is the largest on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. It also serves as habitat and winter breeding ground for several bird species.

Other notable features in the image include the El Guajaro Reservoir, around 50 km southwest of Barranquilla. The reservoir was created by the union of seven smaller swamps in the area to supply water for agricultural irrigation. In addition to sewage discharges, the reservoir receives agricultural runoff, particularly during the rainy season, which leads to states of eutrophication in the water that are accompanied by blooms of harmful microorganisms, otherwise known as cyanobacteria.

These types of algae, which are commonly present in freshwater and saline ecosystems, are most likely why the lake appears in emerald green in today’s image. Satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission can track the growth and spread of harmful algae blooms in order to alert and mitigate against damaging impacts for tourism and fishing industries.

The image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over San Francisco Bay in the US state of California.

San Francisco Bay, almost 100 km in length, is a shallow estuary surrounded by the San Francisco Bay Area – an extensive metropolitan region that is dominated by large cities such as San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. The densely populated urban areas around the bay contrast strongly with the surrounding green forest and park areas.

In the upper right of the image, the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers is visible – with the brown, sediment-filled water flowing down into San Pablo Bay. Here, the murky waters mix before flowing into the larger bay area, which is connected to the Pacific Ocean via the Golden Gate strait. A large sediment plume can be seen travelling westward into the Pacific in the left of the image.

The Golden Gate Bridge, around 2.7 km long, is visible crossing the opening of the bay into the Pacific Ocean between Marin County and the city of San Francisco – which can be seen at the tip of the southern peninsula in the centre of the image. Treasure, Angel and Alcatraz islands can be seen sticking out of the waters of the bay, with several bridges connecting its east and west shores. Several boats are also visible.

The bright green and yellow colours in the bottom right of the image are salt ponds and are part of the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge. Covering an area of around 120 sq km, the refuge contains salt marsh, mudflat and vernal pool habitats for millions of migratory birds and endangered species.

Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus programme. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution allow changes in water bodies to be closely monitored.

This image, captured on 25 January 2019, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

This image shows a feature on Mars’ surface named Moreux crater. It comprises data gathered on 30 October 2019 during orbit 20014. The ground resolution is approximately 16 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 44°E/42°N.

This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface.

Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Sardinia (also known as Sardegna) is situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and south and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the east. The island sits 200 km west of the Italian Peninsula, 200 km north of Tunisia and around 12 km south of the French island of Corsica, partially visible in the top of the image.

This image, which uses data from 11 October to 14 October 2019, has been processed using the shortwave infrared band and the near infrared band to highlight dense vegetation. Crops and vegetation appear in bright green in the image, while bare soil can be seen in various shades of orange and brown.

Grasslands and croplands with a higher moisture content appear more vibrant in the image. As water is a strong absorber of infrared, inland water bodies are delineated and can be easily spotted in black. Much of the Sardinia’s arable land is devoted to cereal cultivation and fruit growing.

Sardinia is a mainly mountainous region, with its highest point Mount La Marmora in the Gennargentu massif visible in the centre-right of the image. With over 1800 km of coastline, Sardinia is internally renowned for its beaches including those along the Emerald Coast, or Costa Smeralda, Alghero and Villasimius. The coasts, particularly in the east, are high and rocky, with long stretches of coastline with bays, inlets and various smaller islands located off the coast.

The archipelago of La Maddalena, including the renowned islands of La Maddalena, Caprera and Santo Stefano, can be seen in the top-right of the image. Its islands are known for their pristine beaches and wild beauty. Cagliari, the island’s capital and largest city, lies on the southern coast of the island.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 is designed to provide images that can be used to distinguish between different crop types as well as data on numerous plant indices, such as leaf area index, leaf chlorophyll content and leaf water content – all of which are essential to accurately monitor plant growth.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Artist's impression of Heracles landing on the Moon.

ESA is working with the Canadian and Japanese space agencies to prepare the Heracles robotic mission to the Moon in the mid-to-late-2020s. Using the Gateway as a halfway point, a robotic rover will scout the terrain in preparation for the future arrival of astronauts, and deliver lunar samples to Earth.

This mission offers the best and earliest chance to deliver Moon samples to Earth on NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

Goals also include testing new hardware, demonstrating technology and gaining experience in operations while strengthening international partnerships in exploration.

A small lander with a rover inside weighing around 1800 kg in total will land and be monitored by astronauts from the space gateway. An ascent module will take off from the surface and return to the gateway with samples taken by the rover.

Heracles will demonstrate these technologies and prove their value for humans. Later missions will include a pressurised rover driven by astronauts and an ascent module for the crew to return home.

Communications are key, with satellites providing high-speed networks to operate rovers from orbit, including feeding visuals from cameras, control signals to move the cameras, arms and wheels, and transmitting scientific data.

When the ascent module carrying the sample container arrives, the Gateway’s robotic arm will capture and berth it with the outpost’s airlock for unpacking and transfer of the container to Orion and subsequent flight to Earth with returning astronauts.

Heracles is an international programme to use the Gateway to the fullest and deliver samples to scientists on Earth using new technology that is more capable and lighter than previous missions.

Credits: ESA/ATG Medialab

Dress rehearsals don’t just happen on Broadway, they are a vital part of spacecraft launch preparations. After months of practising for a wide range of worst-case scenarios and ‘nominal’ - perfect - lift-offs, the SEOSAT-Ingenio Flight Control Team recently went through the final practise-run, preparing to bring a new Earth observation satellite into orbit.

In the many simulations leading up to this point, the control team worked with a simulated version of the SEOSAT-Ingenio satellite, one which was designed to go wrong in a variety of unpredictable ways, preparing them for the many problems that can arise in space.

On Saturday 14 November, for the first time, they were connected to the satellite on the launchpad in Kourou as well as with partners and colleagues around the globe who are working together to make this launch and 'early orbit' a possibility.

In this photo, Isabel Rojo, Spacecraft Operations Manager for the mission sits in the Main Control Room at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre during the rehearsal. Masks, dividers and strict social distancing rules are now in place across the site.

The flagship SEOSAT-Ingenio is a mission of the Spanish Earth Observation Program, and will launch on Tuesday 17 November at 02:52 CET from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Shortly after launch, the fledgling mission will establish communications with ESA’s ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where teams will monitor and control the spacecraft during its intense first days in space, before handing over control to Spain’s National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) for routine operations.

During SEOSAT-Ingenio’s early days in space – the critical ‘Launch and Early Orbit Phase’ – teams at ESA mission control will conduct a series of manoeuvres to put it in its target orbit, communicating with the spacecraft using ground stations including ESA’s own Kiruna station in Sweden.

After safely guiding the satellite through this phase, ESOC will hand control over to an INTA control facility in Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, which will primarily communicate with it using their own ground station in Torrejón.

Find out more about how teams have been preparing for this launch amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and follow along live via @esaoperations on Twitter where you’ll find rolling coverage leading up to liftoff straight from the heart of mission control.

Credits: Daniel Mesples

This week’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases the galaxy NGC 4036: a lenticular galaxy some 70 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (the Great Bear).

This galaxy is known for its irregular lanes of dust, which form a swirling spiral pattern around the centre of the galaxy. This core is surrounded by an extended, hazy aura of gas and dust that stretches further out into space and causes the warm, fuzzy glow that can be seen here. The centre itself is also intriguing; it is something known as a LINER-type (Low-Ionisation Nuclear Emission-line Region) galactic nucleus, meaning that it displays particular emission lines within its spectrum. The particularly bright star visible slightly to the right of the galactic centre is not within the galaxy itself; it sits between us and NGC 4036, adding a burst of brightness to the scene.

Due to its relative brightness, this galaxy can be seen using an amateur telescope, making it a favourite amongst backyard astronomers and astrophotography aficionados.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

ESA’s Euclid satellite sets sail from the port of Savona, Italy to the port near its launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The ship is expected to reach its destination at the beginning of May, getting ready for launch no earlier than this July on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, USA.

Euclid will travel 1.5 million km from Earth, in the opposite direction to the Sun, to the Lagrange point L2. From there, ESA's Euclid mission will begin the detective work of exploring the dark Universe.

Euclid will create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe ever. It will observe billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. With this map, Euclid will reveal how the Universe has expanded and how large-scale structure has evolved over cosmic history. And from this, we can learn more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Credits: Thales Alenia Space / ImagIn

This is the antenna that will transmit back the first close-up images of the distant Dimorphos asteroid since its orbit was shifted by a collision with NASA’s DART spacecraft.

The 1.13-m diameter High Gain Antenna of ESA’s Hera mission went through a week-long test campaign at the Compact Antenna Test Range, part of the Agency’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands.

The CATR’s metal walls isolate external radio signals while its foam-spike-lined interior absorb radio signals to prevent reflections and reproduce the empty void of space. Each test session took more than 10 hours at a time, with the antenna rotated a degree at a time to build up a 360 degree picture of the antenna’s detailed signal shape.

“The High Gain Antenna is really a crucial part of our mission – it will be our sole means of receiving data and sending commands with the volume we need, with the Low Gain Antenna as backup for low data rate emergency communications” explains Hera antenna engineer Victoria Iza.

Hera system engineer Paolo Concari adds: “Coupled with an innovative deep-space transponder, this antenna will also perform science in its own right. Doppler shifting in its signals due to slight shifts in Hera’s velocity as the spacecraft orbits Dimorphos will be used to derive the mass and shape of the asteroid. But for this radio science experiment to work well, the antenna signal will need to remain stable over time, which means the antenna itself has to maintain its geometrical shape very precisely.”

The High Gain Antenna was manufactured by HPS in Germany and Romania. The company was checking that the antenna’s CATR test performance met mission requirements, comparing the results to simulated radio frequency data.

“The antenna reflector is made of carbon fibre, which makes it very stable and resistant to temperature extremes and general environmental stresses,” comments Fulvio Triberti from HPS. “With a total mass of just 7.5 kg, it is a scaled up version of a smaller model produced for ESA’s Euclid’s observatory, which will operate 1.5 million km from Earth. But Hera’s antenna will need to operate over much greater distances still than Euclid, transmitting and receiving across as far as over 400 million km.”

Located on the exterior of the spacecraft, the High Gain Antenna is especially susceptible to accelerations during launch and the high and low temperatures experienced in space – for added protection against the latter, the antenna will be flown covered in a Kapton-Germanium sunshield that provides thermal isolation while radio waves can still pass through it.

So, as a next step, the antenna will undergo vibration testing at IABG in Germany, to reproduce launch stresses, followed by ‘thermal vacuum’ testing at AAC in Austria, to simulate temperature extremes. Then the antenna will return to the CATR next spring, in order to check that this environmental testing did nothing to degrade its radio-frequency performance.

Antenna engineer Ines Barbary led the CATR test campaign: “The challenge for us has been the very high gain of the antenna, and also its tightly focused directivity – it is a very narrowly focused beam with low side lobes. Our test signals cross less than 2 m from our antenna to the High Gain Antenna within the chamber but our specialist software can transform the signals as if they are travelling across vast distances.”

The High Gain Antenna boosts its signal more than 4000-fold to reach Earth, focused down to only half a degree, so that the entire spacecraft will move in order to line up with its homeworld.

“It’s a fantastic feeling to see flight hardware take shape like this,” concludes Paolo. “And all involved did a great job in making it happen on time, to meet our launch schedule in October 2024.”

Credits: ESA-SJM Photography

Seen on a microscopic support, this sharp-edged grain of rock is an extraterrestrial object – a tiny sample from the Itokawa asteroid, retrieved by Japan’s Hayabusa mission and now being tested by ESA researchers.

Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft was the world’s first mission to retrieve samples from the surface of an asteroid and return them to Earth. Beset by many problems, after a seven-year, six-billion-km odyssey Hayabusa returned around 1 500 precious asteroid grains to Earth.

Extremely precious, these Hayabusa grains have become the focus of scientific study around the world – and three of them are currently here, at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands.

Researcher Fabrice Cipriani is leading research into their static charging properties, to understand the consequences for the surface environments of asteroids.

Watch this video interview with Fabrice produced for ESA’s Asteroid Day webcast.

Credits: ESA

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will serve as commander of the International Space Station towards the end of his second mission, called Alpha, currently slated to begin on 22 April this year. The announcement was made during today’s press briefing.

Thomas will be the fourth European to hold the post of commander, after ESA astronauts Frank De Winne, Alexander Gerst and Luca Parmitano. During the briefing, Thomas remarked how three back-to-back European commanders underscores the growing role of Europe in space exploration and is a testament to the hard work of ESA colleagues.

‘I am unbelievably humbled and honoured’, said Thomas.

Thomas will be the first ESA astronaut to fly on a SpaceX Crew Dragon launching on a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, USA. He will accompany NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.

During his six-month Alpha mission, Thomas will continue the programme of research that often spans multiple missions and a wide range of scientific disciplines spanning materials science and radiation to educational activities.

The end of Thomas six-month stay on board will overlap with the start of German ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer’s first mission to the Space Station, called Comic Kiss, which will be followed by Samantha Cristoforetti’s second tenure in space, marking three back-to-back missions for ESA astronauts.

Follow Thomas Pesquet and his Alpha mission

Credits: NASA–Bill Stafford

There are more than 20,000 galaxies in this field. This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope view is found between the Pisces and Andromeda constellations.

Researchers using Webb anchored their observations on quasar J0100+2802, an active supermassive black hole that acts like a beacon. It is at the centre of the image above, and appears tiny and pink with six prominent diffraction spikes.

The quasar is so luminous that it acts like a flashlight, illuminating the gas between it and the telescope. The team analyzed 117 galaxies that all existed approximately 900 million years after the big bang – focusing on 59 that lie in front of the quasar. The researchers could study not only the galaxies themselves, but also the illuminated gas surrounding them.

These galaxies existed just before the end of the Era of Reionisation, when the Universe contained a patchwork of gas – some opaque and some transparent (or ionised).

Researchers have long sought evidence to explain what happened during this period, when the Universe experienced dramatic changes. After the big bang, gas in the Universe was incredibly hot and dense. Over hundreds of millions of years, the gas cooled. Then, the Universe hit “repeat.” The gas again became hot and ionised – and transparent.

The team’s results more concretely define the conditions at this specific “stop” in the Universe’s history. Webb shows that these transparent regions exist around galaxies. They are much like hot air balloons, with galaxies the size of peas clearing that space.

Webb showed that galaxies have fully ionised the gas within a 2 million light-year radius. That’s approximately the same distance as the space between our Milky Way galaxy and our nearest neighbour, Andromeda. Over the next hundred million years, the bubbles went on to grow larger and larger, eventually merging and causing the entire Universe to become transparent.

These results were announced by members of the Emission-line galaxies and Intergalactic Gas in the Epoch of Reionisation (EIGER) team. The team will eventually have images and data from six fields, each centred on a quasar, but Webb’s first image from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and data known as spectra are so detailed that they could easily make definitive conclusions without waiting for additional observations.

[Image description: Thousands of tiny galaxies appear across the black expanse of space. The galaxy colours vary. Some of the smallest galaxies are shades of orange and pink. Most galaxies are so distant they appear as single points of light. At the centre is a pink object with six diffraction spikes. This is quasar J0100+2802. It appears slightly smaller than the foreground stars, which appear blue.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, S. Lilly (ETH Zurich), D. Kashino (Nagoya University), J. Matthee (ETH Zurich), C. Eilers (MIT), R. Simcoe (MIT), R. Bordoloi (MIT), R. Mackenzie (ETH Zurich), A. Pagan (STScI)

Chaotic mounds, wind-sculpted ripples and dust devil tracks: this image shows a fascinating and otherworldly landscape near Hooke Crater in Mars’ southern highlands.

The image was taken by the CaSSIS camera onboard the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on 1 February 2021, and shows part of Argyre Planitia, centred at 46.2°S/318.3°E.

This type of scenery is similar to ‘chaotic terrain’: a kind of broken, disrupted terrain seen across Mars where haphazard groups of variously sized and shaped rocks – irregular knobs, conical mounds, ridges, flat-topped hills known as mesas – clump together, often enclosed within depressions. There are around 30 regions of chaotic terrain defined on Mars (see ESA Mars Express views of Ariadnes Colles, Pyrrhae Regio, and Iani Chaos for just a small sample); while this small patch has not been defined as one of these, its appearance is certainly chaotic.

Perhaps the most striking feature here is the wispy, snaking tendrils stretching out across the frame. These dark traces of past activity were caused by dust devils, whirlwinds of dust that occur on both Mars and Earth when warm air rises quickly into cooler air. These devils leave tracks on a planet’s surface as they travel through dusty landscapes. The tracks here appear to have a north-south orientation, indicating a possible local wind pattern.

The bluish tinge to the dust devil tracks seen here is a result of the three filters that were combined to create this image; while not representative of what an observer would see with the naked eye, these filters produce a colour infrared image with greater sensitivity to variations in surface mineralogy.

TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images like this one, but also providing the best ever inventory of the planet’s atmospheric gases, and mapping the planet’s surface for water-rich locations. It will also provide data relay services for the second ExoMars mission, comprising the Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok platform, when it arrives on Mars in 2023.

Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Two tails of dust ejected from the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system are seen in new images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, documenting the lingering aftermath of the NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact on 27 September 2022 at 01:14 CEST. Current data show that DART shortened Dimorphos’ original 11 hour and 55 minute orbit around Didymos by about 32 minutes.

Repeated observations from Hubble over the last several weeks have allowed scientists to present a more complete picture of how the system’s debris cloud has evolved over time. The observations show that the ejected material, or “ejecta,” has expanded and faded in brightness as time went on after impact, largely as expected. The twin tail is an unexpected development, although similar behavior is commonly seen in comets and active asteroids. The Hubble observations provide the best-quality image of the double-tail to date.

Following impact, Hubble made 18 observations of the system. Imagery indicates the second tail formed between 2-8 October 2022.

In this image, DART impacted the Didymos-Dimorphos system from the 10 o’clock direction.

The relationship between the comet-like tail and other ejecta features seen at various times in images from Hubble and other telescopes is still unclear, and is something the Investigation Team is currently working to understand. The northern tail is newly developed. In the coming months, scientists will be taking a closer look at the data from Hubble to determine how the second tail developed. There are a number of possible scenarios the team will investigate.

Credits: NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI), Joe Depasquale (STScI)

The peculiar galaxy NGC 3256 dominates this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This Milky Way-sized galaxy lies about 120 million light-years away in the constellation Vela, and is a denizen of the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster.

NGC 3256 may seem peaceful, a swirl of tightly entwined spiral arms set in a hazy cloud of light, but this image shows the aftermath of an ancient cosmic clash. This distorted galaxy is the wreckage of a head-on collision between two equally massive spiral galaxies which astronomers estimate to have met around 500 million years ago. The tumultuous past of NGC 3256 is captured in the long tendrils of shining dust and stars which extend outwards from the main body of the galaxy. The striking red and orange regions spread across the galaxy contain young stars created in the merger that are irradiating small dust grains, which then emit infrared light that is captured in astonishing detail by Webb’s instruments. Further out, there are extended tidal features, which are mostly stars pulled out of the galaxies when they collided.

If you were asked to picture a galaxy collision, you might picture stars careening into one another with catastrophically explosive results. In reality, the spaces between the stars in a galaxy are vast; when galaxies collide, their clouds of stars pass through one another and mingle like two clouds of smoke. The gas and dust in colliding galaxies does interact, however, and with spectacular results. The galactic collision that created NGC 3256 triggered a luminous burst of star formation that can be seen in the brightest portions of this image. These infant stars shine most brightly at infrared wavelengths, light which can penetrate through obscuring dust in the galaxy, and which makes the stars perfect subjects for Webb.

This observation is one of several which take a detailed look at the physics of star formation and black hole growth in nearby merging galaxies, hoping to transform astronomers' understanding of galactic evolution. Capturing a selection of luminous infrared galaxies like NGC 3256 will help the astronomical community to understand how Webb can unravel the complex histories of nearby star-forming galaxies.

This image contains data from Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera and Mid-InfraRed Instrument, which — as the names suggest — capture NGC 3256 in stunning detail at infrared wavelengths. Previous observations of NGC 3256 with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope revealed this cosmic collision at visible wavelengths, and Hubble and Webb observations are shown side-by-side using the slider tool here.

[Image Description: A large, face-on spiral galaxy. The core is radiating very brightly. Streaks of dust glow intensely red, in the centre and across most of the galaxy. This gas is surrounded by a dark grey halo made of the galaxy’s stars. The halo stretches out into a tidal tail at the upper-left, and another at the bottom. Small stars and galaxies surround the spiral galaxy, on a black background.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans

The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.

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Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice ready for launch on the ELA-3 launch pad at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 12 April 2023.

Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.

Following launch, Juice will embark on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, arriving in July 2031 with the aid of momentum and direction gained from four gravity-assist fly-bys of the Earth-Moon system, Venus and, twice, Earth.

Flight VA 260 will be the final Ariane 5 flight to carry an ESA mission to space.

Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This image of an archetypal spiral galaxy was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The subject of this image is known as NGC 691, and it can be found some 120 million light-years from Earth. This galaxy was one of thousands of objects discovered by astronomer William Herschel during his prolific decades-long career spent hunting for, characterising, and cataloguing a wide array of the galaxies and nebulae visible throughout the night sky — almost 200 years before Hubble was even launched.

The intricate detail visible in this Picture of the Week would likely be extraordinary to Herschel. Hubble was able to capture an impressive level of structure within NGC 691’s layers of stars and spiralling arms — all courtesy of the telescope’s high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.; CC BY 4.0

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson are getting world-class geology training this week during the fifth edition of ESA’s Pangaea course.

A balanced mix of theory and field trips, the course will take the pair all over Europe to hone their geology skills. The training began last week in the Italian Dolomites with lessons on fundamental geology knowledge and skills, martian geology and asteroids at Bletterbach Canyon.

The rock samples from the canyon Alexander is holding in this image are a combination of gypsum (white hue) in siltstone-sandstone (reddish hue), and are analogous to rocks found on Mars.

This week, Alexander and Stephanie will follow the footsteps of Apollo astronauts to study the Ries crater in Germany, one of the best-preserved impact craters on Earth, where American crews trained before their flights to the Moon.

The course concludes the year with a trip to the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote, Spain in November, to learn about the geological interactions between volcanic activity and water – two key factors in the search for life.

The final part of the course has the astronauts travel to Lofoten, Norway, to focus on rocks similar to the lunar highlands. These will be important locations to explore during the future Artemis missions, as they may hold key information for unravelling the history of the Moon and our Solar System.

The different field locations visited during Pangaea are used to train Alexander and Stephanie on how to read a landscape, collect scientifically relevant samples and effectively communicate their geological observations with teams back on Earth.

Alexander is a geophysicist, volcanologist and more recently International Space Station commander in 2018, and has seen 5700 sunrises and sunsets in space. Pangaea is challenging this seasoned space explorer to become a field scientist in preparation for future deep space missions, where the astronauts will be the eyes and ears of the scientific community on Earth.

Follow Alexander on Twitter for his takes on getting back in the classroom for Pangaea.

Credits: ESA-V. Crobu

Telescopes, including Hubble, have monitored the Eta Carinae star system for more than two decades. It has been prone to violent outbursts, including an episode in the 1840s during which ejected material formed the bipolar bubbles seen here.

Now, using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to probe the nebula in ultraviolet light, astronomers have uncovered the glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas (shown in blue) in places they had not seen it before. The luminous magnesium resides in the space between the dusty bipolar bubbles and the outer shock-heated nitrogen-rich filaments (shown in red). The streaks visible in the blue region outside the lower-left lobe are a striking feature of the image. These streaks are created when the star’s light rays poke through the dust clumps scattered along the bubble’s surface. Wherever the ultraviolet light strikes the dense dust, it leaves a long, thin shadow that extends beyond the lobe into the surrounding gas.

Eta Carinae resides 7500 light-years away.

Learn more.

Credits: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson), and J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute, New York); CC BY 4.0

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was used to conduct a three-year study of the crowded, massive and young star cluster Westerlund 2. The research found that the material encircling stars near the cluster’s centre is mysteriously devoid of the large, dense clouds of dust that would be expected to become planets in a few million years. Their absence is caused by the cluster’s most massive and brightest stars that erode and disperse the discs of gas and dust of neighbouring stars. This is the first time that astronomers have analysed an extremely dense star cluster to study which environments are favourable to planet formation.

Learn more.

Credits: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team; CC BY 4.0

This comparison view shows puffing dust bubbles and an erupting gas shell — the final acts of a monster star.You can explore the detail of the nebula surrounding the star AG Carinae by using the slider tool on the image above.

This Picture of the Week showcases new views of the dual nature of the star AG Carinae, which was the target of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 31st anniversary image in April 2020. This new perspective was developed thanks to Hubble’s observations of the star in 2020 and 2014, along with others captured by the telescope’s WFPC2 instrument in 1994. You can compare these two new versions of AG Carinae going back and forth.

This image showcases the details of the ionised hydrogen and ionised nitrogen emissions from the nebula (seen here in red). In the second image, the blue demonstrates the contrasting appearance of the distribution of the dust that shines of reflected stellar light. Astronomers believe that the dust bubbles and filaments formed within and were shaped by powerful stellar wind .

This giant star is waging a tug-of-war between gravity and radiation to avoid self-destruction. The star is surrounded by an expanding shell of gas and dust — a nebula — that is shaped by the powerful winds emanating from the star. The nebula is about five light-years wide, equal to the distance from here to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

AG Carinae is formally classified as a Luminous Blue Variable because it is hot (blue), very luminous, and variable. Such stars are quite rare because there are not many stars that are so massive. Luminous Blue Variable stars continuously lose mass in the final stages of their life, during which a significant amount of stellar material is ejected into the surrounding interstellar space, until enough mass has been lost that the star has reached a stable state.

AG Carinae is surrounded by a spectacular nebula, formed by material ejected by the star during several of its past outbursts. The nebula is approximately 10 000 years old, and the observed velocity of the gas is approximately 70 kilometres per second. While this nebula looks like a ring, it is in fact a hollow shell rich in gas and dust, the centre of which has been cleared by the powerful stellar wind travelling at roughly 200 kilometres per second. The gas (composed mostly of ionised hydrogen and nitrogen) is visible to us in these images as a thick bright red ring, which appears doubled in places — possibly the result of several outbursts colliding into each other. The dust, here visible in blue, has formed in clumps, bubbles and filaments that are shaped by the stellar wind.

Scientists who observed the star and its surrounding nebula note that the ring is not perfectly spherical; it appears to have a bipolar symmetry, indicating that the mechanism producing the outburst may have been caused by the presence of a disc in the centre, or that the star is not alone but might have a companion (known as a binary star). An alternative and simpler theory is that the star rotates very fast (as many massive stars have been found to do).

Credits: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Nota, C. Britt; CC BY 4.0

The Gulf of Martaban, an arm of the Andaman Sea located in southern Myanmar, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. The image has been processed in a way that included the near-infrared channel – which makes vegetation appear bright red.

The gulf, also known as Gulf of Mottama, is named after the port city of Mottama, formerly known as Martaban. The Gulf of Martaban is considered a unique estuarine mudflat environment that is home to a great variety of flora and fauna. Fed by sediment and nutrients from three major rivers (Sittang, Salween and Yangon), the gulf supports a number of species including marine fish, 150 000 migratory birds as well as supporting the livelihood of tens of thousands of people.

A notable characteristic of the gulf is that it has a tide-dominated coastline, with tidal ranges between six and seven metres. The mouth of the gulf, which is approximately 100 km wide, narrows into a funnel-shaped bay to produce a powerful tidal bore phenomenon that can reach heights of over a metre in the upper estuary. As a result, the tidal mudflats of the gulf are among the largest in the world.

The Sittang River, visible in the right side of the image, originates near Mandalay, Myanmar, and flows southward for around 420 km before emptying into the gulf. Dense vegetation can be seen in bright red, particularly in the left of the image.

The distinct rectangular shape, visible in the upper half of the image, is part of the Moeyungyi Wetland Wildlife Sanctuary, a designated Ramsar Site of International Importance. The site encompasses several artificial lakes and bodies (visible in black). One of the bodies of water appears in light blue most likely owing to eutrophication – the overabundance of algae, phosphorus and other plant nutrients.

The city of Yangon is visible in the bottom-left of the image, at the convergence of the Yangon and Bago Rivers. With over seven million people, Yangon is Myanmar's most populous city and its most important commercial centre. The city served as the country’s capital until 2006.

Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus programme. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution allow changes in water bodies to be closely monitored.

This image, acquired on 18 November 2020, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.

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Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Vidéo du CSG - JM Guillon

This image of three miniature satellites or CubeSats freshly launched into space is a striking reminder of human cooperation at the heart of space exploration.

Bhutan’s first ever satellite along with others from Malaysia and the Philippines were released into their respective orbits from the International Space Station on 10 August.

While the launch was a first for Bhutan, it was just another day on the International Space Station that was built and is maintained by thousands of people across the globe.

Launched in 1998, the Space Station is the culmination of years of international planning and partnership between the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, and participating European countries.

In its 20 years of operation it has hosted many international flight crews, launched global operations and conducted research from the world-wide scientific community.

It is not only a technological achievement but a successful testament to partnership across borders.

ESA is continuing along these lines of partnership and cooperation in its new European vision for space exploration.

In addition to committing its support for the Space Station, the agency is partnering with the commercial sector to make the Space Station more accessible to all with programmes such as the International Commercial Experiments Service, or ICE Cubes.

The agency is also setting its sights beyond low-Earth orbit, with ambitious plans for the Moon, a deep space gateway and a Mars landing.

For the Moon, ESA is preparing for a robotic landing in partnership with Russia as early as 2022. The mission will look for water ice.

Returning humans to the Moon is underway in collaboration with NASA on the Orion vehicle, with a European service module at its core, that will build bridges to Moon and Mars by sending humans further into space than ever before.

Like the International Space Station, this new age of exploration will be achieved not in competition, but through international cooperation.

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst put it best when posted this image on social media, writing “If you want to go far, go together.”

We’re already on it.

Credits: ESA/NASA-A. Gerst

These images from Copernicus Sentinel-2 show the before and after of the massive slab of ice that broke away from the Brunt Ice Shelf. The image on the left shows cracks and chasms of the ice shelf on 25 October 2022, while the image on the right shows the ice berg breaking away from the ice shelf on 24 January 2023.

The new berg, estimated to be around 1550 sq km and around 150 thick, calved when the crack known as Chasm-1 fully extended northwards severing the west part of the ice shelf. This crack was first revealed to be extending in early 2012 after having been dormant for some decades.

The timing of the calving event, although unexpected, had long been anticipated. It was only a matter of time that Chasm 1, which had been dormant for decades, would meet with the Halloween Crack, first spotted on Halloween 2016.

Read full story

A version of this image with the Dawson-Lambton penguin colony can be accessed by clicking here.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022-23), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Far away in the Ursa Major constellation is a swirling galaxy that would not look out of place on a coffee made by a starry-eyed barista. NGC 3895 is a barred spiral galaxy that was first spotted by William Herschel in 1790 and was later observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble's orbit high above the Earth's distorting atmosphere allows astronomers to make the very high resolution observations that are essential to opening new windows on planets, stars and galaxies — such as this beautiful view of NGC 3895. The telescope is positioned approximately 570 km above the ground, where it whirls around Earth at 28 000 kilometres per hour and takes 96 minutes to complete one orbit.

Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and R. Barrows; CC BY 4.0

This radar image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, shows us the only city-island-nation – Singapore – and one of the busiest ports in the world.

The Republic of Singapore is located just off the southern tip of the Malayan Peninsula, between Malaysia and Indonesia, around 135 km north of the equator. It consists of the 710 sq km Singapore Island, visible in the top-centre of the image, as well as some 60 small islets.

Nearly two-thirds of the Singapore Island is less than 15 m above sea level. The highest summit, Timah Hill, has an elevation of only 160 m. Changi Airport, one of the largest transportation hubs in Asia, can be seen at the eastern end of the island.

Singapore Island is separated from the Peninsular Malaysia to the north by the Johore Strait, a narrow channel crossed by a road and train causeway, while the southern end faces the Singapore Strait, where the Riau-Lingga Archipelago (part of Indonesia) extends.

Singapore is home to the largest port in Southeast Asia and one of the busiest in the world. The port offers connectivity to more than 600 ports in 123 countries. It owes its growth and prosperity to its position at the southern extremity of the Malay Peninsula, where it dominates the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea.

This week’s image contains satellite data stitched together from three separate radar scans, in order to detect changes occurring between acquisitions. The sea surface reflects the radar signal away from the satellite, making water appear dark in the image and contrasts with metal objects, in this case ships and vessels, which appear as bright, sparkly dots in the dark water.

In this image, boats from 28 December 2021 appear in red, those from 9 January 2022 appear in green, and those from 21 January 2022 appear in blue. The various colours in the ocean are due to the changing surface currents and sediments from river deltas, while major cities and towns are visible in white owing to the strong reflection of the radar signal.

The advantage of radar as a remote sensing tool is that it can image Earth’s surface through rain and cloud, and regardless of whether it is day or night. This is particularly useful for monitoring areas prone to long periods of darkness – such as the Arctic – or providing imagery for emergency response during extreme weather conditions.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021-22), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

From left: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour shortly after having splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, USA.

Thomas is the first European to fly to the International Space Station and return on a commercial spacecraft. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour transporting Crew-2 autonomously undocked from the International Space Station and after a series of burns, entered Earth’s atmosphere and deployed parachutes for a soft water-landing. Thomas and crew splashed down on 9 November 2021 at 03:33 GMT (04:33 CET).

Credits: NASA–A.Gemignani

This image, captured on 15 August 2021 by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, shows the giant smoke plumes from the fires in California and Oregon, as well as Hurricane Linda off the coast of Baja California. This wide image was obtained by merging four Sentinel-3 acquisitions together.

Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. Each satellite’s instrument package includes an optical sensor to monitor changes in the colour of Earth’s surfaces.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Pristine environments, limited resources, and near-complete isolation are just some of the attractions of Antarctica, often termed the White Desert. Numerous research stations dot the outer regions of the continent where scientists gather data on glaciology, seismology, climate change and the stars.

The French-Italian Concordia research station is one of three year-round stations and is located on Dome C, a plateau some 3200 m above sea level. Secluded from the world in inhospitable conditions, the crew stationed there tackle temperatures that can drop to –80°C in the winter, with a yearly average temperature of –50°C.

The air is extremely dry, so the crew suffer from continuously chapped lips and irritated eyes. The great open landscape alternates between months of night and months of daylight, and colours, smells and sounds are almost non-existent, adding to the sense of loneliness.

In other words, Concordia is perfect.

Here, researchers study the atmosphere, free from pollution, to gain insights into how the world’s population is changing Earth’s climate. Scientists conduct glaciology research by analysing the Antarctic plateau to reveal clues to our past as chemicals are trapped and frozen in the ice.

The thin atmosphere, clear skies and zero light-pollution around Concordia make it an enviable place for observing the Universe. The very southern location of Antarctica also makes it ideal for studying Earth’s magnetic field.

Delving deeper, Concordia is looking at the inside movements of Earth. A seismograph at Concordia measures movement and the research base is part of the international network of seismograph stations.

And then there is the human factor. Despite all the hardships of life in Antarctica, up to 16 people spend around a year at a time living in Concordia in the name of science. In addition to helping conduct other experiments and station maintenance, they are an experiment themselves, and ESA sends a medical doctor to Concordia to study the crew.

The elevation, isolation and sensory deprivation can wreak havoc on crewmembers’ biological clock, making it hard to get a good night’s sleep. Researchers track the effects of this on the human body and mind which adds to data being collected on astronauts on the International Space Station.

Insights are used to help people on Earth like shift workers, bedridden patients and those suffering from sleep disorders, and of course, astronauts serving in low Earth orbit.

Antarctic research at Concordia is helping humans adapt, mentally and physically, to a changing climate, a longer voyage in space, and eventually, life on another planet.

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–C. Possnig

Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice ready for launch on the ELA-3 launch pad at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 12 April 2023.

Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.

Following launch, Juice will embark on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, arriving in July 2031 with the aid of momentum and direction gained from four gravity-assist fly-bys of the Earth-Moon system, Venus and, twice, Earth.

Flight VA 260 will be the final Ariane 5 flight to carry an ESA mission to space.

Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows IC 4653, a galaxy just above 80 million light-years from Earth. That may sound like quite a distance, but it’s not that far on a cosmic scale. At these kinds of distances, the types and structures of the objects we see are similar to those in our local area.

Thie galaxy's whirling arms tells us a story about what’s happening inside this galaxy. Stars are generally brighter and bluer when they are younger, so the blue patches mark sites of new star formation. Studying the structures of other galaxies is a key way to learn about the structure of our own, given that humans can’t leave the Milky Way to look back and see what it looks like from the outside. It helps to compare our observations of our home galaxy with those of nearby galaxies we can see in their entirety.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario (CEA, Durham University); CC BY 4.0

Alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope is now complete. After full review, the observatory has been confirmed to be capable of capturing crisp, well-focused images with each of its four powerful onboard science instruments.

Upon completing the seventh and final stage of telescope alignment, the team held a set of key decision meetings and unanimously agreed that Webb is ready to move forward into its next and final series of preparations, known as science instrument commissioning. This process of setting up and testing the instruments will take about two months before scientific operations begin in the summer.

The alignment of the telescope across all of Webb’s instruments can be seen in a series of images that captures the observatory’s full field of view.

Engineering images of sharply focused stars in the field of view of each instrument demonstrate that the telescope is fully aligned and in focus. For this test, Webb pointed at part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, providing a dense field of hundreds of thousands of stars across all the observatory’s sensors.

The sizes and positions of the images shown here depict the relative arrangement of each of Webb’s instruments in the telescope’s focal plane, each pointing at a slightly offset part of the sky relative to one another.

Webb’s three imaging instruments are NIRCam (images shown here at a wavelength of 2 microns), NIRISS (image shown here at 1.5 microns), and MIRI (shown at 7.7 microns, a longer wavelength revealing emission from interstellar clouds as well as starlight).

ESA's NIRSpec is a spectrograph rather than imager but can take images, such as the 1.1 micron image shown here, for calibrations and target acquisition. The dark regions visible in parts of the NIRSpec data are due to structures of its microshutter array, which has several hundred thousand controllable shutters that can be opened or shut to select which light is sent into the spectrograph.

Lastly, Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor tracks guide stars to point the observatory accurately and precisely; its two sensors are not generally used for scientific imaging but can take calibration images such as those shown here. This image data is used not just to assess image sharpness but also to precisely measure and calibrate subtle image distortions and alignments between sensors as part of Webb’s overall instrument calibration process.

The optical performance of the telescope continues to be better than the engineering team’s most optimistic predictions. Webb’s mirrors are now directing fully focused light collected from space down into each instrument, and each instrument is successfully capturing images with the light being delivered to them. The image quality delivered to all instruments is “diffraction-limited,” meaning that the fineness of detail that can be seen is as good as physically possible given the size of the telescope. From this point forward the only changes to the mirrors will be very small, periodic adjustments to the primary mirror segments.

Now, the Webb team will turn its attention to science instrument commissioning. Each instrument is a highly sophisticated set of detectors equipped with unique lenses, masks, filters, and customised equipment that helps it perform the science it was designed to achieve. The specialised characteristics of these instruments will be configured and operated in various combinations during the instrument commissioning phase to fully confirm their readiness for science. With the formal conclusion of telescope alignment, key personnel involved with the commissioning of each instrument have arrived at the Mission Operations Center at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, and some personnel involved with telescope alignment have concluded their duties.

Though telescope alignment is complete, some telescope calibration activities remain: As part of scientific instrument commissioning, the telescope will be commanded to point to different areas in the sky where the total amount of solar radiation hitting the observatory will vary to confirm thermal stability when changing targets. Furthermore, ongoing maintenance observations every two days will monitor the mirror alignment and, when needed, apply corrections to keep the mirrors in their aligned locations.

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and CSA.

Credits: NASA/STScI

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took this image of Typhoon Trami on 25 September 2018, 400 km high from the International Space Station. He commented:

"As if somebody pulled the planet's gigantic plug. Staring down the eye of yet another fierce storm. Category 5 Super Typhoon Trami is unstoppable and heading for Japan and Taiwan. Be safe down there!"

Alexander is on his second six-month Space Station mission. Follow him and the Horizons mission on social media on his website and on his blog.

Credits: ESA/NASA-A.Gerst

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an "intense and violent process." This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called "disk instability."

The new world under construction is embedded in a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas with distinct spiral structure swirling around surrounding a young star that’s estimated to be around 2 million years old. That's about the age of our solar system when planet formation was underway. (The solar system's age is currently 4.6 billion years.)

Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS).

In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB Aurigae b in a due south position compared to its host star, which is covered by the instrument’s coronagraph. The image captured in 2021 by STIS shows the protoplanet has moved in a counterclockwise motion over time.

Credits: NASA, ESA, T. Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.), A. Pagan (STScI); CC BY 4.0

At first glance, the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image looks to be a simple spiral galaxy, with two pinwheeling arms emerging from a central bar of stars and material that cuts through the galactic centre. In fact, there are rings within these spiral arms, too: spirals within a spiral.

This kind of morphology is known as a multiring structure. As this description suggests, this galaxy, named NGC 2273, hosts an inner ring and two outer “pseudorings” — having so many distinct rings is rare, and makes NGC 2273 unusual. Rings are created when a galaxy’s spiral arms appear to loop around to nearly close upon one another, combined with a trick of cosmic perspective. NGC 2273’s two pseudorings are formed by two swirling sets of spiral arms coming together, and the inner ring by two arcing structures nearer to the galactic centre, which seem to connect in a similar way.

These rings are not the only unique feature of this galaxy. NGC 2273 is also a Seyfert galaxy, a galaxy with an extremely luminous core. In fact, the centre of a galaxy such as this is powered by a supermassive black hole, and can glow brightly enough to outshine an entire galaxy like the Milky Way.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Greene; CC BY 4.0

This peculiar galaxy, beautifully streaked with tendrils of reddish dust, is captured here in wonderful detail by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The galaxy is known as NGC 1022, and is officially classified as a barred spiral galaxy. You can just about make out the bar of stars in the centre of the galaxy in this image, with swirling arms emerging from its ends. This bar is much less prominent than in some of the galaxy’s barred cousins and gives the galaxy a rather squat appearance; but the lanes of dust that swirl throughout its disc ensure it is no less beautiful.

Hubble observed this image as part of a study into one of the Universe’s most notorious residents: black holes. These are fundamental components of galaxies, and are thought to lurk at the hearts of many — if not all — spirals. In fact, they may have quite a large influence over their cosmic homes. Studies suggest that the mass of the black hole sitting at a galaxy’s centre is linked with the larger-scale properties of the galaxy itself. However, in order to learn more, we need observational data of a wider and more diverse range of galaxies — something Hubble’s study aims to provide.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Seth; ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Seth; CC BY 4.0

This striking image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, a powerful instrument installed on the telescope in 2009. WFC3 is responsible for many of Hubble’s most breathtaking and iconic photographs, including Pictures of the Week.

Shown here, NGC 7773 is a beautiful example of a barred spiral galaxy. A luminous bar-shaped structure cuts prominently through the galaxy's bright core, extending to the inner boundary of NGC 7773's sweeping, pinwheel-like spiral arms. Astronomers think that these bar structures emerge later in the lifetime of a galaxy, as star-forming material makes its way towards the galactic centre — younger spirals do not feature barred structures as often as older spirals do, suggesting that bars are a sign of galactic maturity. They are also thought to act as stellar nurseries, as they gleam brightly with copious numbers of youthful stars.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is thought to be a barred spiral like NGC 7773. By studying galactic specimens such as NGC 7773 throughout the Universe, researchers hope to learn more about the processes that have shaped — and continue to shape — our cosmic home.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Walsh; CC BY 4.0

Part of Mecklenburg–West Pomerania, also known as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a state in northeast Germany is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. A portion of the northwest coast of Poland can be seen in the right of the image.

Mecklenburg–West Pomerania extends along the Baltic Sea coastal plain with the region’s landscape largely shaped by glacial forces – which deposited materials that produced the coastal lowlands that are today filled with wetlands, streams and lakes.

Mecklenburg–West Pomerania is one of Germany’s least populated states. Nearly two-thirds is covered by farmland with the main crops being rye, wheat, barley and hay. The green areas present in this image are most likely winter wheat and winter rapeseed. The region’s pastures typically support sheep, horses and cattle.

On the state’s coastline on the Baltic Sea lie many holiday resorts, unspoilt nature and the islands of Rügen (partly visible in the top left) and Usedom (in the centre of the image), as well as many others. The most populous island in the Baltic Sea, the 445 sq km island of Usedom is mostly flat and is partly covered by marshes.

The icy Szczecin Lagoon, or Szczeciński Lagoon, dominates this week’s image, which was captured on 22 February 2021. An extension of the Oder estuary, the lagoon is shared between Germany and Poland, and is drained (via the Świna, Peene, and Dziwna rivers) into Pomeranian Bay of the Baltic Sea, between Usedom and Wolin.

From the south, it is fed by several arms of the Oder River, Poland’s second-longest river, and several smaller rivers. The distinct line across the lagoon depicts the shipping waterway that connects the port cities of Świnoujście and Szczecin.

Several emerald-green algae blooms can be seen in the image, with the most visible near Peenestrom, an arm of the Baltic Sea, in the left of the image. Peenestrom separates the island of Usedom from the mainland and is an important habitat for waterfowl, especially because of its fish population, such as white-tailed eagles and herons.

The Baltic Sea is no stranger to algae blooms, with two annual blooms taking place each year (the spring bloom and the cyanobacterial bloom in late spring.) Given this image was captured in February, it is most likely an onset of a spring bloom.

Although algal blooms are a natural and essential part of life in the sea, human activity is also said to increase the number of annual blooms. Agricultural and industrial run-off pours fertilisers into the sea, providing additional nutrients algae need to form large blooms.

Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus programme. The satellites are able to systematically map different classes of land cover such as forest, crops, grassland, water surfaces and artificial cover like roads and buildings. This kind of information can benefit a multitude of applications.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The spiral galaxy NGC 2008 sits centre stage, its ghostly spiral arms spreading out towards us, in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

This galaxy is located about 425 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pictor (The Painter’s Easel). Discovered in 1834 by astronomer John Herschel, NGC 2008 is categorised as a type Sc galaxy in the Hubble sequence, a system used to describe and classify the various morphologies of galaxies. The “S” indicates that NGC 2008 is a spiral, while the “c” means it has a relatively small central bulge and more open spiral arms. Spiral galaxies with larger central bulges tend to have more tightly wrapped arms, and are classified as Sa galaxies, while those in between are classified as type Sb.

Spiral galaxies are ubiquitous across the cosmos, comprising over 70% of all observed galaxies — including our own, the Milky Way. However, their ubiquity does not detract from their beauty. These grand, spiralling collections of billions of stars are among the most wondrous sights that have been captured by telescopes such as Hubble, and are firmly embedded in astronomical iconography.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Bellini; CC BY 4.0

New results from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope suggest the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the early Universe took place sooner than previously thought. A European team of astronomers have found no evidence of the first generation of stars, known as Population III stars, as far back as when the Universe was just 500 million years old.

The study, led by ESA research fellow Rachana Bhatawdekar, probed the early Universe from about 500 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang by investigating Hubble's views of the galaxy cluster MACSJ0416, pictured in this image, and its parallel field – a nearby region in the sky which was imaged with the same exposure time as the cluster itself. The team combined these observations, which were obtained as part of the Hubble Frontier Fields programme to produce the deepest observations ever made of galaxy clusters and the galaxies located behind them – magnified by the gravitational lensing effect, with supporting data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the ground-based Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The exploration of the very first galaxies remains a significant challenge in modern astronomy. We do not know when or how the first stars and galaxies in the Universe formed. These questions can be addressed with the Hubble Space Telescope through deep imaging observations, allowing astronomers to view the Universe back to within 500 million years of the Big Bang.

Rachana and collaborators set out to study the first generation of stars in the early Universe, or Population III stars. Forged from the primordial material that emerged from the Big Bang, these stars must have been made solely out of hydrogen, helium and lithium, the only elements that existed before processes in the cores of these stars could create heavier elements, such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and iron.

Thanks to a newly developed technique to remove the light from the bright foreground galaxies in the cluster, the team discovered background galaxies with lower masses than ever previously observed with Hubble, at a distance corresponding to when the Universe was less than a billion years old. In the cosmic interval they probed, they found no evidence of the first-generation Population III stars.

These results show that galaxies must have formed much earlier than astronomers thought. They also suggest that the earliest formation of stars and galaxies occurred much earlier than can be probed with the Hubble Space Telescope, leaving an exciting area of further research for the upcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope — to study the Universe’s earliest galaxies.

Full story: Hubble makes surprising find in the early Universe

These results are based on a 2019 paper by Bhatawdekar et al., and another paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The results are being presented at the 236th meeting of American Astronomical Society on 3 June 2020.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and M. Montes (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia); CC BY 4.0

This colour-coded topographic image shows Holden Basin, which forms part of Mars’ Uzboi-Ladon-Morava (ULM) outflow system. It was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 24 April 2022. It is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right.

North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 19 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 329°E/25°S.

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Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

At this very moment, a spacecraft is headed toward the brightly burning Sun, photographed here on an Antarctic summer day by ESA sponsored medical doctor Stijn Thoolen at Concordia research station.

Solar Orbiter is ESA’s latest mission to study the Sun up close. Launched in the early hours of 10 February from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the spacecraft is due to arrive at its fiery destination in approximately two years.

Solar Orbiter will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury, approximately 42 million kilometres from the solar surface. This is an ideal distance: from here Solar Orbiter can take remote images and measurements that will provide the first views of the Sun’s uncharted polar regions.

At the southern poles on Earth, in Antarctica, the Sun has an exceptional presence on people living at the remote Concordia research station. During the Antarctic summer, the sun shines 24 hours a day. It would be perfect for sunbathing, except for the fact that the average summer temperature is only –30°C.

Consequently, in the winter the Sun does not appear above the horizon for over three months and the crew stationed in Concordia live with outside temperatures of –80°C in complete darkness.

In 2015 ESA-sponsored medical research doctor in Concordia Adrianos Golemis captured the Sun at 16:00 every Monday for a year and explains the technique in this blog entry.

While Solar Orbiter is en route to observing the Sun up close, the crew in Concordia are preparing for life without and enjoying the last rays of sunlight while they can. This picture shows a halo that can occur when sunlight is refracted off ice crystals in the atmosphere.

The mission will investigate how intense radiation and energetic particles being blasted out from the Sun and carried by the solar wind through the Solar System impact our home planet, to better understand and predict periods of stormy ‘space weather’.

While this results in beautiful aurora seen in the Arctic and Antarctic circles, stormy space weather can be disastrous. Solar storms have the potential to knock out power grids, disrupt air traffic and telecommunications, and endanger space-walking astronauts, for example.

A better understanding of how our parent star works is critical to our preparedness for these scenarios on Earth.

Follow more news about life and science at Concordia research station, located at Dome C in the Antarctic Peninsula, on the Chronicles from Concordia blog.

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–S. Thoolen

Integration of the European Service Module (ESM) for Orion, the American crewed spacecraft for the Artemis programme, at Airbus' Bremen site.

ESA is delivering up to six modules to NASA, with three more currently under negotiation for the lunar Gateway. Airbus is ESA’s prime contractor for building the first six service modules.

Credits: Airbus

A test segment of a launch interface ring – used to secure a satellite in place during its flight to orbit – produced by 3D printing of aluminum-magnesium-scandium alloy by laser melting deposition. It was made as part of an ESA project to improve this technique.

The Launch Interface Rings by Additive Manufacturing, LIRAM project took place with Belgian companies Sonaca, CRM and SIRRIS, supported through ESA’s General Support Technology Programme, readying promising technology for space and the open market, as part of ESA’s Advanced Manufacturing initiative.

As a follow-up, the production of a complete launch interface ring is planned for 2023.

Credits: ESA

Shortly after launch on 14 April, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, captured this stunning view of Earth. The image was taken by Juice monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) at 14:22 CEST, following launch at 14:14 CEST. JMC1 is located on the front* of the spacecraft and looks diagonally up into a field of view that will eventually see deployed antennas, and depending on their orientation, part of one of the solar arrays.

JMC images provide 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. The images shown here are lightly processed with a preliminary colour adjustment.

More information and images.

*Additional technical information: “front” means +X side of the spacecraft (the opposite side, -X hosts the high gain antenna). JMC1 looks towards the +Y/+Z direction.

Credits: ESA/Juice/JMC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO