Tucked away in the Fucino Valley, in central Italy, lies the Fucino Space Centre, where Telespazio will manage the early orbit activities of the Meteosat Third Generation Imager, set to launch on 13 December from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Lower temperatures and decreasing daylight hours in October 2022 triggered the autumn foliage in the central Apennines Mountains, Italy. Shades of orange and red in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image depend mainly on the local weather, altitude and orientation of the slopes.

In the centre-left of the image lies a lush valley known as the Fucino Valley. The densely packed rectangles are agricultural fields, with the main vegetables grown here being potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and lettuce. The fields divide a region that used to hold the country’s third-largest body of water, Lake Fucino, which now provides over 13 000 hectares of fully workable and highly fertile land.

Hidden in this agricultural area is the Fucino Space Centre, visible towards the lower right of the plain, surrounded entirely by fields. As well as 170 antennas, it houses one of the two control centres that manage Galileo – the European satellite positioning and navigation system.

It is from the Fucino Space Centre where Telespazio will manage the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) of the Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I) satellite. The operations team at the space centre will manage the early orbit activities and final orbit transfer.

MTG-I is the first of a new generation of satellites providing crucial insights for the early detection and prediction of fast-developing severe storms, weather forecasting and climate monitoring. The complete satellite system will bring about a significant improvement in the ability to observe meteorological phenomena, ensuring higher-level forecasting capabilities, particularly for ‘nowcasting’ – the short-term monitoring and forecasting of rapidly evolving meteorological phenomena.

Telespazio has been involved in the development of the MTG programme, particularly in the development and management of the ground segment, handling both data acquisition and satellite command and control operations.

MTG-I will carry two completely new instruments: a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager, developed by Leonardo in Italy, which will be able to capture individual lightning events in the sky, whether day or night.

Join us for the live launch coverage of the Meteosat Third Generation Imager on 13 December on ESA Web TV. For updated launch details, pleas check here for more information.

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

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

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Cook Strait, which separates New Zealand's North and South Islands.

Named after James Cook, who was the first European to sail through it, the Cook Strait is just 23 km wide at its narrowest point, so on a clear day it is possible to see across the strait. However, it is also renowned as one of the roughest and most unpredictable stretches of water in the world, owing to strong winds, conflicting currents and variable tides.

This dynamic environment is depicted here by the various shades of blue in the water and swirls. Both shores feature steep cliffs which, in the image, result in the white colour caused by the big waves crashing against the rocky coast.

New Zealand comprises many islands, though the North and South Islands are the largest. North Island, visible on the right, is home to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, which lies on the hills and shore around the bay in the extreme south of the island.

South Island is connected to North Island by a ferry service from Wellington to Picton, a port town near the head of Queen Charlotte Sound. The sound is a deep inlet visible in dark blue in the upper part of South Island. Numerous ferries can be spotted as white dots in the sound.

Moving south, a patchwork of agricultural fields cover the Wairau Plain and surround the town of Blenheim, visible in grey.

Several rivers cross the plain. The biggest in the image, the Wairau River, is one of the longest in New Zealand. It can be seen meandering through the fields and splitting into separate arms which eventually enter Cloudy Bay in Cook Strait. The southernmost arm of the river forms an estuary, which feeds a network of ponds, marshes and lagoons, sheltered from the Pacific Ocean by an 8-km-long boulder bank.

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

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over a set of small towns in the Colli Albani hills known collectively as Castelli Romani.

Located around 20 km southeast of Rome, the Castelli Romani area is of volcanic nature, originating from the collapsing of the Latium volcano hundreds of thousands of years ago. The outlines of the inner and outer crater rims are clearly visible in the image.

Two lakes now occupy the craters, the small Lake Nemi and the larger, oval-shaped Lake Albano. The town of Castel Gandolfo overlooks Lake Albano and is known for its papal summer residence where many popes have spent their summers since the 17th century.

Owing to cooler temperatures during summer, the hills and small towns are a popular destination for city dwellers trying to escape the heat.

Each town has its own attraction, for example Ariccia is famous for its porchetta or roast pork, and Frascati is predominantly known for its wine.

Frascati, which is just north of Lake Albano, is known for a number of scientific research institutes. These include ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development; CNR, the Italian Research Council; INFN, the National Institute for Nuclear Physics; as well as ESA’s Earth observation centre.

From 9–13 September, ESA is holding the Φ-week event, focusing on Earth observation and FutureEO — to review the latest developments in Open Science trends. The week will include a variety of inspiring talks, workshops on how Earth observation can benefit from the latest digital technologies and help shape future missions.

Watch the Φ-week opening session live on Monday 9 September, starting at 11:30 GMT (13:30 CEST).

This image, acquired on 13 October 2018, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

An unprecedented wildfire has ripped through the island of Gran Canaria, one of Spain’s Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. The wildfire, which started on Saturday 17 August, has now started to subside after engulfing around 10 000 hectares of land, leading to the evacuation of over 9000 people.

This false colour image, captured on 19 August, was created using the shortwave infrared bands from the Copernicus Sentinel-2’s instrument, and allows us to clearly see the fires on the ground in bright orange. Burn scars are visible in dark brown. These bands also allow us to see through smoke – but not clouds.

The Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service was activated to help respond to the fire. The service uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in cases of disaster, the international humanitarian community, respond to emergencies.

The fire started near the town of Tejeda and spread to Tamadaba Natural Park, driven by a combination of high temperatures, strong winds and low humidity. According to authorities, over 700 firefighters on the ground and 16 aircraft helped tackle the blaze, with some flames reaching over 50 metres in height.

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

The first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 13 December at 21:30 CET.

From geostationary orbit, 36,000 km above the equator, this all-new weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level. The satellite carries two completely new instruments: Europe’s first Lightning Imager and a Flexible Combined Imager.

MTG-I1 is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical data for weather forecasting over the next 20 years. In full operations, the mission will comprise two MTG-I satellites and one MTG Sounding (MTG-S) satellites working in tandem.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

[LEFT] - The forecast for Jupiter is for stormy weather at low northern latitudes. A prominent string of alternating storms is visible, forming a ‘vortex street’ as some planetary astronomers call it. This is a wave pattern of nested cyclones and anticyclones, locked together like the alternating gears of a machine moving clockwise and counterclockwise. If the storms get close enough to each other and merge together, they could build an even larger storm, potentially rivalling the current size of the Great Red Spot. The staggered pattern of cyclones and anticyclones prevents individual storms from merging. Activity is also seen interior to these storms; in the 1990s Hubble didn’t see any cyclones or anticyclones with built-in thunderstorms, but these storms have sprung up in the last decade. Strong colour differences indicate that Hubble is seeing different cloud heights and depths as well.

The orange moon Io photobombs this view of Jupiter’s multicoloured cloud tops, casting a shadow toward the planet’s western limb. Hubble’s resolution is so sharp that it can see Io’s mottled-orange appearance, the result of its numerous active volcanoes. These volcanoes were first discovered when the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by in 1979. The moon’s molten interior is overlaid by a thin crust through which the volcanoes eject material. Sulphur takes on various hues at different temperatures, which is why Io’s surface is so colourful. This photo was taken on 12 November 2022.

[RIGHT] - Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot takes centre stage in this view. Though this vortex is big enough to swallow Earth, it has actually shrunk to the smallest size it has ever been according to observation records dating back 150 years. Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede can be seen transiting the giant planet at lower right. Slightly larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System. It is a cratered world and has a mainly water-ice surface with apparent glacial flows driven by internal heat. This image was taken on 6 January 2023.

[Image description: Two views of the giant gas planet Jupiter appear side-by-side for comparison.]

Read more

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Vatnajökull ice cap, in southeast Iceland, in this summery image captured on 6 July 2019.

Zoom in to see this image at its full 10 m resolution.

Covering an area of around 8400 sq km, which is three times the size of Luxembourg, Vatnajökull is not only classified as the biggest glacier in Iceland, but the biggest in Europe. With an average ice thickness of around 900 m, the ice cap has about 30 outlet glaciers – many of which are retreating owing to warming temperatures.

The most prominent outlet glaciers of Vatnajökull include Dyngjujökull in the north, Breiðamerkurjökull, and Skeiðarárjökull to the south. Vatnajökull conceals some of the most active volcanoes in the country, of which Bárðarbunga is the largest and Grímsvötn the most active. Periodic eruptions of these volcanoes melt the surrounding ice and create large pockets of water, which can often burst the weakened ice causing glacial floods, or ‘jökulhlaup’ in Icelandic.

During these jökulhlaups, the glacier’s meltwater carries sediments and sands composed of ash to the coast. These outwash plains are called ‘sandurs’ and are commonly found in Iceland. Skeiðarársandur, the large area of black sand, visible south of the Skeiðarárjökull outlet glacier, covers an area of around 1300 sq km and was formed as the glacial rivers in the area washed ash and ice towards the sea.

In the bottom-right of the image, on the southern side of Vatnajökull, the Jökulsárlón glacial lake, dotted with icebergs, is visible. Jökulsárlón began to form when the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier began retreating from the Atlantic Ocean owing to rising temperatures.

The lake has grown considerably over time because of the melting of the glacier. It now covers an area of around 18 sq km, and with a maximum depth of around 250 m, it is considered Iceland’s deepest lake. The lake connects with the ocean and is, therefore, composed of both seawater and freshwater – causing its unique colour.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. Together they cover all Earth’s land surfaces, large islands, inland and coastal waters every five days at the equator.

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

The Falcon 9 Crew Dragon spacecraft "Endurance" is being readied for the launch of Crew-3 now set for 6 November 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It is the first spaceflight for ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, who will be the 600th human to fly to space.

On Station, Matthias will become a long-duration crew member, spending around six months living and working in orbit. During this time, he will support more than 35 European experiments and numerous international experiments on board.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

As seen in 2022, Uranus’s north pole shows a thickened photochemical haze that looks similar to the smog over cities. Several little storms can be seen near the edge of the polar haze boundary. Hubble has been tracking the size and brightness of the north polar cap and it continues to get brighter year after year. Astronomers are disentangling multiple effects — from atmospheric circulation, particle properties, and chemical processes — that control how the atmospheric polar cap changes with the seasons. At the Uranian equinox in 2007, neither pole was particularly bright. As the northern summer solstice approaches in 2028 the cap may grow brighter still, and will be aimed directly toward Earth, allowing good views of the rings and the north pole; the ring system will then appear face-on. This image was taken on 10 November 2022.

[Image description: Uranus appears tipped on its side. Set against a black background, the planet is mainly coloured cyan. It looks like a flat circle outlined with a pinkish gray limb. A faint, pink ring encircles the planet nearly vertically. The faint ring appears to be almost face on. A large area of white coves much of the right side of the planet.]

Read more

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance” atop a Falcon 9 rocket carrying ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, waits to be launched to the International Space Station from launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

Initially scheduled for 31 October, the launch of Crew-3 was delayed by weather and a minor crew medical issue. With a favourable forecast and the crew in good health, liftoff is now planned for 02:03 GMT/03:03 CET Thursday 11 November. This is the first spaceflight for Matthias, who will be the 600th human to fly to space.

On Station, Matthias will become a long-duration crew member, spending around six months living and working in orbit. During this time, he will support more than 35 European experiments and numerous international experiments on board.

Visit the Cosmic Kiss mission page to learn more about Matthias’s mission.

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 shows a quasar nicknamed the Teacup due to its shape. A quasar is an active galaxy that is powered by material falling into its central supermassive black hole. They are extremely luminous objects located at great distances from Earth. The Teacup is 1.1 billion light years away and was thought to be a dying quasar until recent X-ray observations shed new light on it.

The Teacup was discovered in 2007 as part of the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project that classified galaxies using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A powerful eruption of energy and particles from the central black hole created a bubble of material that became the Teacup's handle, which lies around 30 000 light years from the centre.

Observations revealed ionised atoms in the handle of the Teacup, possibly caused by strong radiation coming from the quasar in the past. This past level of radiation dwarfed the current measurements of the luminosity from the quasar. The radiation seemed to have diminished by 50 to 600 times over the last 40 000 to 100 000 years, leading to the theory that the quasar was rapidly fading.

But new data from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory reveal that X-rays are coming from a heavily obscured central source, which suggests that the quasar is still burning bright beneath its shroud. While the quasar has certainly dimmed over time, it is nowhere near as significant as originally thought, perhaps only fading by a factor of 25 or less over the past 100 000 years.

The Chandra data also showed evidence for hotter gas within the central bubble, and close to the 'cup' which surrounds the central black hole. This suggests that a wind of material is blowing away from the black hole, creating the teacup shape.

In the image shown here the X-ray data is coloured in blue and optical observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are shown in red and green. Another image including radio data also shows a second ‘handle’ on the other side of the ‘cup’.

The research is described in The Astrophysical Journal Letters: “Storm in a Teacup: X-ray view of an obscured quasar and superbubble” by G. Lansbury et al.

Explore the XMM-Newton data from this study in ESA’s archives.

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/University of Cambridge/G. Lansbury et al; optical: NASA/STScI/W. Keel et al

The lives of planetary nebulae are often chaotic, from the death of their parent star to the scattering of its contents far out into space. Captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESO 455-10 is one such planetary nebula, located in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion).

The oblate shells of ESO 455-10, previously held tightly together as layers of its central star, not only give this planetary nebula its unique appearance, but also offer information about the nebula. Seen in a field of stars, the distinct asymmetrical arc of material over the north side of the nebula is a clear sign of interactions between ESO 455-10 and the interstellar medium.

The interstellar medium is the material — consisting of matter and radiation — between star systems and galaxies. The star at the centre of ESO 455-10 allows Hubble to see the interaction with the gas and dust of the nebula, the surrounding interstellar medium, and the light from the star itself. Planetary nebulae are thought to be crucial in galactic enrichment as they distribute their elements, particularly the heavier metal elements produced inside a star, into the interstellar medium which will in time form the next generation of stars.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Stanghellini; CC BY 4.0

This image provides a perspective view of a pair of festive silhouettes – an angel (left) and a heart (right) spotted by ESA’s Mars Express near Mars’ south pole. It comprises data gathered by ESA’s Mars Express on 8 November 2020 during orbit 21305. The ground resolution is approximately 15 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 148°E/78°S. This view 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. HRSC stereo imaging was then used to derive the digital elevation model (DTM) upon which this oblique view is based.

More information

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

As this year’s heatwave continues, the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission reveals once again how the colour of our vegetation has changed in just one month. These two images cover the same area: part of Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, part of Germany and part of France, but the difference between them couldn’t be more striking. The first, captured on 28 June 2018, is predominantly green, depicting healthy vegetation. The second, captured on 25 July 2018, however, is mainly brown, showing just how much the vegetation has changed owing to the long hot dry spell Europe has been enduring over the last weeks.

These two images were captured by Sentinel-3’s ocean and land colour instrument.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows a region of Mars named Deuteronilus Mensae. This oblique perspective view was generated using a digital terrain model and Mars Express data gathered on 25 February 2018 during orbit 17913. The ground resolution is approximately 13 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 25.5°E/44°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.

More information

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

ESA’s Earth Explorer Aeolus satellite lifted off on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 22 August at 21:20 GMT (23:20 CEST). Using revolutionary laser technology, Aeolus will measure winds around the globe and play a key role in our quest to better understand the workings of our atmosphere. Importantly, this novel mission will also improve weather forecasting.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

As ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet get closer to launch, it's time to meet the crew. In the words of Thomas: "I don't mean to show off but this crew might have the most combined experience in spaceflight history!!!! (I'm sure the internet will take on the task to do the maths), and more importantly they're the best teammates ever. We had the chance to train in our shiny new spacesuits recently in Hawthorne where SpaceX is based, and we snapped a few pictures. Let me introduce them (and feel free to follow them on social media too). A special shoutout to the awesome PR and media team at SpaceX and Ashish Sharma the incredibly talented photographer who takes most of the cool SpaceX pictures you see all over the internet."

Credits: SpaceX

The Falcon 9 Crew Dragon spacecraft "Endurance" is being readied for the launch of Crew-3 now set for 3 November 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It is the first spaceflight for ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, who will be the 600th human to fly to space.

On Station, Matthias will become a long-duration crew member, spending around six months living and working in orbit. During this time, he will support more than 35 European experiments and numerous international experiments on board.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) reveal large amounts of dust from two Type II supernovae, Supernova 2004et (SN2004 et) and Supernova 2017eaw (SN 2017eaw), located 22 million light-years away from Earth in spiral galaxy NGC 6946. The large amounts of dust found around these supernovae support the theory that supernovae played a key role in supplying dust to the early Universe.

SN 2004et is highlighted in the left panel of this image, and SN 2017eaw in the right panel. Webb’s exquisite sensitivity and capability to observe in the mid-infrared allow it to detect the cooler dust that survived the internal shocks reverberating in the aftermath of the dying stars’ explosions. In these images, the bluer colours indicate hotter dust, while red is cooler dust. The hexagonal shape of SN 2004et in Webb’s image is an artefact of the telescope’s mirror and struts — when the bright light of a point source is observed, the light interacts with the sharp edges of the telescope, creating diffraction spikes.

The new Webb discovery is the first breakthrough in the study of dust production from supernovae since the detection of newly formed dust in relatively nearby (170,000 light-years) Supernova 1987A.

In SN 2004et, researchers using Webb found more than 5,000 Earth masses of dust, rivalling the amount of dust found in SN 1987A. That’s why SN 2004et appears brighter and redder in Webb images. SN 2017eaw is currently hotter, with less dust (bluer in Webb observations), but in 13 years, researchers expect it to appear similar to how SN 2004et does now.

In these images, blue, green, and red were assigned to Webb’s MIRI data at 10; 11.3, 12.8, and 15; and 18 and 21 microns (F1000W; F1130W, F1280W, and F1500W; and F1800W and F2100W, respectively).

SN 2004et and SN2017eaw are the first of five targets included in this program. The observations were completed as part of Webb General Observer program 2666. The paper was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on 5 July.

MIRI was developed as a partnership between Europe and the USA: the main partners are ESA, a consortium of nationally funded European institutes, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the University of Arizona. The instrument was nationally funded by the European Consortium under the auspices of the European Space Agency. The principal investigator leading the MIRI European Consortium is Gillian Wright (UK Astronomy Technology Centre) and the MIRI American science lead is George Rieke (University of Arizona).

[Image description: An image is split down the middle. At the top right of each half is a box with a zoomed-in image, connected by lines to a smaller area of the main image. On the left side, the large white box is labelled SN 2004et. In this larger box is a zoomed-in image of a dot on the larger main image. On the right side, the large white box is labelled SN 2017eaw. The zoomed-in image is a small light blue dot. The main images on each side are mostly black sections of a galaxy, with various smatterings of white dust clumps, small red dots, and light blue dots.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ori Fox (STScI), Melissa Shahbandeh (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

In this image by the international Cassini spacecraft, Saturn's shadow is captured creeping across the rings. The bottom half of the image shows the bright rings reflecting sunlight from their icy particles, whereas the top is partially obscured in shadow from the gas giant.

The planet's night side can be seen through gaps in the rings on the right side of the image, where it is dimly lit by light reflected from the rings.

The mosaic of four images was taken in visible light by Cassini's narrow-angle camera on 5 November 2006 when Cassini was 1.5 million kilometres from the ringed giant. At the time, Cassini was still a relatively new tourist at Saturn, and was in the middle of its primary mission, which lasted from 2004 to 2008.

The spacecraft was also spending time in an inclined orbit above Saturn, allowing it to have a bird’s eye view of the rings, as seen here, where the giant planet’s shadow creates a ‘terminator’ line of day and night across the rings.

The primary mission was followed by the Equinox mission (2008–2010) and the Solstice mission (2010–2017). The incredible tour of the Saturn system ended with the Grand Finale when Cassini got closer to the rings than ever before, prior to plunging into the planet's crushing atmosphere on 15 September 2017, at the planned end of the mission.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project between NASA, ESA, and Italy's ASI space agency. This image was published via NASA in March 2018.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 30 September, shows the flow of lava from the volcano erupting on the Spanish island of La Palma. The cascade of lava can be seen spilling into the Atlantic Ocean, extending the size of the coastline. This ‘lava delta’ covered about 20 hectares when the image was taken.

A crack opened in the Cumbre Vieja volcano on 19 September, throwing plumes of ash and lava into the air. Lava flowed down the mountain and through villages engulfing everything in its path. By 28 September, the 6-km lava flow had reached the ocean on the island’s west coast. Clouds of white steam were reported where the red-hot lava hit the water in the Playa Nueva area.

This Sentinel-2 image has been processed in true colour, using the shortwave infrared channel to highlight the lava flow. The Sentinel-2 mission is based on a constellation of two identical satellites, each carrying an innovative wide swath high-resolution multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands for monitoring changes in Earth’s land and vegetation.

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

A test version of ESA’s Proba-V Companion CubeSat seen during preparation for ‘thermal balance’ testing in the Agency’s Mechanical Systems Laboratory at its ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands.

Space is a place where it is possible to be hot and cold at the same time, if one part of your satellite is in sunlight and another face in shade. A satellite’s interior needs to maintain a steady temperature to go on operating properly.

Accordingly this ‘structural and thermal model’ of the Proba-V Companion CubeSat was placed inside the Large Vacuum Facility of ESA’s Mechanical Systems Laboratory – employed to test large satellite systems or complete small satellites – for a week-long exposure to temperature extremes in space-quality vacuum.

Developed by prime contractor Aerospacelab in Belgium for ESA, this mission is a 12-unit ‘CubeSat’ – a small, low-cost satellite built up from standardised 10-cm boxes. It will fly a cut-down version of the vegetation-monitoring instrument aboard the Earth-observing Proba-V to perform experimental combined observations with its predecessor.

Launched in 2013, Proba-V was an innovative ‘gap filler’ mission between the Vegetation instruments monitoring global plant growth aboard the full-size Spot-4 and -5 satellites and compatible imagery coming from Copernicus Sentinel-3, the first of which flew in 2016.

By combining the views from three adjacent telescopes into one, Proba-V’s Vegetation achieved a continent-spanning swath of 2250 km, allowing to image the entire world’s plant growth in just over a day. But with its operational mission now over, Proba-V has shifted to experimental mode.

As part of that effort, the Proba-V Companion CubeSat will host a single telescope version of the Vegetation imager, left over from Proba-V development. The two missions will perform joint observations, to evaluate how well the instrument performs on a smaller, lower-cost platform.

Aerospacelab will also gain operational experience to be applied to its planned constellation of geospatial-information-gathering small satellites.

The flight version of the nanosatellite will undergo its own thermal balance testing at ESTEC later this year, while its instrument is due to be calibrated in the establishment’s Opto-Electronics Laboratory and its platform will be de-magnetised using ESTEC’s Magnetic Coil Facility. The Proba-V Companion CubeSat’s antenna underwent radio-frequency testing in January.

The mission is supported through the Fly in-orbit testing element of ESA’s General Support Technology Programme.

Credits: ESA/Aerospacelab

Hubble’s 25 October view of Uranus puts the planet’s bright northern polar hood in the spotlight. It’s springtime in the northern hemisphere and the increase in ultraviolet radiation from the Sun seems to be causing the polar region to brighten. Researchers aren’t sure why. It could be a change in the opacity of atmospheric methane haze, or some variation in the aerosol particles. Curiously, even as the atmospheric hood gets brighter, the sharp southernmost boundary remains at the same latitude. This has been constant over the past several years of Hubble observations of the planet. Perhaps some sort of jetstream is setting up a barrier at that latitude of 43 degrees.

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team; CC BY 4.0

Infographics with the location of the European Robotic Arm on the International Space Station.

The European Robotic Arm is the first robot that can ‘walk’ around the Russian part of the International Space Station.

ERA has a length of over 11 m, and can anchor itself to the Station in multiple locations, moving backwards and forwards around the Russian segment with a large range of motion. Its home base will be the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, also called ‘Nauka’.

Astronauts will find in the European Robotic Arm a most valuable ally – it will save them precious time to do other work in space.

The crew in space can control ERA from both inside and outside the Space Station, a feature that no other robotic arm has offered before.

100% made-in-Europe, this intelligent robotic arm consists of two end effectors, two wrists, two limbs and one elbow joint together with electronics and cameras. Both ends act as either a 'hand' for the robot.

Credits: ESA

Europe' Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana is gearing up for the arrival of Ariane 6, Europe's new generation launch vehicle.

Aerial views from December 2021 show the main elements of the new Ariane 6 launch complex: the launch vehicle assembly building, the mobile gantry, and launch pad.

Ariane 6 has two versions depending on the required performance and will be capable of a wide range of missions to guarantee Europe’s independent access to space.

Credits: CNES-ESA/Sentinel

ESA’s Juice mission to Jupiter has successfully endured a month of space-like conditions inside the Large Space Simulator, the largest vacuum chamber in Europe.

At 10 m wide and 15 m high, the Large Space Simulator (LSS) is big enough to accommodate an upended London double decker bus. It is part of ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands, the largest satellite testing facility in Europe.

The flight model of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, was exposed to vacuum a billion times lower than standard seal level pressure, along with representative temperature extremes the spacecraft will encounter on its journey to Jupiter, ranging from 250°C to -180 °C.

The LSS’s artificial Sun simulator recreated the searing sunlight Juice will experience during its 88-month cruise phase, which will include a flyby of Venus. Liquid nitrogen circulating through the walls of the chamber mimicked the chill of deep space.

After a month of round-the-clock monitoring, the chamber doors were opened on 15 July. Next the spacecraft will return to Airbus Defence and Space in France, for final preparations for its launch next year.

Once in the Jovian system Juice will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments.

The mission will investigate the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants and the Jupiter system as an archetype for the numerous giant exoplanets now known to orbit other stars.

Watch this video covering Juice’s thermal vacuum test campaign.

Credits: ESA

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Zeeland – the westernmost province in the Netherlands.

Located around 150 km from Amsterdam, Zeeland consists of a complex system of islands, peninsulas and waterways. It also comprises Zeeuwsch-Vlaanderen – a strip of the Flanders mainland between the Western Scheldt (Westerschelde) and Belgium.

The province of Zeeland lies on the large river delta at the mouth of several rivers, like the Scheldt (Schelde) and Meuse (Maas) rivers. The lighter aqua colours in the image depict the shallow waters of the delta with riverbeds and several sandbanks visible. The brown coloured waters indicate a higher sediment content, which contrasts with the darker waters of the North Sea.

The Port of Rotterdam, the largest seaport in Europe, is visible top-right in the image. Antwerp, in Belgium, is visible in the bottom-right and the quaint city of Bruges can be seen in the bottom-left of the image.

Zeeland is one of the main agricultural provinces in the Netherlands with one of the largest areas of arable farmland. The patchwork of agricultural fields visible on the islands and mainland show the fields in the various stages of growth or harvest. The area supports cereals, potatoes, beets, cattle and horticulture.

Large parts of Zeeland, which translates to ‘sea land,’ lie below sea level. The province was the site of a deadly flood in 1953 brought on by a combination of high spring tides and a strong windstorm that severely damaged the low-lying coastal region.

As a result, the Dutch government began to implement the Delta Project – an elaborate system of dykes, canals, dams and bridges to hold back the North Sea. In this image, the 9km-long Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier (Oosterscheldekering) is visible between the islands of Schouwen-Duiveland and Noord-Beveland.

Since sea-level rise is a key indicator of climate change, accurately monitoring the changing height of the sea surface over decades is essential for climate science, for policy-making and, ultimately, for protecting the lives of those in low-lying regions at risk.

The Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, set to launch in November, is the first of two identical satellites to be launched sequentially to provide accurate measurements of sea level change.

Both satellites will reach 66°N and 66°S – a specific orbit occupied by the earlier missions that supplied the reference sea-surface height data over the last three decades. This orbit will allow for 95% of Earth’s ice-free ocean to be mapped every 10 days.

This image, acquired on 30 May 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

This image was created using data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor mission. It shows the complete Uzboi-Ladon-Morava (ULM) outflow system.

The area outlined by the bold white box indicates part of the Holden Basin, which was imaged by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on 24 April 2022 during orbit 23133. The dashed circles depict the informally named Holden and Ladon Basins.

Read more

Credits: MOLA Science Team/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Though it resembles a peaceful rose swirling in the darkness of the cosmos, NGC 3256 is actually the site of a violent clash. This distorted galaxy is the relic of a collision between two spiral galaxies, estimated to have occurred 500 million years ago. Today it is still reeling in the aftermath of this event.

Located about 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), NGC 3256 is approximately the same size as our Milky Way and belongs to the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster. It still bears the marks of its tumultuous past in the extended luminous tails that sprawl out around the galaxy, thought to have formed 500 million years ago during the initial encounter between the two galaxies, which today form NGC 3256. These tails are studded with young blue stars, which were born in the frantic but fertile collision of gas and dust.

When two galaxies merge, individual stars rarely collide because they are separated by such enormous distances, but the gas and dust of the galaxies do interact – with spectacular results. The brightness blooming in the centre of NGC 3256 gives away its status as a powerful starburst galaxy, host to vast amounts of infant stars born into groups and clusters. These stars shine most brightly in the far infrared, making NGC 3256 exceedingly luminous in this wavelength domain. Because of this radiation, it is classified as a Luminous Infrared Galaxy.

NGC 3256 has been the subject of much study due to its luminosity, its proximity, and its orientation: astronomers observe its face-on orientation, that shows the disc in all its splendour. NGC 3256 provides an ideal target to investigate starbursts that have been triggered by galaxy mergers. It holds particular promise to further our understanding of the properties of young star clusters in tidal tails.

As well as being lit up by over 1000 bright star clusters, the central region of NGC 3256 is also home to crisscrossing threads of dark dust and a large disc of molecular gas spinning around two distinct nuclei – the relics of the two original galaxies. One nucleus is largely obscured, only unveiled in infrared, radio and X-ray wavelengths.

These two initial galaxies were gas-rich and had similar masses, as they seem to be exerting roughly equal influence on each other. Their spiral disks are no longer distinct, and in a few hundred million years' time, their nuclei will also merge and the two galaxies will likely become united as a large elliptical galaxy.

NGC 3256 was previously imaged through fewer filters by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope as part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies, released for Hubble's 18th anniversary on 24 April 2008.

Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA, CC BY 4.0

Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot takes centre stage in this view. Though this vortex is big enough to swallow Earth, it has actually shrunk to the smallest size it has ever been according to observation records dating back 150 years. Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede can be seen transiting the giant planet at lower right. Slightly larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System. It is a cratered world and has a mainly water-ice surface with apparent glacial flows driven by internal heat. This image was taken on 6 January 2023.

Ganymede is the main target of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice). As humanity’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System, Juice will complete numerous flybys around Ganymede, and eventually enter orbit around the moon. The mission will explore various key topics: Ganymede’s mysterious magnetic field, its hidden ocean, its complex core, its ice content and shell, its interactions with its local environment and that of Jupiter, its past and present activity, and whether or not the moon could be a habitable environment.

[Image description: Jupiter looms large in this image. Set against a black background, the planet is banded in stripes of brownish orange, light gray, soft yellow, and shades of cream. White and cream coloured ovals punctuate the planet at all latitudes. The icy moon Ganymede appears as a gray, mottled orb crossing the face of Jupiter.]

Read more

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

First sunlight in Antartctic research station Concordia after four months of darkness.

ESA research medical doctor Nadja Albertsen writes in her blog: "Sun or not, it's quite magical.

When there are no clouds, the landscape around Concordia seems almost endless. When it is cloudy, the world seems to close in around us, in more acute isolation.

I take off my goggles for several minutes. For the first time in months, it is warm enough, and though the lenses are clear, it is still amazing to view the landscape without them. With over three months left in Antarctica, I am sucking it all up, like a giant bacon smoothie.

Light of heart and a little cold in the eyes, I go back to the base. It is lunch time and I am on table and dishwashing duty.

I am (almost) sure that tomorrow the layer of cloud will disperse, and the Sun will shine and the cold will bite again. First sunrise or not – we will eventually get so much Sun, we will tire of it. By the end of October it is all we will see."

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–N. Albtersen

When it comes to eggs, most of us are probably thinking of the chocolate variety that we hope will pass our way this weekend, but they’re difficult to spot from space. Instead, we can offer you this gorgeous Copernicus Sentinel-2B picture of Egg Island in the Bahamas.

Covering just 800 sq m, Egg Island is officially an islet. This tiny uninhabited patch is at the northwest end of the long thin chain of islands that form the Eleuthera archipelago, about 70 km from Nassau. Its name perhaps originates from the seabird eggs collected here.

The image, which Sentinel-2B captured on 2 February 2018, shows the sharp contrast between the beautiful shallow turquoise waters to the southwest and the deeper darker Atlantic waters to the northeast. Ripples of sand waves created by currents stand out in the shallow waters. These shallow waters are a natural nursery for sea turtles and other sea life. Any disturbance to this delicate ecosystem could spell disaster for wildlife. In fact, Egg Island was recently at risk of being developed as a cruise ship port, which would have meant dredging the seabed and destroying coral reefs. Fortunately, this plan didn't take hold because of the damage it would cause to the environment.

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

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Ariane 5 flight VA254 with the Eutelsat Quantum and Star One D2 satellites is now on the launch par of the ELA-3 (Ensemble de Lancement Ariane) Ariane 5 launch complex, at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guyana on 29 July 2021.

Quantum, the ESA Partnership Project with Eutelsat, Airbus and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, is a pioneering mission preparing the way for the next generation of telecommunications satellites, which will be more flexible by design and so more adaptable to customer needs once in orbit.

Quantum is a shift from custom-designed satellite with one-off payloads to a more generic approach, resulting in unprecedented in-orbit reconfigurability in coverage, frequency and power, allowing complete mission rehaul, including orbital position.

ESA partnered with satellite operator Eutelsat and manufacturer Airbus to design this programme, in response to today's market requiring satellites to be able to respond to changes in geographical or performance demand, either during manufacturing or after launch. This will enable the operator to address emerging business opportunities — even those that appear after it has ordered a satellite.

Such ESA Partnership Projects maximise the benefits to industry thanks to an efficient, co-managed approach that is tailored to commercial best practice.

Credits:

Title :

Eutelsat Quantum on the launch pad

Credit line image :

ESA - S. Corvaja

Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River in western Nigeria, is featured in this true-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Kainji Lake was created in 1968 by the construction of the Kainji Dam and covers an area of around 1300 sq km with a mean depth of 12 m. Water from the Niger River, the third-longest river in Africa, enters the lake in the north. The grey-coloured waters here mix with the striking, yellow-coloured waters of Kainji Lake, creating a distinct sediment plume moving southwards. The emerald-green streaks are vegetation and algae floating on the surface of the lake.

The creation of the lake submerged Foge Island, the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements – leaving around 50 000 people displaced. Foge Island can be seen dividing the river into two channels at the northern end, and the channels merge again north of Old Bussa. During low water tides, large parts of Foge Island rise above and are temporarily inhabited by migrating fishermen.

Kainji Dam, located in the centre of the image, produces electricity for most of Nigeria’s cities. The dam is the largest of the dams on the Niger, over 66 m high and 550 m across. The dam provides electrical power, improved river navigation, water control of the Niger, as well as waters for irrigation and fishing.

Kainji Lake National Park, visible as a dark green patch of land in the left of the image, is Nigeria’s oldest national park. Covering an area of around 5300 sq km, the park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. Around 65 mammal species, 350 species of birds and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians have been recorded in the park.

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 11 November 2020, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

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

A new Mars year began on 7 February 2021.

The image on the left was taken on 6 February and the image on the right on 7 February – one of the first images returned from the new martian year. The images were captured by the Visual Monitoring Camera onboard ESA’s Mars Express, which takes regular snapshots of the planet from orbit. The images are automatically shared to the camera’s Twitter account and posted to Flickr.

One year on Mars equals 687 Earth days, so it takes almost twice as long to orbit the Sun. Your birthday would instead be every 23 Earth months!

The martian new year begins with the northward equinox (northern spring, southern autumn) and the coming year is designated Mars Year 36.

Find out more here

Credits: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

This glittering ball of stars is the globular cluster NGC 1898, which lies towards the centre of the Large Magellanic Cloud — one of our closest cosmic neighbours. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy that hosts an extremely rich population of star clusters, making it an ideal laboratory for investigating star formation.

Discovered in November 1834 by British astronomer John Herschel, NGC 1898 has been scrutinised numerous times by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Today we know that globular clusters belong to the oldest known objects in the Universe and that they are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation. While we already have a pretty good picture on the globular clusters of the Milky Way — still with many unanswered questions — our studies on globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies just started. The observations of NGC 1898 will help to determine if their properties are similar to the ones found in the Milky Way, or if they have different features, due to being in a different cosmic environment.

This image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The WFC3 observes light ranging from near-infrared to near-ultraviolet wavelengths, while the ACS explores the near-infrared to the ultraviolet.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0

Not a spacesuit but a SCAPE suit – standing for ‘Self Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble’. Technicians don these suits before filling satellites with the toxic hydrazine fuel used for manoeuvres in space. This one was snapped by Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins at ESA’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

ESA’s Clean Space initiative is researching greener alternatives to hydrazine but for now this high-energy propellant is being used to fuel almost all satellites as well as launcher upper stages.

Edgar Martins collaborated closely with ESA to produce a comprehensive photographic survey of the Agency’s various facilities around the globe, together with those of its international partners.

Characteristically empty of people, Martins’ long-exposure photos – taken with analogue wide film cameras – possess a stark, reverent style. They document the variety of specialised installations and equipment needed to prepare missions for space, or to recreate orbital conditions for testing down on Earth.

Credits: Edgar Martins

Everyone is used to living with smarter devices. But imagine living in a smart city where everything from public transport to city lamps are efficient and sustainable. This seemingly simple image of northern Italy from Earth orbit is one of the ways space is paving the way for cities to get smarter.

Doorbells, refrigerators and toothbrushes are everyday devices that are now controllable, customisable and designed to make your life run more efficiently by collecting and relaying data using telecommunications satellites.

Other space technology is helping to collect valuable data that can result in larger scale changes for cities.

Take one of humankind’s greatest achievement in space so far, the International Space Station.

Astronauts routinely snap photos of Earth from the orbital outpost, and not just for the likes and retweets. Photographs like this one of northern Italy, taken by ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano during his 2013 mission, provide vital data about city efficiency and sustainability.

Researchers have devised a method to assess the environmental impact of artificial light on humans, animals, and the surrounding environment using one of the few sources of publicly-accessible night images of Earth in colour: pictures taken by the astronauts from the International Space Station.

City lights are disruptive not only for the lives of nocturnal animals, who suffer from disorientation and behavioural and physiological changes, but also for people. An excess of artificial light before bedtime reduces melatonin production, a hormone linked to sleep. This suppression can lead to negative effects on our health, including breast and prostate cancer.

In addition, streetlights account for a large chunk of a country’s energy consumption. As the world grapples with climate change and cleaner sources of energy, how that energy is put to use is a bright topic.

Cities at Night is an online platform that invites citizens to flip through the half a million photographs of Earth at night taken so far by astronauts from the Space Station to identify cities. The end result of Cities at Night will be map of Earth that is accessible to anyone.

Researchers want to use the map to locate energy inefficiencies in urban cities to urge dimming of the lights. A case in point is the city of Milan. The city replaced their orange sodium lamps with white LEDs. Comparisons of Milan from night as seen from space before and after the change has shown that the white light is worse for the local environment.

The data retrieved from these images is vital to drawing risk maps for artificial lighting that can help guide city officials in these types of decisions. And that’s just smart.

Credits: ESA/NASA

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows a beautiful slice of the Red Planet from the northern polar cap downwards, and highlights cratered, pockmarked swathes of the Terra Sabaea and Arabia Terra regions. It comprises data gathered on 17 June 2019 during orbit 19550.

The ground resolution at the centre of the image is approximately 1 km/pixel and the images are centred at about 44°E/26°N. This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera. The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface. North is up.

Learn more

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

The total solar eclipse of 2 July 2019, composed for viewing with red-green/blue '3D' anaglyph glasses. The image combines the first and last image during totality and has a subtle 3D effect.

Credits: ESA/CESAR

Part of the Laguna San Rafael National Park, located on the Pacific coast of southern Chile, is pictured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Covering an area of around 17000 sq km, the park includes the Northern Patagonian Ice Field – a remnant of the Patagonian Ice Sheet that once covered the region. Today, despite the ice field being just a small fraction of its previous size, it is still the second largest continuous mass of ice outside of the polar regions.

The image depicts the west part of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field which has 28 exit glaciers, with the largest two, San Rafael and San Quintín, visible here. San Rafael Glacier, which can be seen in the upper-right of the image, is one of the most actively calving glaciers in the world and the fastest-moving glacier in Patagonia – ‘flowing’ at a speed of around 7.6 km per year.

The glacier calves west towards the Pacific Ocean and into the Laguna San Rafael (Lake San Rafael), visible directly to the left of the glacier. The lake was formed due to the retreat of the glacier after the last ice age, and today is a popular tourist destination, with ships sailing to the lagoon to see ice falling from the glacier.

Directly below lies the San Quintín glacier, the second-largest glacier in the northern ice field. The glacier drains to the west, where hundreds of icebergs can be seen dotted in the lake. Until 1991, the glacier terminated on land, but with its retreat, the basin filled with water and formed the proglacial lake we see today.

Together with its twin, San Rafael, the glaciers have been receding dramatically under the influence of global warming. Satellite data show that some of the glaciers in Patagonia are retreating faster than anywhere in the world. As temperatures rise and glaciers and ice sheets melt, the water eventually runs into the ocean, causing sea level to rise.

According to a report last year, glaciers worldwide have lost over 9000 gigatonnes of ice since 1961 – raising sea level by 27 mm. Rising seas are one of the most distinctive and potentially devastating effects of Earth’s warming climate.

For the last 30 years, a series of satellites have collected global sea level measurements to keep an eye on its rising trend. Scheduled for launch in November 2020, the Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite will be the next spacecraft to continue the long-term record of sea-surface height measurements started in 1992.

The satellite will collect the most accurate data on sea level and monitor how it changes over time. The satellite carries a radar altimeter, which works by measuring the time it takes for radar pulses to travel to Earth’s surface and back again to the satellite.

The spacecraft also carries five instruments to help monitor atmospheric conditions that affect the radar signal and to determine the precise position and velocity of the satellite in orbit. Other instruments measure atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles for weather forecasting and the radiation environment around the satellite.

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

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

These finely-detailed ceramic parts have been 3D printed using simulated lunar regolith as part of an ESA-led investigation into how 3D printing could be used to support a lunar base.

“These parts have the finest print resolution ever achieved with objects made of regolith simulant, demonstrating a high level of print precision and widening the range of uses such items could be put to,” comments ESA materials engineer Advenit Makaya. “If one needs to print tools or machinery parts to replace broken parts on a lunar base, precision in the dimensions and shape of the printed items will be vital.

“They are the work of innovative Austrian company Lithoz, working on 3D printed ceramics.

“Normally their print process is based on materials such as aluminium oxide, zirconium oxide or silicon nitride. What we’ve demonstrated here is that it can also work with raw regolith, which is a collection of various different types of oxides, chiefly silicon oxide but also aluminium, calcium and iron oxides, among others.”

Ground and sieved down to particle size, the regolith grains are mixed with a light-reacting binding agent, laid down layer-by-layer then hardened by exposing them to light. The resulting printed part is then ‘sintered’ in an oven to bake it solid.

Johannes Homa, CEO of Lithoz added: “Thanks to our expertise in the additive manufacturing of ceramics, we were able to achieve these results very quickly. We believe there’s a huge potential in ceramic additive manufacturing for the Moon.”

As a next step, the parts will be tested to check their strength and mechanical properties, with the idea that similar parts could one day be employed to replace parts in a lunar base without requiring replacements from Earth.

This work was carried out as part of the URBAN project, supported through ESA’s Discovery and Preparation Programme.

Credits: ESA–G. Porter, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

NGC 4618 was discovered on 9 April 1787 by the German-British astronomer, Wilhelm Herschel, who also discovered Uranus in 1781. Only a year before discovering NGC 4618, Herschel theorised that the “foggy” objects astronomers were seeing in the night sky were likely to be large star clusters located much further away then the individual stars he could easily discern.

Since Herschel proposed his theory, astronomers have come to understand that what he was seeing was a galaxy. NGC 4618, classified as a barred spiral galaxy, has the special distinction amongst other spiral galaxies of only having one arm rotating around the centre of the galaxy.

Located about 21 million light-years from our galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, NGC 4618 has a diameter of about one third that of the Milky Way. Together with its neighbour, NGC 4625, it forms an interacting galaxy pair, which means that the two galaxies are close enough to influence each other gravitationally. These interactions may result in the two (or more) galaxies merging together to form a new formation, such as a ring galaxy.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, I. Karachentsev; CC BY 4.0

ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, Juice, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French 09:14 local time/14:14CEST on 14 April 2023 to begin its eight-year journey to Jupiter, where it will study in detail the gas giant planet’s three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

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 VA260 is 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

Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) reveals what is really going on in an intriguing region of the Tarantula Nebula. Astronomers focused the powerful instrument on what looked like a small bubble feature in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). However, the spectra reveal a very different picture from a young star blowing a bubble in its surrounding gas.

The signature of atomic hydrogen, shown in blue, shows up in the star itself but not immediately surrounding it. Instead, it appears outside the “bubble,” which spectra show is actually “filled” with molecular hydrogen (green) and complex hydrocarbons (red). This indicates that the bubble is actually the top of a dense pillar of dust and gas that is being blasted by radiation from the cluster of massive young stars to its lower right (see the full NIRCam image). It does not appear as pillar-like as some other structures in the nebula because there is not much colour contrast with the area surrounding it.

The harsh stellar wind from the massive young stars in the nebula is breaking apart molecules outside the pillar, but inside they are preserved, forming a cushy cocoon for the star. This star is still too young to be clearing out its surroundings by blowing bubbles – NIRSpec has captured it just beginning to emerge from the protective cloud from which it was formed. Without Webb’s resolution at infrared wavelengths, the discovery of this star birth in action would not have been possible.

NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems.

Read more

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

This image of the young volcanic region of Elysium Planitia on Mars [10.3°N, 159.5°E] was taken on 14 April 2021 by the CaSSIS camera on the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).

The two blue parallel trenches in this image, called Cerberus Fossae, were thought to have formed by tectonic processes. They run for almost one thousand km over the volcanic region. In this image, CaSSIS is looking straight down into one of these 2 km-wide fissures.

The floor here is a few hundred metres deep and is filled with coarse-grained sand, likely basaltic in composition, which appears blue in the CaSSIS false-colour composite image. The flat volcanic plains nearby are punctured by small impact craters, which expose possibly the same basaltic materials that we see within Cerberus Fossae.

TGO arrived at Mars in 2016 and began its full science mission in 2018. The spacecraft is not only returning spectacular images, 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

At first glance, Saturn’s rings appear to be intersecting themselves in an impossible way. In actuality, this view from the international Cassini spacecraft shows the rings in front of the planet, upon which the shadow of the rings is cast. And because rings like the A ring and Cassini Division, which appear in the foreground, are not entirely opaque, the outline of Saturn and those ring shadows can be seen directly through the rings themselves.

Saturn’s rings have complex and detailed structures, many of which can be seen here. In some cases, the reasons for the gaps and ringlets are known: for example, 28 km wide moon Pan – seen here as a bright speck near the image centre – keeps open the Encke gap. But in other cases, the origins and natures of gaps and ringlets are less well understood.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 14º above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on 11 February 2016, and highlighted in a release published 25 April 2016. The view was acquired at a distance of 1.9 million km from Pan and at a Sun–Pan–spacecraft angle of 85º. Image scale is 10 km/pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency. The mission concluded in September 2017.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

With temperatures soaring and no rain to speak of, Europe is the grip of a heatwave. As well as the havoc that wildfires have caused in countries such as the UK, Sweden and Greece, the current heat is scorching our land and vegetation. These two images from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission show agricultural fields around the town of Slagelse in Zealand, Denmark. The image from July 2017 shows lush green fields, but as the image from this July shows, the heat and lack of rain has taken its toll on the health of the vegetation. This year’s summer weather means that the same comparison could be made for many other parts of Europe.

The two Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites carry high-resolution multispectral optical imagers to monitor changes in vegetation. While the difference in plant health in these two images is clear to see, the mission offers measurements of leaf area index, leaf chlorophyll and leaf water content, which allow for a detailed assessment of plant health.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017–18), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO