The Circinus Galaxy, a galaxy about 13 million light-years away, contains an active supermassive black hole that continues to influence its evolution. The largest source of infrared light from the region closest to the black hole itself was thought to be outflows, or streams of superheated matter that fire outward.

Now, new observations from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope provide evidence that reverses this thinking, suggesting that most of the hot, dusty material is actually feeding the central black hole. The technique used to gather this data also has the potential to analyze the outflow and accretion components for other nearby black holes.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a full view of the Circinus galaxy, a nearby spiral galaxy about 13 million light-years away. The inset highlights a close-up from Webb of the galaxy’s core, where infrared observations pierce through dust to reveal hot material feeding its central supermassive black hole. Webb’s image, made using the Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) tool on its NIRISS (Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) instrument, isolates hot dust in the immediate surroundings of the supermassive black hole, revealing that most of the infrared emission comes from a compact, dusty structure feeding the black hole rather than from outflowing material. In the Webb image, the inner face of the torus glows in infrared light, while the darker areas represent where the outer ring is blocking light.

The research, which includes the sharpest image of a black hole’s surroundings ever taken by Webb, was published today in Nature. Learn more about this result here.

[Image description: Image shows a large spiral galaxy that has a bright white center, with several lanes of reddish-brown dust and gas in between faint white arms. The galaxy takes up the center third of the frame. There are several thousand stars, some with diffraction spikes, scattered around the image. This image is labeled Hubble. A small box outlining an area at the center of the galaxy leads to a pullout square at the top right. The image, labeled Webb, is dark with a white glowing oval at the center.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, E. Lopez-Rodriguez (University of South Carolina), D. Thatte (STScI), Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI). Acknowledgment: NSF's NOIRLab, CTIO; CC BY 4.0

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron walk out from the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, ready for launch.

Known as “Crew-3” the four astronauts will be launched to the International Space Station from launchpad 39A, aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance”, atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

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

The ExoMars parachute deployment sequence that will deliver a surface platform and rover to the surface of Mars in 2021 (following launch in 2020). The graphic is not to scale, and the colours of the parachutes are for illustrative purposes only.

The graphic highlights the main events concerning the parachutes, a sequence that is initiated after significant slowing of the 3.8 m-wide entry module in the atmosphere with the aeroshell’s heatshields. Then the first pilot parachute is deployed, and shortly after the first main stage parachute, which measures 15 m in diameter and has a disc-gap band design. It will open while the module is still travelling at supersonic speed and will be jettisoned prior to the deployment of the second pilot chute and second stage main parachute once at subsonic speeds. The second stage main parachute has a ring-slot design and is 35 m in diameter, the largest to ever fly on Mars.

The second pilot chute remains attached to the main parachute in order to prevent rebound of the deployed parachute. During latter stages of the descent (not pictured) the aeroshell’s front heatshield will be discarded, and the landing platform will be released for its final descent and propulsive braking phase. Once safely on the surface, it will subsequently deploy ramps for the rover to drive down and on to Mars.

Credits: ESA

Looking past its long spiral arms filled with stars and the dark threads of dust crossing it, your eye might be caught by the shining point at the centre of UGC 3478, the spiral galaxy starring in this Hubble Picture of the Week. This point is the galaxy’s nucleus, and indeed there is something special about it: it is a growing giant black hole which astronomers call an active galactic nucleus, or AGN.

UGC 3478, located in the constellation Camelopardalis, is what is known as a Seyfert galaxy. This is a type of galaxy with an AGN at its core. Like all such “active galaxies”, the brightness that you see here hides a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. A disc of gas spirals into this black hole, and as the material crashes together and heats up it emits very strong radiation. The spectrum of this radiation includes hard X-ray emission, which clearly mark it out from the stars in the galaxy. Despite the strong brightness of the compact central region, we can still clearly see the disc of the galaxy around it, which makes the galaxy a Seyfert galaxy.

Many active galaxies are known to astronomers at vast distances from Earth, thanks to the great brightness of their nuclei highlighting them next to other, dimmer galaxies. At 128 million light-years from Earth, UGC 3478 is positively neighbourly to us. The data used to make this image comes from a Hubble survey of nearby powerful AGNs found in relatively high-energy X-rays, like this one, which it is hoped can help astronomers to understand how the galaxies interact with the supermassive black holes at their hearts.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, with two glowing spiral arms. They are filled with thin lines of dark dust, and surrounded by a faint cloud. One arm stretches further from the galaxy than the other. The point at the centre of the spiral is particularly bright. It is on a black background, mostly empty, except for some distant galaxies and a few bright stars in the foreground.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Koss, A. Barth; CC BY 4.0

Testing one, two and now, three.

Radio frequency testing has begun on the first Orion spacecraft that will fly around the Moon for the Artemis 1 mission, just two weeks after thermal and environmental tests were completed at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio, USA.

Electromagnetic compatibility or EMC testing is routine for spacecraft. All electronics emit some form of electromagnetic waves that can cause interference with other devices. Think of the buzz that speakers give out right before an incoming call on a mobile phone.

Spacecraft electronics can cause similar interference, but out in space such interference can have disastrous consequences, so all systems must be checked before launch.

EMC tests often take place in a special shielded room constructed of metal walls and doors and foamy spikes (aka Absorbers) that block out unwanted external electromagnetic radiation, like ESA’s Maxwell chamber at its technical site in the Netherlands.

Though not an EMC chamber, Plum Brook’s thermal vacuum chamber is made of aluminium that does provide electromagnetic shielding, making it a suitable substitute.

To test electronics, the spacecraft will simulate a flight in realistic conditions with most of its subsystems and equipment powered and in operational mode.

The electronics are first tested for compatibility in this electromagnetic shielded chamber. Equipment will be switched on to test whether they do potentially disturb one another.

In the second round of tests, electromagnetic fields will be applied using antennas around the spacecraft to test the susceptibility to interference from external sources. The Orion capsule is equipped with electromagnetic field sensors to take measurements as the disturbance frequencies are injected into the chamber.

While all subsystems are a potential source of radio frequency noise, of particular interest are the transmitters that intentionally generate radio frequencies. These can easily disturb other equipment sensitive to electromagnetic noise, like GPS receivers, tele-command modules and other communication elements.

Orion’s European Service Module provides power, propulsion, and crew life support.

ESA experts are on site monitoring all tests alongside NASA colleagues as Orion moves closer to its first flight without a crewaround the Moon.

Find more in depth coverage of all things Orion on the blog.

Credits: ESA

ESA’s Biomass satellite, encapsulated within a Vega-C rocket fairing, has been rolled out to the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of liftoff, planned for 29 April at 11:15 CEST.

Once in orbit, this latest Earth Explorer mission will provide vital insights into the health and dynamics of the world’s forests, revealing how they are changing over time and, critically, enhancing our understanding of their role in the global carbon cycle.

Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut

The Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over Mount Triglav in Slovenia. At 2800 m above sea level, the mountain is the highest in the country and a significant source of national pride, even featuring on the Slovenian coat of arms. Milan Kucan, the former president, famously once said that it was the duty of every countryman and woman to scale the mountain at least once in their lives.

The snow-peaked mountain is visible in the centre of the image, flanked by the popular tourist resort of Bled to the west. This small town is a popular base for skiers in the winter and for water-sport enthusiasts in the summer who make the most of the alpine lake of the same name.

In the lower-right part of this true-colour image, we see the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, home to just under 300 000 people and the cultural, administrative and economic centre of the country. Famous for its environmental credentials, the city was named European Green Capital in 2016. This is thanks to shifting the focus from car transport to public transport, by pedestrianising areas of the city and by taking concerted efforts to preserve and protect green areas.

Slovenia is bordered by Austria, Italy, Croatia and Hungary. On the top-right of the image we can see Klagenfurt, the capital city of the southern Austrian province of Carinthia, located by Lake Wörthersee. Sometimes referred to as the Caribbean of the Alps, the Lake area is where the famous Austrian composer, Gustav Mahler, wrote some of his best-known symphonies.

Sentinel-2 data can be used to monitor agriculture, biodiversity, and coastal and inland waters, helping to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme.

This image, which was captured on 6 May 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

This Hubble Space Telescope image captures the beauty of the moth-like planetary nebula NGC 2899. This object has a diagonal, bipolar, cylindrical outflow of gas. This is propelled by radiation and stellar winds from a nearly 22 000 degree Celsius white dwarf at the center. In fact, there may be two companion stars that are interacting and sculpting the nebula, which is pinched in the middle by a fragmented ring or torus – looking like a half-eaten donut. It has a forest of gaseous “pillars” that point back to the source of radiation and stellar winds. The colours are from glowing hydrogen and oxygen. The nebula lies approximately 4,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Vela.

[Image description: The planetary nebula NGC 2899 is shaped like a single macaroni noodle, with its edges pointed up, but its edge-on central torus is semi-transparent in the middle. The top and bottom edges are thick and orange. The center is semi-transparent blue and green. The wider central region looks roughly like a moth, also filled with semi-transparent blue and green. There are two pinpoint-like white stars with diffraction spikes toward the center. Immediately below them, slightly toward the right, is a smaller blue orb, a central star. The next layer of gas and dust is whiter, with some thicker pillars that look like they are rising up at bottom center. The colour fades into reds and purples, and then to orange ]

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI; CC BY 4.0

Artist's impression of Cheops, ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, in orbit above Earth. In this view the satellite's telescope cover is closed.

Credits: ESA / ATG medialab

A European telecommunications satellite that can be completely repurposed while in orbit has been placed on board a rocket ready for launch on 30 July.

Developed under an ESA Partnership Project with satellite operator Eutelsat and prime manufacturer Airbus, Eutelsat Quantum is the first commercial fully flexible software-defined satellite in the world.

Because it can be reprogrammed in orbit, it can respond to changing demands for data transmission and secure communications during its 15-year lifetime.

Its beams can be redirected to move in almost real time to provide information to passengers on board moving ships or planes. The beams also can be easily adjusted to deliver more data when demand surges.

The satellite can detect and characterise any rogue emissions, enabling it to respond dynamically to accidental interference or intentional jamming.

Eutelsat Quantum is the outcome of an ESA Partnership Project. It is a UK flagship project with most of the satellite developed and manufactured by British industry. Airbus was the prime contractor and was responsible for manufacturing the satellite’s payload, while Surry Satellite Technology Ltd manufactured the new platform.

The satellite will be launched on board an Ariane 5 rocket operated by Arianespace from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

ESA Partnership Projects develop sustainable end-to-end systems, right up to in-orbit validation.

Credits: ESA/ArianeGroup/Arianespace/CNES

Check our accessible text here.

We call the side that is not visible from Earth the far side of the Moon, and it is also illuminated by the Sun at different times. The Moon takes as long to rotate on its axis as it takes to revolve around Earth, so we only see one face of the Moon from our planet.

Image description: Images of the near and far sides of the Moon.

Credits: ESA

An artist's impression of the lunar outpost called the Gateway. The Gateway is the next structure to be launched by the partners of the International Space Station.

During the 2020s, it will be assembled and operated in the vicinity of the Moon, where it will move between different orbits and enable the most distant human space missions ever attempted.

Placed farther from Earth than the current Space Station – but not in a lunar orbit – the Gateway will offer a staging post for missions to the Moon and Mars.

Like a mountain refuge, it will provide shelter and a place to stock up on supplies for astronauts en route to more distant destinations. It will also offer a place to relay communications and can act as a base for scientific research.

The Gateway will weigh around 40 tonnes and will consist of a service module, a communications module, a connecting module, an airlock for spacewalks, a place for the astronauts to live and an operations station to command the Gateway’s robotic arm or rovers on the Moon. Astronauts will be able to occupy it for up to 90 days at a time.

A staging outpost near the Moon offers many advantages for space agencies. Most current rockets do not have the power to reach our satellite in one go but could reach the space Gateway. Europe’s Ariane would be able to deliver supplies for astronauts to collect and use for further missions deeper into space – much like mountain expeditions can stock up refuges with food and equipment for further climbs to the summit.

The Gateway also allows space agencies to test technologies such as electric propulsion where Earth’s gravity would interfere if done closer to home. New opportunities for space research away from Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere are planned for the outpost. Its close position will provide rapid response times for astronauts controlling rovers on the Moon.

Credits: ESA/NASA/ATG Medialab

The sparkling scene depicted in this week’s Hubble Picture of the Week is of the spiral galaxy NGC 5248, located 42 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Boötes. It is also known as Caldwell 45, having been included in a catalogue of visually interesting celestial objects that were known, but weren’t as commonly observed by amateur astronomers as the more famous Messier objects.

NGC 5248 is one of the so-called ‘grand design’ spirals, with prominent spiral arms that reach from near the core out through the disc. It also has a faint bar structure in the centre, between the inner ends of the spiral arms, which is not quite so obvious in this visible-light portrait from Hubble. Features like these which break the rotational symmetry of a galaxy have a huge influence on how matter moves through it, and eventually its evolution through time. They feed gas from a galaxy’s outer reaches to inner star-forming regions, and even to a galaxy’s central black hole where it can kick-start an active galactic nucleus.

These flows of gas have shaped NGC 5248 in a big way; it has many bright ‘starburst regions’ of intense star formation spread across its disc, and it is dominated by a population of young stars. The galaxy even has two very active, ring-shaped starburst regions around its nucleus, filled with young clusters of stars. These ‘nuclear rings’ are remarkable enough, but normally a nuclear ring tends to block gas from getting further into the core of a galaxy. NGC 5248 having a second ring inside the first is a marker of just how forceful its flows of matter and energy are! Its relatively nearby, highly visible starburst regions make the galaxy a target for professional and amateur astronomers alike.

[Image Description: A close-in, face-on view of a spiral galaxy. It has two large arms which curve outwards from the round, bright central region to nearly the corners of the image. They are lined by bright pink, glowing points where stars are forming, and channels of dark reddish dust that blocks light. These also spread across the galaxy’s oval disc, which is cloudy in form and speckled with stars. A black background is visible behind it.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; CC BY 4.0

The James Webb Space Telescope, configured for flight, was moved from the cleanroom to the payload preparation facility for fuelling at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 11–12 November 2021.

Webb will be loaded with propellants before being mounted on top of the rocket and then encapsulated by the Ariane 5 fairing.

Webb will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. As part of an international collaboration agreement, ESA is providing the telescope’s launch service using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace.

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Find out more about Webb in ESA’s launch kit and interactive brochure.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Vidéo du CSG - P Baudon

The James Webb Space Telescope was transferred to the final assembly building at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 7 December 2021, to meet its Ariane 5 launch vehicle.

Stowed inside a special 23-tonne transport container, Webb was protected and monitored throughout the transfer.

Ariane 5 was already moved to the same building on 29 November. Here, adjustable platforms allow engineers to access the launch vehicle and its payload.

The next steps are to hoist Webb to the upper platform which has been prepared so that Webb can be integrated on Ariane 5’s upper stage and then encapsulated inside Ariane 5’s specially adapted fairing.

Webb is scheduled for launch on 22 December from Europe’s Spaceport. Ground teams have already successfully completed the delicate operation of loading the spacecraft with the propellant it will use to steer itself while in space.

Webb will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. As part of an international collaboration agreement, ESA is providing the telescope’s launch service using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace.

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Find out more about Webb in ESA’s launch kit and interactive brochure.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Vidéo du CSG - P Piron

The Gariep Dam, the largest dam in South Africa, is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

The Gariep Dam, visible in the bottom right of the image, lies along the Orange River, bordering the Free State and Eastern Cape provinces. The dam’s primary purpose is for irrigation, domestic and industrial use as well as power generation. The wall of the Gariep Dam, which is around 88 m high and 900 m long, holds back the Gariep Reservoir and, when full, the reservoir covers an area of around 360 sq km.

This image has been processed in a way that highlights vegetation in shades of green and water bodies in black. The water on the east side of the Gariep Dam appears in royal blue owing to a large quantity of sediments coming from the Orange River, therefore appearing brighter than the water flowing out of the west side of the dam.

The Orange River plays an important role in the South African economy by providing water for irrigation and hydroelectric power. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean.

The river is said to be one of the world’s most turbid, and is estimated to deliver around 60 million tonnes of sediment each year to the western margin of South Africa. A significant quantity of this sediment is believed to be from soil erosion, an increasing environmental threat to sustainability in southern Africa.

On the northern shore of the dam lies the Gariep Dam Nature Reserve, home to the largest number of Springbok in the country as well as other animals such as zebras, black wildebeest and ostrich.

The bright green circular shapes along the Orange River are an example of centre-pivot irrigation systems, where equipment rotates around a centre pivot and crops are fed with water from the centre of the arc.

In the left of the image lies the Doornkloof Nature Reserve, at the southern shore of the Vanderkloof Dam (not visible). The reserve is home to kudu, brown hyena and around 170 bird species.

The rest of the image is dominated by bare soil and rocky terrain which appear in different shades of pink and red. Straight lines in the image are roads which connect this area to other parts of South Africa.

Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission can help monitor changes in urban expansion, land-cover change and agriculture monitoring. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution also allow changes in inland water bodies to be closely monitored.

This image, captured on 30 January 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 gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, and visible and ultraviolet light from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago. The smaller spiral on the left, catalogued as IC 2163, passed behind NGC 2207, the larger spiral galaxy at right.

Both have increased star formation rates. Combined, they are estimated to form the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of the Sun annually. Our Milky Way galaxy forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year.

Both galaxies have hosted seven known supernovae, each of which may have cleared space in their arms, rearranging gas and dust that later cooled, and allowed many new stars to form. (Find these areas by looking for the bluest regions).

Learn more

[Image description: Two spiral galaxies take up almost the entire view and appear to be overlapping. The galaxy at left, IC 2163, is smaller and more compact than the galaxy at right, NGC 2207. The black background of space is dotted with foreground stars and extremely distant galaxies.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0

The sparkling spiral galaxy gracing this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is UGC 5460, which sits about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. This image combines four different wavelengths of light to reveal UGC 5460’s central bar of stars, winding spiral arms and bright blue star clusters. Also captured in the upper left-hand corner of this image is a far closer object: a star just 577 light-years away in our own galaxy.

UGC 5460 has hosted two recent supernovae named SN 2011ht and SN 2015as. It’s because of these two stellar explosions that Hubble targeted this galaxy, collecting data for three observing programmes that aim to study various kinds of supernovae.

SN 2015as was what’s known as a core-collapse supernova: a cataclysmic explosion that happens when the core of a star far more massive than the Sun runs out of fuel and collapses under its own gravity, initiating a rebound of material outside the core. Hubble observations of SN 2015as will help researchers understand what happens when the expanding shockwave of a supernova collides with the gas that surrounds the exploded star.

SN 2011ht might have been a core-collapse supernova as well, but it could also be an impostor called a luminous blue variable. Luminous blue variables are rare stars that experience eruptions so large that they can mimic supernovae. Crucially, luminous blue variables emerge from these eruptions unscathed, while stars that go supernova do not. Hubble will search for a stellar survivor at SN 2011ht’s location, and the explosion’s identity may be revealed at last.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen close to face-on. The centre of its disc is a bright, pale yellowish oval shape. Spiral arms extend from either side of the oval through the disc on irregular paths. They are marked throughout by bright bluish-white patches of stars. Distant background galaxies appear as small orangish blobs around the spiral galaxy. In the top-left corner a nearby star shines brightly, spikes radiating from it.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Jacobson-Galán, A. Filippenko, J. Mauerhan; CC BY 4.0

Earlier this summer, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim guided a team of robots across a simulated martian landscape while orbiting 400 km above Earth on the International Space Station. The demonstration marked the final session of Surface Avatar, a joint effort between ESA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to investigate how astronauts can coordinate robotic partners for future missions to the Moon and Mars.

As Jonny shared on X after the experiment, “One of the most fun technology demonstrations I took part in during this mission was with a global team exploring how remote robotic operations could support future missions on other worlds. Growing up, I played a lot of video games and while I still enjoy gaming with my kids, time is scarcer these days. This demo brought me right back, blending elements of real-time strategy, RPGs [role-playing games], and first-person play into something very real.”

At the heart of the experiment is a custom-built software interface developed by ESA and DLR. Running on a laptop inside ESA’s Columbus module, the interface allows operators to see where the robots are, select pre-defined actions such as picking up an object, and smoothly switch between different camera views. It combines a first-person perspective for teleoperating a robot directly, with a strategic top-down map to manage multiple robots.

To interact with the robots, Jonny used two controllers: a joystick and a haptic-feedback device with seven degrees of freedom – motion in all directions plus rotation – and tactile feedback, so astronauts can feel when a robot’s arm meets resistance on Earth.

Jonny continues: "The setup was awesome. A joystick and advanced robotic arm controller let me mimic finger and wrist movements with precision. A heads-up display kept me informed with battery levels, location data, and quick access to either an AI assistant or ground teams. I could enlarge a mini-map to see each robot's perspective, like a ‘fog of war’ in strategy games, and send parallel commands to different units. With the fine arm controls, I could enter into the perspective of a humanoid robot to manipulate the environment, whether moving science samples or shifting a rock that blocked the way. My favourite was a rover with a deployable mini-robot designed to crawl into tight spaces like caves, a feature that felt straight out of a game but with real scientific potential.”

Each session begins with a symbolic “haptics handshake”, in which engineers on the ground shake the robot’s hand while the astronaut senses the gesture in orbit. This not only demonstrates the technology but also helps operators adapt to the 850-millisecond delay between the Station and the ground.

Over four sessions, the Surface Avatar project has advanced how astronauts and robots can work together, balancing direct control with increasing autonomy. Through European expertise and international collaboration, ESA and DLR are laying the foundation for human-robot teamwork on future exploration missions.

Jonny ended with: “Hats off to the ESA and Surface Avatar teams for bringing this vision to life. It was not just a technology demonstration, but a glimpse into how play, imagination, and innovation intersect to shape the future of exploration.”

Watch our video and read our blog to find out more about this experiment.

Credits: ESA/NASA

The Fukang meteorite, found in the Gobi Desert in China's Xinjiang Province, 2000. It is a palasite, a type of stony-iron meteorite filled with olivine crystals. It is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old.

When it slammed into the surface of Earth, there was little sign of the beauty that lay inside. But cutting the Fukang meteorite open yielded a breathtaking sight. Within the rock, translucent golden crystals of a mineral called olivine gleamed among a silvery honeycomb of nickel-iron.

In this photo, Marvin Killgore of the Arizona Meteorite Laboratory lets the sun shine through a polished slice of the Fukang rock.

Credit: meteoritelab.com/fukang/

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron liftoff to the International Space Station in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance”.

Collectively known as “Crew-3”, the astronauts were launched from launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. They will spend around six months living and working aboard the orbital outpost before returning to Earth.

It is the first space mission for Matthias, who will be the 600th human to fly to space. He chose the name “Cosmic Kiss” for his mission as a declaration of love for space.

Matthias has a background in materials science and looks forward to supporting a wide range of science and research in orbit. The work he carries out throughout his mission will contribute to the success of future space missions and help enhance life on Earth.

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

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This colour-coded topographic image shows craters, valleys and chaotic terrain in Mars’ Pyrrhae Regio, based on data gathered by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) during orbit 20972 (3 August 2020). This view is based on a digital terrain model (DTM) 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, yellows and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right. North is to the right.

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

The inaugural flight Vega-C launcher integration process began with the P120 solid rocket stage being delivered to the Vega Launch Zone (Zone de Lancement Vega) ZLV at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guiana on 15 April 2022.

On the wave of Vega’s success, Member States at the ESA Ministerial meeting in December 2014 agreed to develop the more powerful Vega-C to respond to an evolving market and to long-term institutional needs.

Vega-C increases performance from Vega’s current 1.5 t to about 2.2 t in a reference 700 km polar orbit, covering identified European institutional users’ mission needs, with no increase in launch service and operating costs.

The participating states in this development are: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Vega-C will also accommodate the flight-proven Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) dispenser, which further reduces cost-to-orbit by enabling rideshare missions, with or without a large, primary payload.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

Today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week features a galaxy that Hubble has captured multiple times over more than 20 years. The galaxy is called NGC 3370, and it is a spiral galaxy located nearly 90 million light-years away in the constellation Leo (The Lion).

What is it about this galaxy that makes it a popular target for researchers? NGC 3370 is home to two kinds of objects that astronomers prize for their usefulness in determining distances to faraway galaxies: Cepheid variable stars and Type Ia supernovae.

Cepheid variable stars change in both size and temperature as they pulsate. As a result, the luminosity of these stars varies over a period of days to months. It does so in a way that reveals something important: the more luminous a Cepheid variable star is, the more slowly it pulsates. By measuring how long a Cepheid variable’s brightness takes to complete one cycle, astronomers can determine how bright the star actually is. Paired with how bright the star appears from Earth, this information gives the distance to the star and its home galaxy.

Type Ia supernovae provide a way to measure distances in a single explosive burst rather than through regular brightness variations. Type Ia supernovae happen when the dead core of a star ignites in a sudden flare of nuclear fusion. These explosions peak at very similar luminosities, and much like for a Cepheid variable star, knowing the intrinsic brightness of a supernova explosion allows for its distance to be measured. Observations of Cepheid variable stars and Type Ia supernovae are both critical for precisely measuring how fast our Universe is expanding.

A previous Hubble image of NGC 3370 was released in 2003. The image released today zooms in on the galaxy, presenting a richly detailed view that incorporates wavelengths of light that were not included in the previous version. NGC 3370 is a member of the NGC 3370 group of galaxies along with other Hubble targets NGC 3447 and NGC 3455.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy occupies most of the image. It is a slightly tilted disc of stars, yellow-white in the centre and blue in the outskirts, showing light from different stars in the galaxy. Its spiral arms curl outwards from the centre, speckled with blue star clusters. Dark reddish threads of dust swirl around the galaxy’s centre. The backdrop is two medium-sized and many small, distant galaxies on a black background.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess, K. Noll; CC BY 4.0

The Rockot upper stage holding the Copernicus Sentinel-3B satellite on its way from the Plesetsk cleanroom facilities to the launch pad. Sentinel-3B is scheduled for liftoff on 25 April 2018. Its identical twin, Sentinel-3A, has been in orbit since February 2016. The two-satellite constellation offers optimum global coverage and data delivery for Europe’s Copernicus environment programme.

Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja

Two infrared views of NGC 1514. At left is an observation from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). At right is a more refined image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

[Image description: Two views of the same planetary nebula cataloged NGC 1514, split down the middle. Both show roughly the same features, an outline of a cylinder tipped to the right with a large blob of material in the middle. At the center of the blob is a bright star. At left is the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) view. The outlines of the cylinder are orange and thicker, and within it is a bright green irregular cloud with a larger blue central star. This view has hazier lines, and colors that appear to bleed into one another. At right is the view from the James Webb Space Telescope. The outline of the cylinder is clearer with crisp, wispy details. Where the cylinder appears to connect at top left and bottom right, the outline forms shallow V-shapes. It’s a lot easier to see where material begins, ends, and overlaps. In both images, the background of space is black. The WISE image shows bright blue orbs. The Webb image shows tiny pinpoints of light.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech, UCLA, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC); CC BY 4.0

Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich safely tucked up in the Falcon 9 rocket fairing on the launch pad at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US. Once launched, this new mission will take the role of radar altimetry reference mission, continuing the long-term record of measurements of sea-surface height started in 1992 by the French–US Topex Poseidon and then the Jason series of satellite missions.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This colour-coded topographic image shows a slice of the Red Planet from the northern polar cap downwards, and highlights cratered, pockmarked swathes of the Terra Sabaea and Arabia Terra regions. The area outlined in the centre of the image indicates the area imaged by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on 17 June 2019 during orbit 19550.

This context map is based on data gathered by NASA’s Viking and Mars Global Surveyor missions; lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites, yellows, and reds, as indicated on the scale to the bottom left.

Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team, FU Berlin

ESA’s exoplanet-characterising Cheops satellite being prepared for electromagnetic compatibility testing inside the Maxwell chamber at ESTEC, the Agency’s technical heart in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Once the chamber’s main door is sealed, Maxwell’s 12 m-high metal walls form a ‘Faraday Cage’, blocking electromagnetic signals from outside. The ‘anechoic’ foam pyramids covering its interior absorb internal signals – as well as sound – to prevent any reflection, mimicking the infinite void of space.

Once switched on Cheops was illuminated with a two-way radio beam. The satellite was then rotated and tilted through various angles to detect any potentially harmful electromagnetic ‘cross-talk’ that might occur between its subsystems. Testing also ruled out any radio emissions arising from the satellite that might interfere with its launcher during its rise to orbit.

ESA’s Cheops satellite will measure the sizes of known exoplanets by detecting tiny fluctuations in the light of their parent stars. Cheops, or ‘CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite’, combines a state-of-the-art scientific performance with a compact design – 1.5 m by 1.4 m by 1.5 m in size, it weighs in at about 300 kg fully fuelled – allowing it to be flown as a secondary passenger on a Soyuz launcher inside its ASAP-S adapter.

Last month, once its ESTEC test campaign was complete, Cheops left ESTEC for Airbus Defence & Space’s facility in Madrid to undergo further evaluation, including testing of its solar arrays, a ‘leak check’ of its propulsion module and a fit-check with its launcher adapter.

Once all tests are done, the satellite is planned for launch next year from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

ESA–G. Porter

Sometimes, nature is the best art director!

When Uwe Reichert grabbed his camera and tripod on the evening of 16 June 2018, he intended simply to image the conjunction of the then-three-day old Moon and the bright Venus.

In his backyard, near Heidelberg, Germany, trees and bushes blocked the view towards the western horizon, so he strolled through the neighbourhood searching for a better viewpoint. After taking a few pictures from various positions, he finally ended up on the outskirts of the town where he could see both celestial objects shining above some scattered clouds in the far distance.

He set the focal length of his 100-400mm telephoto lens to 180mm, chose a small aperture of f/10 so that bright Venus might produce some pictorial rays and switched the sensitivity to ISO 4000 to keep the exposure time short enough to avoid blurring due to Earth’s rotation. By cosmic chance, in the same instant that he pressed the button of the camera's remote control, Reichert saw something bright falling from the sky.

First, a white light flashed up above Venus, moved downward with high speed, changing colour into an intense greenish glare, and what once appeared as one object disintegrated to a spray of smaller sparkles keeping the original trajectory until dying out just over the horizon.

As a long-time observer, both amateur and professional, he had seen many different celestial phenomena, including countless meteors and some bright fireballs, but this one appeared odd: The sparkles looked more like an exploding firework than a dying shooting star. But both the speed of the object and the very narrow angle under which the sparkles fanned out were arguments against artificial fireworks or other pyrotechnics.

Within a few seconds, Reichert went through different emotional states ranging from astonishment and puzzlement to euphoria: Had he really seen a cosmic body burning up in Earth’s atmosphere? When he checked the display of his camera, he was even more surprised: The object had crossed the camera’s field of view leaving a bright streak on the image. The streak appeared to have pierced the clouds as an object would have done when falling from high altitude down to Earth. Clearly, this object had really been falling down, but taking perspective into account the whole trajectory must have been above the clouds. Therefore, the flight path must have been much farther away than it appeared.

As it turned out a few hours later, with the help of Reichert’s picture, the fireball’s ground track was identified to have been over Belgium, some 230 kilometres away from the photographer’s position. Hundreds of people had seen the fireball, and the many sightings were also reported from Belgium and Holland, where Reichert’s picture made it to several news websites the next day.

Uwe Reichert is editor-in-chief at Sterne und Weltraum

On 30 June 2018, join ESA and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for the live Asteroid Day webcast, packed with expert interviews, news and updates and some of the most recent asteroid science results starting at 13:00 CEST.

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IMO event 16.06.2018

Credits: U. Reichert

The joint European-Japanese Mercury spacecraft BepiColombo took a final glimpse of Earth on 11 April 2020, a day after its closest approach to the planet to perform a gravity-assist flyby.

The image, showing Earth as a bright crescent against the blackness of the Universe, was captured at 14:24 UTC by one of the monitoring ‘selfie’ cameras mounted on Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), one of the three components of the BepiColombo mission.

One of the solar arrays is visible on the right side of the image, and the Moon is visible as a tiny speck of light, slightly above and to the left of the end of the array. The structure seen in the bottom corner is one of the sun sensor units on the MTM, with the multi-layered insulation visible.

The image was taken around 540 400 km away from the surface of our planet. A sequence of images taken as the spacecraft moved away from our planet on 10 and 11 April is available here.

BepiColombo, which comprises ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is scheduled to reach its target orbit around the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System in 2025.

The 10 April flybyx at Earth was the first of nine gravity-assist manoeuvres that BepiColombo will perform during its seven-year journey. The spacecraft got as close as 12 700 km to Earth’s surface, closer than the orbit of Europe’s navigational satellites Galileo, and was observed by astronomers from many places across the world.

BepiColombo will perform its next two flybys at Venus and further six at Mercury.

Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

SpaceX Crew-2 Walkout and dry dress rehearsal with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet on 18 April 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan MacArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

The Crew-2 launch is scheduled for 22 April at 06:11 EDT/12:11 CEST.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week features the spiral galaxy NGC 4535, which is situated about 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo (The Maiden). This galaxy has been nicknamed the ‘Lost Galaxy’ because it’s extremely faint when viewed through a small telescope. With a mirror spanning 2.4 metres across, Hubble is well equipped to observe dim galaxies like NGC 4535 and pick out features like its massive spiral arms and central bar of stars.

On full display in this Hubble image are NGC 4535’s young star clusters, which dot the galaxy’s spiral arms. Many of the groupings of bright blue stars are enclosed by glowing pink clouds. These clouds, called H II (‘H-two’) regions, are a sign that the galaxy is home to especially young, hot, and massive stars that are blazing with high-energy radiation. By heating the clouds in which they were born, shooting out powerful stellar winds, and eventually exploding as supernovae, massive stars certainly shake up their surroundings.

This Hubble image incorporates data from an observing programme that will catalogue roughly 50 000 H II regions in nearby star-forming galaxies like NGC 4535. A previous image of NGC 4535 was released in 2021. Both the 2021 image and today’s image incorporate observations from the PHANGS programme, which seeks to understand the connections between young stars and cold gas. Today’s image adds a new dimension to our understanding of NGC 4535 by capturing the brilliant red glow of the nebulae that encircle massive stars in their first few million years of life.

[Image Description: A close-in view of a spiral galaxy that faces the viewer. Brightly lit spiral arms swing outwards through the galaxy’s disc, starting from an elliptical region in the centre. Thick strands of dark reddish dust are spread across the disc, mostly following the spiral arms. The arms also contain many glowing pink-red spots where stars form. The galaxy is a bit fainter beyond the arms, but speckled with blue stars.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; CC BY 4.0

Stars of all ages are on display in today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This sparkling spiral galaxy is called NGC 6000 and it is located 102 million light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

This galaxy has a glowing yellow centre and glittering blue outskirts. The colours reflect differences in the average ages, masses and temperatures of the galaxy’s stars. In the heart of the galaxy, the stars tend to be older and smaller. Less massive stars are cooler than more massive stars, and somewhat counterintuitively, cooler stars are redder, while hotter stars are bluer. Farther out along NGC 6000’s spiral arms, brilliant star clusters host young, massive stars that appear distinctly blue.

Hubble collected the data for this image while surveying the sites of recent supernova explosions in nearby galaxies. NGC 6000 has hosted two recent supernovae: SN 2007ch in 2007 and SN 2010as in 2010. Using Hubble’s sensitive detectors, researchers are able to discern the faint glow of supernovae years after the initial explosion. These observations help to constrain the masses of supernova progenitor stars and can indicate if they had any stellar companions.

By zooming in to the right side of the galaxy’s disc in this image, you may see something else yellow and blue: a set of four thin lines. These are an asteroid in our Solar System, which was drifting across Hubble’s field of view as it gazed at NGC 6000. The four streaks are due to different exposures that were recorded one after another with slight pauses in between. These were combined to create this final image. The colours appear this way because each exposure used a filter to collect only very specific wavelengths of light, in this case around red and blue. Having these separate exposures is important to study and compare stars by their colours — but it also makes asteroid interlopers very obvious!

[Image Description: An oval-shaped spiral galaxy, of which only the centre and lower half is in frame. Its centre is mainly golden in colour with a white glowing core, while its thick spiral arms are mostly blue, particularly at the outskirts; the colours merge in between. Dark lanes of dust swirl through the centre, blocking some of its light. Stars and distant galaxies can be seen around the edges on a black background.]

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

Acknowledgements: M. H. Özsaraç

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and his NASA crew mates Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron arrive at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 25 October 2021.

Collectively, the astronauts make up Crew-3 and will travel to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance”. The first launch opportunity for Crew-3 is 07:21 CET (06:21 GMT, 02:21 EDT) Sunday 31 October 2021, with a backup date of 3 November.

The name of Matthias’s mission is “Cosmic Kiss”. This is Matthias’s first mission, and he will be the 600th human to fly to space.

Once in orbit, Matthias will spend around six months living and working in microgravity as he supports more than 35 European experiments and numerous international experiments on board.

Matthias is also certified to perform Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) in both the Russian Orlan and American EMU spacesuits. He is expected to perform a Russian spacewalk during his mission as part of initial operations for the European Robotic Arm (ERA) that was launched to the Station in July 2021.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, being unpacked from its shipping container in the Hydra clean room at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC in the Netherlands on 30 April 2020.

Juice will undergo environmental testing in ESTEC’s Large Space Simulator to replicate the extreme heating and cooling cycles that the spacecraft will experience on its way to Jupiter.

Once in the Jovian system the mission will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

Credits: ESA

A galaxy ablaze with young stars is the subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This galaxy is called NGC 685 and is situated about 64 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus (The River). NGC 685 is classified as a barred spiral because its feathery spiral arms sprout from the ends of a bar of stars at the galaxy’s centre. The Milky Way is also a barred spiral, but our galaxy is a little less than twice the size of NGC 685.

Astronomers used Hubble to study NGC 685 for two observing programmes, both of which focus on star formation. It’s no surprise that NGC 685 was chosen for these programmes: numerous patches of young blue stars highlight the galaxy’s spiral arms. Many of these star clusters are cocooned in pink gas clouds, which are called H II (pronounced ‘H-two’) regions. An H II region is a gas cloud that glows for a short time when particularly hot and massive stars are born. An especially eye-catching H II region peeks out at the bottom edge of the image. Despite the dozens of star-forming regions evident in this image, NGC 685 converts an amount of gas equivalent to less than half the mass of the Sun into stars each year.

The Hubble data collected for the two observing programmes will allow astronomers to catalogue 50 000 H II regions and 100 000 star clusters in nearby galaxies. By combining Hubble’s sensitive visible and ultraviolet observations with infrared data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and radio data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, researchers will peer into the depths of dusty stellar nurseries and illuminate the stars forming there.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen directly on. It glows strongly at its centre and has a short horizontal bar. Two spiral arms extend from this bar, but they are broad and irregularly-shaped. They are filled with tiny blue dots - stars - and glowing pink clouds - star-forming nebulae. The arms break apart into many strands at the edge of the disc. Beyond this is a dark background.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee, F. Belfiore

A miniaturised model of the Juice spacecraft during electromagnetic tests at ESA's technical heart in the Netherlands.

Juice, or the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, is ESA's future mission to explore the most massive planet in Solar System and its large moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. Planned for launch in June 2022, it will embark on a seven-year cruise that will make use of several flybys – of Earth, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Earth again – before leaving the inner Solar System en route to Jupiter.

All three moons are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their icy crusts, and the Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) instrument on Juice will be used to probe their subsurface structure. Emitted by a 16-m long antenna, the radar signals will penetrate the icy surfaces of Jupiter’s moons down to a depth of 9 km.

RIME will be the first instrument of its kind capable of performing direct subsurface measurements of worlds in the outer Solar System, and it should provide key clues on the potential for such bodies to harbour habitable environments.

Once in space, the instrument’s performance will be influenced by several factors, including the radiation pattern of the antenna. To evaluate these effects, a series of tests were carried out at ESA’s Hertz facility in September, using a 1:18 scale model of the RIME antenna – shrunk to a length of about 80 cm and mounted on a simplified, scaled-down model of the spacecraft.

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Credits: ESA–M. Cowan

Concordia research station in Antarctica is located on a plateau 3200 m above sea level. A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to –80°C in the winter, with a yearly average temperature of –50°C.

During the harsh winter no outside help can be flown in or reach the base over land – the crew have to solve any problems on their own.

As Concordia lies at the very southern tip of Earth, the Sun does not rise above the horizon in the winter and does not set in the summer. The crew must live without sunlight for four months of the year.

The station is a collaboration between the French Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) and Italian Programma Nazionale di Richerche Antartide (PNRA).

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA– M. Giorgioni

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano was launched to the International Space Station from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 20 July 2019 alongside NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov.

The trio travelled to the Station in a Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft and will spend more than six months living and working in orbit.

Beyond is Luca’s second space mission – his first was Volare in 2013. During the second part of this mission, known as Expedition 61, Luca will become the third European and first Italian commander of the International Space Station.

The most recent European commander was ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst during his Horizons mission in 2018. The first was ESA astronaut Frank De Winne during his OasISS mission in 2009.

During Beyond, Luca will support over 50 European experiments and more than 200 International experiments in microgravity. A number of these experiments, such as Grip and Grasp, are continuations from previous missions.

New experiments include BioRock, an experiment looking at the potential of microbes in extracting minerals from rocks on other planets, and NutrISS, which looks at the best strategies for monitoring and controlling changes in energy balance, metabolism and body composition during spaceflight.

Follow Luca's mission Beyond mission here and visit the blog for regular updates.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Featured in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is the spiral galaxy NGC 2090, located in the constellation Columba.

This galaxy is notable as a part of the group of galaxies studied in Hubble’s Extragalactic Distance Scale Key Project, which aimed to determine a new state-of-the-art value for the Hubble constant, one of the then-new telescope’s primary science goals. The contribution of NGC 2090 was in calibrating the Tully-Fisher (TF) distance method, by observing Cepheid variable stars in the galaxy. The Cepheid-based measurement from that study in 1998 put NGC 2090 as 37 million light-years away; the newest measurement from 2020, using the TF method, has NGC 2090 slightly farther away, at 40 million light-years.

Before and since that project, NGC 2090 has been well studied as a very prominent nearby example of star formation. It has been described as a flocculent spiral, meaning a spiral galaxy with a patchy, dusty disc and arms that are flaky or not visible at all. This Hubble image shows well why NGC 2090 earned that description, but its spiral arms do appear among the dust as winding lanes of light.

NGC 2090 is a galaxy still full of activity, with clusters of star formation at various stages of evolution spread across the disc. Examining star formation and the movement of matter in galaxies was the motivation for these Hubble observations, taken in October of this year. Likewise Hubble’s partner in space astronomy, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, has also spied on this galaxy to add infrared data to this overall picture of galaxy evolution.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy with a wide, oval-shaped disc. It has a shining spot at the centre which is surrounded by a whirl of dark threads and patches of dust, all atop a luminous disc. Some brighter lanes curving through the disc indicate the galaxy’s spiral arms. The glow of the disc fades smoothly into a dark background where faint, extended patches of stars can be seen, as well as some foreground stars.]

Credits: ESA; CC BY 4.0

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker

For this new ESA/Webb Picture of the Month, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has spied a pair of dwarf galaxies engaged in a gravitational dance. These two galaxies are named NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, and they’re located about 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Aside from the Milky Way’s own dwarf companions (the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds), this is the closest known interacting dwarf-dwarf system where astronomers have directly observed both a gas bridge and resolved stellar populations. Together NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 form the system Arp 269, which is featured in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. At such a close distance (and with Webb’s impressive ability to peer through dusty cosmic clouds) these galaxies allow astronomers to witness up close the kinds of galaxy interactions that were common billions of years ago.

Dwarf galaxies likely share many similarities with young galaxies in the early Universe: they are much less massive than galaxies like the Milky Way, they typically have small amounts of metals (what astronomers call elements heavier than helium), and they contain a lot of gas and relatively few stars. When nearby dwarf galaxies collide, merge, or steal gas from one another, it can tell us how galaxies billions of years ago might have grown and evolved.

The nearby dwarf galaxies NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 form an intriguing pair. Nearly three decades ago, astronomers discovered a wispy bridge of gas connecting the two galaxies, showing that they have interacted in the past. Despite many studies with powerful telescopes like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the history between NGC4490 and NGC 4485 has remained mysterious.

Recently, Webb observed this curious galactic pair as part of the Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers (FEAST) programme (#1783; PI: A. Adamo). The FEAST programme used Webb’s sensitive infrared eyes to reveal the formation of new stars in different types of nearby galaxies.

This image was developed using data from Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), as well as a single narrow-band filter from Hubble (657N). It reveals NGC 4490 and NGC 4485 in never-before-seen detail and illuminates the bridge of gas and stars that connects them. NGC 4490 dominates the image as the larger object occupying the left side of the image, while NGC 4485 is the smaller galaxy that hosts the top-right portion of the image. By dissecting these galaxies star by star, researchers were able to map out where young, middle-aged, and old stars reside, and trace the timeline of the galaxies’ interaction.

Roughly 200 million years ago, these galaxies whirled close to one another before waltzing away. The larger galaxy, NGC 4490, ensnared a stream of gas from its companion, and this gas now trails between the galaxies like dancers connected by outstretched arms. Along the newly formed bridge of gas and within the two galaxies, this interaction spurred a burst of new stars. The concentrated areas of bright blue that appear throughout the field indicate highly ionised regions of gas by the recently formed star clusters. Just 30 million years ago, these galaxies burst alight with stars once more, with new clusters coalescing where the gas of the two galaxies mixed together.

By capturing the history of the galactic dancers NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, Webb has revealed new details in how dwarf galaxies interact, giving us a glimpse of how small galaxies near and far grow and evolve.

[Image Description: This Webb image shows two interacting galaxies. NGC 4490 occupies the left side of the image, while NGC 4485 appears as a white glowing hue in the top right of the field. Both galaxies are connected by a bright stream of red stretching from the top left of the image, through the bottom centre, and ending at the right under galaxy NGC 4485. There are regions of bright blue ionised gas visible in concentrated areas of the red stream. The background is black with multiple galaxies in various shapes throughout.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University), G. Bortolini, and the FEAST JWST team; CC BY 4.0

Every year, ESA sponsors a medical doctor to spend a year, or “winterover” in Concordia station. This year, our medical doctor is Jessica Kehala Studer, who is seen in this picture demonstrating the Mpemba effect, the observation that hot water freezes faster than cold water. The picture is taken by Mario Lecca, the current meteorologist at the station. Together, Jessica and Mario boiled the water and then brought it outside where it was around –70°C. As the hot water met the freezing air under the last rays of the Sun, this beautiful icy shape was formed.

Concordia is a research station in Antarctica that places you farther away from humankind than even the International Space Station. Around May, the Sun dips below the horizon for the last time, and the crew experience four months of total darkness, with temperatures dropping to –80°C in winter. The station serves as an analogue for space, mirroring the challenges and conditions faced by astronauts such as isolation, the cold and the dark, and the impact on their health. Concordia is a unique platform for conducting research in human physiology and psychology, but also astronomy, meteorology, glaciology and others.

You can follow Jessica's adventures at the station on our Concordia blog.

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA

This image shows the region surrounding the martian volcanoes Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons. The area outlined by the larger white box indicates the area imaged by ESA’s Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on 5 April 2022 during orbit 24045. The smaller inset white box shows the particular region highlighted by the new images from Mars Express.

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Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team

SpaceX Crew-2 with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet arrive at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on 16 April 2021.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan MacArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

The Crew-2 launch is scheduled for 22 April at 11:11 BST/12:11 CEST.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The European Robotic Arm (ERA) during installation on top of the the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, in May 2021.

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: RSC Energia

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over an area in southern Germany, where approximately 15 million years ago an asteroid crashed through Earth’s atmosphere. The high-speed impact formed what is now known as the Ries crater. Although difficult to spot at first in the image, the result of the impact is actually still visible today.

With a diameter of 26 km, the rim of the crater can be seen as a semi-circle in the image, delineated by dark green forest to the south. The flat ‘crater floor’ is ideally suited for agricultural use and the corresponding fields mark the crater’s extent.

The medieval town of Nördlingen was built in its depression. The historical centre, approximately 1 km wide, appears as a reddish circle, visible with its red rooftops surrounded by a wall.

The asteroid was estimated to be travelling at 70 000 km per hour, and when it made impact with Earth, the high-speed force exposed the rock to intense pressure and heat, over 25 000°C. The impact led to the creation of over 70 000 tonnes of microscopic diamonds, each around 0.2 mm in size.

Overlooked by the town’s inhabitants, the stone buildings were constructed almost entirely with diamond-encrusted rock. Details on the impact can be found in the well-known Rieskrater Museum in Nördlingen.

For centuries, Nördlingen locals believed the town was built in the crater of a volcano. But in the 1960s two American scientists proved that the depression was, in fact, caused by a meteorite impact. Today, visitors around the world gather to marvel at this glittering town, also known as the backdrop to the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. Data from Copernicus Sentinel-2 can help monitor changes in land cover.

This image, which was captured on 1 July 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

In this unique image, one satellite orbiting Mars records the presence of another. The narrow blur against a black backdrop is in fact ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera on the Mars Global Surveyor. It is the first-ever successful image of any spacecraft orbiting Mars taken by another spacecraft in a Martian orbit.

Mars Express, still in operation, represents ESA’s first visit to another planet in the Solar System. Launched in 2003 with seven instruments, a lander, a network of ground and data processing stations and a launcher, Mars Express marked the beginning of a new era for Europe’s planetary exploration.

The Mars Global Surveyor was developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched in 1996. It mapped the entire Martian planet from the ionosphere down through the atmosphere to its red, rocky surface, but it also caught this glimpse of another spacecraft dedicated to revealing the secrets of one of Earth’s nearest neighbours.

From a distance of 250-370 km, the Mars Global Surveyor captured this remarkable shot of Mars Express, but unfortunately ESA’s satellite could not return the favour.

On 2 November 2016 the NASA spacecraft failed to respond to messages and commands. Three days later a faint signal was detected, indicating the spacecraft had gone into safe mode and was awaiting further instruction. Attempts to re-contact the Mars Global Surveyor and resolve the problem failed, and the mission ended officially in January 2007.

Following this loss of contact, the Mars Express team was requested by NASA to perform actions in the hope of visually identifying the American spacecraft. Two attempts were made to find it, but both proved unsuccessful.

Credits: Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team, NASA/JPL/MSSS

Ariane 5 parts are coming together in the launch vehicle integration building for the launch of Webb from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

The Ariane 5 core stage is 5.4 m diameter and 30.5 m high. On 6 November it was taken out of its shipping container and raised vertical.

At launch it will contain 175 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants. With its Vulcain 2 engine it provides 140 t of thrust. It also provides roll control during the main propulsion phase. This rolling manoeuvre will ensure that all parts of the payload are equally exposed to the sun which will avoid overheating of any elements of Webb.

Two boosters followed. They are 3 m in diameter and 31 m high. This week they will be positioned on the launch table and then anchored to the core stage. Engineers will then carry out mechanical and electrical checks. Each booster contains 240 t of solid propellant, together they will provide 1200 t of thrust which is 90 percent of the thrust at liftoff.

On the countdown to launch, the Vulcain 2 engine is ignited first. A few seconds later, when it reaches its nominal operating level, the two boosters are fired to achieve a thrust of about 1364 t at liftoff.

Webb will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. As part of an international collaboration agreement, ESA is providing the telescope’s launch service using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace.

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

These activities mark the beginning of a five-week campaign to prepare the Ariane 5 launch vehicle which runs in parallel with teams preparing Webb, which started three weeks earlier. Soon Webb will meet Ariane 5 and teams will unite for the final integration for launch.

Find out more about Webb in ESA’s launch kit.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG - P.Baudon

Credits: ESA-S.Poletti