The Vega-C Zefiro 40 second stage has now been transferred to and integrated at the Vega Launch Zone (Zone de Lancement Vega) ZLV at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 4 May 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.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

This spectacular image shows a region called G35.2-0.7N, which is known as a hotbed of high-mass star formation. The kind of stars that form here are so massive that they will end their lives as destructive supernovae. However, even as they form they greatly impact their surroundings. At least one B-type star — the second most massive type — lurks within the region pictured here, and a powerful protostellar jet that it is launching towards us is the source of the spectacular light show. The image was taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which is mounted on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and the region G35.2-0.7N lies around 7200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquila.

This beautiful picture was assembled using data that were collected primarily for very specific research purposes, as are many of the Hubble Pictures of the Week. The research conducted using these data included measuring the extent of ionisation in the jets being blasted out of the protostar buried within G35.2-0.7N. Ionisation is a process by which atoms or molecules become charged, often because they are in such a high-energy environment that they have lost some of their electrons (the tiny negatively charged particles that orbit nuclei in atoms and molecules). Protostellar jets are enormous collimated beams of matter that are ejected from protostars. Collimated simply means that the matter is ejected in parallel (column-like) streams, which in turn means that the jets do not spread out much, but extend out very far in relatively straight lines.

The visual result of the ejected matter is the glorious display visible in this image. Much of the nebula is dark, with light being blocked from Hubble’s view by the rich dust clouds that produce these massive stars. Near the very centre can be seen the location of the star and the jet of material it is emitting. The small, bright orange streak there is a cavity in the dust carved out by the ferocity of the jet as it streams towards us. By breaking through its dusty cocoon, the jet reveals light from the protostar, but there is still so much dust that the light is “reddened” to a fiery orange. The massive protostar lies at the very lower-left tip of this cavity.

[Image Description: A nebula with stars. Dense clouds of dust and gas cover the left-hand side and a filament crosses the centre horizontally. Billowing streams of gas and dust in various colours emerge from around the centre. The very centre of the image is permeated with glowing orange regions. Many blue stars with cross-shaped spikes lie in the foreground, and small point-like stars are visible beyond the clouds.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Fedriani, J. Tan; CC BY 4.0

Euclid shows us a spectacularly panoramic and detailed view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33 and part of the constellation Orion.

At approximately 1375 light-years away, the Horsehead – visible as a dark cloud shaped like a horse’s head – is the closest giant star-forming region to Earth. It sits just to the south of star Alnitak, the easternmost of Orion’s famous three-star belt, and is part of the vast Orion molecular cloud.

Many other telescopes have taken images of the Horsehead Nebula, but none of them are able to create such a sharp and wide view as Euclid can with just one observation. Euclid captured this image of the Horsehead in about one hour, which showcases the mission's ability to very quickly image an unprecedented area of the sky in high detail.

In Euclid’s new observation of this stellar nursery, scientists hope to find many dim and previously unseen Jupiter-mass planets in their celestial infancy, as well as young brown dwarfs and baby stars.

“We are particularly interested in this region, because star formation is taking place in very special conditions,” explains Eduardo Martin Guerrero de Escalante of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Tenerife and a legacy scientist for Euclid.

These special conditions are caused by radiation coming from the very bright star Sigma Orionis, which is located above the Horsehead, just outside Euclid’s field-of-view (the star is so bright that the telescope would see nothing else if it pointed directly towards it).

Ultraviolet radiation from Sigma Orionis causes the clouds behind the Horsehead to glow, while the thick clouds of the Horsehead itself block light from directly behind it; this makes the head look dark. The nebula itself is made up largely of cold molecular hydrogen, which gives off very little heat and no light. Astronomers study the differences in the conditions for star formation between the dark and bright clouds.

The star Sigma Orionis itself belongs to a group of more than a hundred stars, called an open cluster. However, astronomers don’t have the full picture of all the stars belonging to the cluster. “Gaia has revealed many new members, but we already see new candidate stars, brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects in this Euclid image, so we hope that Euclid will give us a more complete picture,” adds Eduardo.

The data in this image were taken in about one hour of observation. This colour image was obtained by combining VIS data and NISP photometry in Y and H bands; its size is 8800 x 8800 pixels. VIS and NISP enable observing astronomical sources in four different wavelength ranges. Aesthetics choices led to the selection of three out of these four bands to be cast onto the traditional Red-Green-Blue colour channels used to represent images on our digital screens (RGB). The blue, green, red channels capture the Universe seen by Euclid around the wavelength 0.7, 1.1, and 1.7 micron respectively. This gives Euclid a distinctive colour palette: hot stars have a white-blue hue, excited hydrogen gas appears in the blue channel, and regions rich in dust and molecular gas have a clear red hue. Distant redshifted background galaxies appear very red. In the image, the stars have six prominent spikes due to how light interacts with the optical system of the telescope in the process of diffraction. Another signature of Euclid special optics is the presence of a few, very faint and small round regions of a fuzzy blue colour. These are normal artefacts of complex optical systems, so-called ‘optical ghost’; easily identifiable during data analysis, they do not cause any problem for the science goals.

The cutout from the full view of the Horsehead Nebula is at the high resolution of the VIS instrument. This is nine times better than the definition of NISP that was selected for the full view; this was done for the practical reason of limiting the format of the full image to a manageable size for downloading. The cutout fully showcases the power of Euclid in obtaining extremely sharp images over a large region of the sky in one single pointing. Although this image represents only a small part of the entire colour view, the same quality as shown here is available over the full field. The full view of the Horsehead Nebula at the highest definition can be explored on ESASky.

[Image description]

This square astronomical image is divided horizontally by a waving line between a white-orange cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively blue-purple-pink upper portion. From the nebula in the bottom half of the image, an orange cloud shaped like a horsehead sticks out. In the bottom left of the image, a white round glow is visible. The clouds from the bottom half of the image shine purple/blue light into the upper half. The top of the image shows the black expanse of space. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing stars of varying sizes and colours. Blue stars are younger and red stars are older.

Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Netherlands is featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. This image was processed in a way that included the near-infrared channel, which makes vegetation appear bright red.

Amsterdam, the capital city of the country, is visible towards the top of the image, on the edge of the IJmeer lake. The city’s complex network of canals can be seen in the image, and the city is said to have over 1000 bridges.

Rotterdam is the second largest city in the Netherlands and is visible in the lower left, along the banks of the New Meuse River, which divides the municipality into its northern and southern parts. Rotterdam’s port is the largest port in Europe, stretching over 40 km in length and covering over 10 000 hectares.

The Hague is north of the port, visible along the North Sea coast. The Hague is home to the Dutch seat of government, and the city also hosts the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

To the north of The Hague is the coastal town of Noordwijk, home to ESA's European Space Technology Research Centre (ESTEC). ESTEC is ESA’s technical centre where new missions are designed, their industrial development is managed and, in some cases, the spacecraft and instruments are tested.

On Sunday 6 October, ESTEC is hosting its annual Open Day, where it will open its doors and give general public the chance to meet astronauts, space experts and get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of ESA’s largest establishment. The Open Day is now fully booked.

The theme of this year’s event is ESA to the Moon – where Dutch ESA astronaut André Kuipers will be joined by pioneering Apollo astronauts Walt Cunningham, who flew on the first crewed Apollo mission, and Rusty Schweickart, who was the first person to fly the Lunar Module and use an Apollo lunar spacesuit for a spacewalk.

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

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The region imaged by ESA’s Mars Express on 19 May 2022 is outlined in the smaller of the two white boxes, during orbit 23219 (larger white outline).

Explore this region with high resolution imagery

Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team

At approximately 3000 sq. m in area, ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, is already the largest satellite testing establishment in Europe. Now it has grown even bigger, with the formal opening of a new 350 sq. m environmentally-controlled cleanroom beside it.

Formally known as the ‘FV’ cleanroom, it was declared open with a formal ribbon cutting by Marco Massaro, Head of ESA’s Estates and Facilities Management Division; Paulien van Essen, Regional Manager of lead builder Heijmans and Torben Henriksen, Head of ESTEC and ESA Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality.

“This is the most beautiful cleanroom we have on site,” commented Director Henriksen. “In our Test Centre there has been a shortage of cleanrooms for quite some time, especially with some programmes being based here for long durations – BepiColombo was here for some time, along with the Galileo satellites. So the need for expansion was clear.

“To start with an engineering model of the Smile satellite from China will soon be housed here, as well as several Galileo satellites. The construction process took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it was a long journey to get to this point, but I’d like to thank Heijmans for their diligent work.”

Most of the time the ESTEC Test Centre has multiple test items within its walls simultaneously. Complex planning and traffic management are necessary to ensure every project get access to the facility they need at the time they need it. So sufficient room is needed to accommodate the different satellites and allow their movement between test facilities.

The FV clean room will also host the ESTEC Test Centre’s sensitive micro-vibration measurement facilities, which are used to characterise the very low vibration generated by mechanisms mounted aboard satellites, made possible by a large seismic block beneath the building.

The next step will be to construct a corridor linking the FV cleanroom with the environmentally controlled main Test Centre building.

Credits: ESA-G. Porter

Ariane 5 flight VA254 with the Eutelsat Quantum and Star One D2 satellites is being rolled out from the Final Assembly Building (BAF) to 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: ESA - S. Corvaja

From Earth, we always look towards the Sun's equator. This year, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission broke free of this ‘standard’ viewpoint by tilting its orbit to 17° – out of the ecliptic plane where the planets and all other Sun-watching spacecraft reside. Now for the first time ever, we can clearly see the Sun’s unexplored poles.

This image shows Solar Orbiter's view of the Sun's south pole on 23 March 2025. It was taken by the spacecraft's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument, which captures the ultraviolet light sent out by the million-degree gas in the Sun's outer atmosphere (the corona).

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Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument is led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Germany.

[Image description: Photograph of the bottom half of the Sun, with a highlighted square region around the Sun's south pole. Taken in ultraviolet light, the image shows the hot gas in the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, glowing yellow as it extends outwards in threads and loops from the Sun.]

Credits: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team, D. Berghmans (ROB); CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite takes us along the lower reaches of the brown, sediment-rich Uruguay River. Here, the river forms the border between Argentina and Uruguay and is the site of the Esteros de Farrapos e Islas del Río Uruguay wetlands.

Composed of lagoons, swamps and 24 islets, the Esteros are a haven for wildlife, protected as a national park and included on the List of Wetlands of International Importance of the Ramsar Convention.

This wetland system is home to 130 species of fish, 14 species of amphibian, 104 species of bird – a quarter of all birds found in Uruguay – and 15 species of mammal, including the maned wolf, the largest canid (meaning dog-like) species in South America.

A tourist attraction and a waterway for transport, the Esteros also play an important role in regulating flood levels and maintaining water quality, as well as safeguarding the banks of the Uruguay River from erosion.

Visible to the lower left – its built structures shown in grey-white – is the Argentinian town of Gualeguaychú. On the eastern shore of the Uruguay River is the Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos, an important national harbour, famous for a plant that once exported corned beef around the world. Now inactive, this sprawling industrial complex has become a World Heritage Site.

The dark green area to the east of the Esteros is devoted to forestry, an important industry for the region. A pulp mill is located close to Fray Bentos.

Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. The mission’s main instrument has 13 spectral bands, and is designed to provide images that can be used to distinguish different types of vegetation and monitor plant growth.

This image, acquired on 17 August 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 cutout from the new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope short-wavelength infrared image of the Orion Nebula shows bright 'fingers' of gas racing away from an explosion that occurred roughly 500 to 1000 years ago in the heart of a dense molecular cloud behind the nebula, perhaps as two young massive stars collided. The dense cloud is called Orion Molecular Cloud 1 and lies to the northwest of the visible Trapezium stars in Orion.

The fingers are predominantly red, indicating emission from molecular hydrogen gas that has been shocked by the immense energy pouring out from the explosion site. Near the tips of some of the fingers, the emission turns green due to hot iron gas and even white in some cases where the gas is at its hottest. Further down, the fingers seem mostly turbulent, but in some places, the flow appears laminar.

The Orion Nebula lies roughly 1300 light-years from Earth in the so-called 'sword' of the constellation of Orion the Hunter, and the image shows a region that is 4 by 2.75 light-years in size.

Image description: The image shows a series of red fingers of shocked molecular gas expanding from the bottom of the image towards the top and top right. Each of the fingers comprises a series of bright arcs of emission like bow waves, expanding behind tips, the latter often appearing green. There are many stars spread across the image with the characteristic eight spikes due to diffraction in the optics of Webb, and there is a foreground haze of wisp blue clouds due to the Orion Nebula, which lies in front of the fingers.

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NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Using Hubble Space Telescope data spanning approximately 90 days (between December 2023 and March 2024) when the giant planet Jupiter was approximately 740 million kilometres from the Sun, astronomers measured the Great Red Spot’s size, shape, brightness, colour, and vorticity over one full oscillation cycle. The data reveal that the Great Red Spot is not as stable as it might look. It was observed going through an oscillation in its elliptical shape, jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The cause of the 90-day oscillation is unknown.

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[Image description: Eight Hubble images showing Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The GRS appears as a bright red oval in the middle of cream-coloured cloud bands. The images trace changes in the GRS’s size, shape, brightness, colour, and twisting, over a period of 90 days between December 2023 and March 2024.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC); CC BY 4.0

SpaceX Crew-2 Walkout from NASA's Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building, and departure to launch pad 39A with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet on 23 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 23 April 2021 at 05:49 EDT / 11:49 CEST.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The distorted spiral galaxy at the centre, the Penguin, and the compact elliptical galaxy at the left, the Egg, are locked in an active embrace. A new near- and mid-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope, taken to mark its second year of science, shows that their interaction is marked by a faint upside-down U-shaped blue glow.

The pair, known jointly as Arp 142, made their first pass between 25 and 75 million years ago — causing ‘fireworks’, or new star formation, in the Penguin. In the most extreme cases, mergers can cause galaxies to form thousands of new stars per year for a few million years. For the Penguin, research has shown that about 100 to 200 stars have formed per year. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy (which is not interacting with a galaxy of the same size) forms roughly six to seven new stars per year.

This gravitational shimmy also remade the Penguin’s appearance. Its coiled spiral arms unwound, and gas and dust were pulled in an array of directions, like it was releasing confetti. It is rare for individual stars to collide when galaxies interact (space is vast), but the galaxies’ mingling disrupts their stars’ orbits.

Today, the Penguin’s galactic centre looks like an eye set within a head, and the galaxy has prominent star trails that take the shape of a beak, backbone, and fanned-out tail. A faint, but prominent dust lane extends from its beak down to its tail.

Despite the Penguin appearing far larger than the Egg, these galaxies have approximately the same mass. This is one reason why the smaller-looking Egg hasn’t yet merged with the Penguin. (If one was less massive, it may have merged earlier.)

The oval Egg is filled with old stars, and little gas and dust, which is why it isn’t sending out ‘streamers’ or tidal tails of its own and instead has maintained a compact oval shape. If you look closely, the Egg has four prominent diffraction spikes — the galaxy’s stars are so concentrated that it gleams.

Now, find the bright, edge-on galaxy at top right. It may look like a party crasher, but it’s not nearby. Cataloged PGC 1237172, it lies 100 million light-years closer to Earth. It is relatively young and isn’t overflowing with dust, which is why it practically disappears in Webb’s mid-infrared view.

The background of this image is overflowing with far more distant galaxies. This is a testament to the sensitivity and resolution of Webb’s infrared cameras.

Arp 142 lies 326 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra.

[Image description: Two interacting galaxies known as Arp 142. At left is NGC 2937, nicknamed the Egg for its appearance. At right is NGC 2936, nicknamed the Penguin for its appearance. The latter’s beak-like region points toward and above the Egg.]

Credit:

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; CC BY 4.0

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti arrives at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, with NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins on 18 April 2022.

Collectively known as Crew-4, the astronauts flew in from Houston, Texas, and will spend the next week in quarantine before being launched to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

When they arrive at the Station, Samantha’s Minerva mission will officially begin. This is the second long-duration space mission for Samantha who first flew to the orbital outpost in 2014 for her Italian Space Agency ASI-sponsored mission Futura.

Samantha will be welcomed on board by fellow ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and enjoy a short handover in orbit before Matthias returns to Earth in April as part of Crew-3.

Throughout her mission, Samantha will hold the role of US Orbital Segment (USOS) lead, taking responsibility for all operations within the US, European, Japanese and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station. She will support around 35 European and many more international experiments in orbit.

For more about Samantha and her Minerva mission, visit the Minerva mission page.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

A ‘do not touch’ directive applies to both a Matisse painting and this Matiss experiment on board the International Space Station.

Designed to test the antibacterial properties of hydrophobic (or water-repelling) surfaces on the Station, the sample holders of the upgraded Matiss-2.5 experiment have done their work for roughly a year on board and are now back on Earth for analysis.

Bacteria are a big problem in space as they tend to build up in the constantly-recycled atmosphere of the Space Station. For the six astronauts living in humanity’s habitat in space, keeping the Station clean is an important part of their life to avoid bacteria and fungus. Every Saturday is cleaning day, when the whole crew wipe surfaces, vacuum and collect waste.

Matiss or Microbial Aerosol Tethering on Innovative Surfaces in the international Space Station, driven by French space agency CNES, in collaboration ENS de Lyon and CEA-Leti, and commissioned in 2016 by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, examines the performance of five advanced materials in preventing illness-causing microorganisms from settling and growing in microgravity.

The experiment consists of plaques each containing the five materials to be tested plus a glass control surface. The units are open on the sides to let air flow naturally through and collect any bacteria floating past.

The first set of the Matiss experiment, known as Matiss-1, provided some baseline data points for researchers. Four sample holders were set up in three different locations within the European Columbus laboratory, where they remained for six months.

Once these samples were returned to Earth, researchers characterised the deposits formed on each surface and used the control material to establish a reference for the level and type of contamination expected over half a year.

A continuation of the experiment, known as Matiss-2, saw four identical sample holders containing three different types of material installed in a single location in Columbus. This study aimed to better understand how contamination spreads over time across the hydrophobic and control surfaces. The upgraded Matiss-2.5 aimed to study how contamination spreads, this time spatially, across the hydrophobic surfaces using patterned samples.

The materials are a diverse mix of advanced technology – from self-assembly monolayers and green polymers to ceramic polymers and water-repellent hybrid silica. The smart materials should stop bacteria from sticking and growing over large areas, and effectively making them easier to clean and more hygienic – but which one works best?

Understanding the effectiveness and potential use of these materials will be essential to the design of future spacecraft, especially those carrying humans father out in space.

The findings could also lead to the development and greater use of antimicrobial surfaces on elevator buttons and door handles, in bars, on public transport and in other high-traffic areas.

Credits: ESA

A supernova and its host galaxy are the subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. The galaxy in question is LEDA 132905, which is situated in the constellation Sculptor. Even at over 400 million light-years away, LEDA 132905’s spiral structure is faintly visible, as are patches of bright blue stars.

The bright white dot directly in the centre of the image, between the bright centre of the galaxy and its faint left edge, is a supernova named SN 2022abvt. SN 2022abvt was discovered in late 2022, and Hubble observed the explosion about two months later. This image was constructed from data collected to study Type Ia supernovae, which occur when the exposed core of a dead star ignites in a sudden, destructive burst of nuclear fusion. Researchers are interested in this type of supernova because they can be used to measure precise distances to other galaxies.

The Universe is a big place, and supernova explosions are fleeting. How is it possible to be in the right place at the right time to catch a supernova when it happens? Today, most supernovae are discovered by robotic telescopes that continuously scan the night sky. But some are still found the old-fashioned way, by careful observers who take repeated images of the sky and search for changes. SN 2022abvt was spotted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS. As the name suggests, ATLAS was designed to track down the faint, fast-moving signals from asteroids close to Earth. In addition to searching out asteroids, ATLAS also keeps tabs on objects that brighten or fade suddenly, like supernovae, variable stars and galactic centres powered by hungry black holes.

[Image Description: In the exact centre a supernova is seen as a small but bright blue dot. It lies atop a spiral galaxy, close to the glowing centre and next to some bright patches of blue stars in the galaxy. A small number of more minor galaxies are visible around the comparatively large spiral as small glowing discs, while further distant galaxies are seen as mere orangish spots and smudges, all on a black background.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz); CC BY 4.0

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reobserved interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on 30 November with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. At the time, the comet was about 286 million km from Earth. Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky. As a result, background stars appear as streaks of light.

Hubble previously observed 3I/ATLAS in July, shortly after its discovery, and a number of observatories have since studied the comet as well. Observations are expected to continue for several more months as 3I/ATLAS heads out of the solar system.

Go here for the latest updates and FAQs related to comet 3I/ATLAS.

[Image description: A bright white point sits at the centre of the image, surrounded by a large, soft blue glow that fades gradually into a dark background. Thin, faint streaks appear diagonally across the image, suggesting motion or stars in the distance. The overall effect is of a luminous object in space, radiating light against a deep, dark backdrop.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

Ariane 6 launches to the sky on 9 July 2024.

Europe’s newest heavy-lift rocket, it is designed to provide great power and flexibility at a lower cost than its predecessors. The launcher’s configuration – with an upgraded main stage, a choice of either two or four powerful boosters and a new restartable upper stage – will provide Europe with greater efficiency and possibility as it can launch multiple missions into different orbits on a single flight, while its upper stage will deorbit itself at the end of mission.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

An orange pouch and a yellow cable are paving the way for missions to the Moon. By monitoring space radiation and enabling faster communications, the Dosis-3D experiment and the Columbus Ka-band or ColKa terminal, respectively, are providing the insights needed to enable safer missions father out in space.

Orange Dosis-3D pouches are everywhere in the Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station. A series of active and passive dosimeters, they measure space radiation inside the module as well as how it penetrates the Space Station’s walls.

Radiation levels in space are up to 15 times higher than on Earth. As soon as humans leave the protective shield that is Earth’s atmosphere, space radiation becomes a serious concern.

The Columbus module is monitored by 11 passive dosimeters. The dosimeters are about the size of a pack of playing cards and attach to the walls of Columbus with Velcro. The detectors record how much radiation has been absorbed in total during the period they are in space.

This experiment has been monitoring radiation levels for a number of years and after each six-month crew rotation, the detectors are replaced to record changes in radiation.

In addition to the passive detectors, Dosis-3D uses active dosimeters that measure fluctuations in radiation levels over time. Data from all Station partners is shared to create as complete a picture of space radiation as possible.

Dosimeters will also be flown on the Gateway, the next human habitat to be built in the vicinity of the Moon, to generate a more accurate assessment of radiation in lunar orbit.

Meanwhile, the ColKa communications terminal visible in this image, will connect the Columbus module to the European Data Relay System satellites in geostationary orbit that transfer data via European ground stations. ColKa was installed during a recent spacewalk and began commissioning this week. It will enable faster uplink and downlink speeds between the European segment of the Space Station and European researchers on the ground.

The know-how gained from designing, building and running ColKa could potentially be used in exploring farther from Earth in the Gateway around the Moon. ESA will supply the ESPRIT module for communications, scientific experiments, and refuelling for the international lunar outpost.

These ambitious plans require reliable navigation and telecommunication capabilities to succeed. Building these independently would be costly, complex and inefficient.

If this work were outsourced to a consortium of space companies that could put a constellation of satellites around the Moon, each individual mission would become more cost-efficient.

As part of an initiative called Moonlight, ESA is now conducting deep analyses of the planned lunar missions and further developing possible solutions, both technical and business-related, to provide telecommunications and navigation services for the Moon.

Credits: ESA/NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope captured in exquisite detail a face-on view of a remarkable-looking galaxy. NGC 5335 is categorized as a flocculent spiral galaxy with patchy streamers of star formation across its disk. There is a striking lack of well-defined spiral arms that are commonly found among galaxies, including our Milky Way. A notable bar structure slices across the center of the galaxy. The bar channels gas inwards toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Such bars are dynamic in galaxies and may come and go over two-billion-year intervals. They appear in about 30 percent of observed galaxies, including our Milky Way.

[Image description: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 observed by the Hubble Space Telescope takes up the majority of the view. At its center is a milky yellow, flattened oval that extends bottom left to top. Within the oval is a bright central region that looks circular, with the very center the brightest. In the bright central region is what looks like a bar, extending from top left to bottom right. Around this is a thick swath of blue stars speckled with white regions. Multiple arms wrap up and around in a counterclockwise direction, becoming fainter the farther out they are. Both the white core and the spiral arms are intertwined with dark streaks of dust. The background of space is black. Thousands of distant galaxies in an array of colors are speckled throughout.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI; CC BY 4.0

This view of the Idaeus Fossae region of Mars was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express. It shows the flat-topped rocky outcrops – mesas – that dominate part of this terrain.

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[Image description: A yellow-brown Martian surface with a fractured, rugged terrain. Large plate-like sections appear broken and shifted, creating dark, uneven ridges. Several circular impact craters of different sizes are scattered across the scene, including a prominent crater near the top left with steep walls and a shadowed interior. The landscape looks dry, dusty, and barren, with subtle shading that highlights its rough texture.]

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

This serene spiral galaxy hides a cataclysmic past. The galaxy IC 758, shown here in today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week, is situated 60 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

In this Hubble image captured in 2023, IC 758 appears peaceful, its soft blue spiral arms curving gently around its hazy barred centre. But in 1999, astronomers spotted a powerful explosion in this galaxy: the supernova SN 1999bg. SN 1999bg marked the dramatic end of a star far more massive than the Sun.

It’s not yet known how massive this star was before it exploded. Researchers will use these Hubble observations to measure the masses of stars in SN 1999bg’s neighbourhood, which will help them estimate the mass of the star that went supernova. The Hubble data may also reveal whether SN 1999bg’s progenitor star had a companion, which would give additional clues about the star’s life and death.

A supernova represents more than just the demise of a single star — it’s also a powerful force that can shape its neighbourhood. When a massive star collapses, triggering a supernova, its outer layers rebound off its shrunken core. The explosion stirs the interstellar soup of gas and dust out of which new stars form. This interstellar shakeup can scatter and heat nearby gas clouds, preventing new stars from forming, or it can compress them, creating a burst of new stars. The cast-off layers also become ingredients for new stars.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy with a generally soft and slightly faint appearance. It glows most brightly around the pale yellow bar across its centre. It has two spiral arms which wrap around the centre, quickly broadening out to join a wide, faint circular halo around the galaxy. Glowing, sparkling patches in the disc show stars forming in nebulae. Behind the galaxy, distant galaxies appear as orange dots on a black background.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick; CC BY 4.0

Major elements of the Ariane 5 rocket to launch the James Webb Space Telescope arrived safely in Kourou, French Guiana from Europe on 3 September 2021.

The rocket’s fairing, upper stage and core stage have been unloaded from the MN Toucan vessel at Pariacabo harbour and transported by special convoy to Europe’s Spaceport about 3 km away from the wharf.

Webb will be stowed folded inside the fairing built by RUAG Space in Emmen, Switzerland. This ogive-shaped fairing at the top of Ariane 5 is 5.4 m in diameter and over 17 m high. Made of carbon fibre-polymer composite, this structure will protect Webb from the thermal, acoustic, and aerodynamic stresses at liftoff on the ascent to space.

Ariane 5’s upper stage is built by ArianeGroup in Bremen, Germany. It gives Ariane 5 the flexibility to deploy scientific payloads to a highly precise second Lagrangian injection orbit. Its HM7B engine burns 14.7 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant to deliver 6.6 t of thrust. It provides attitude control during the ascent and the separation of Webb. The Vehicle Equipment Bay, ‘the brain’, autonomously controls the whole vehicle and transmits all key flight parameters to the ground station network.

The cryogenic core stage, built by ArianeGroup in France, is 5.4 m diameter and 30.5 m long and unfuelled weighs more than 14 tonnes. At liftoff, its Vulcain 2 engine burns 175 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants to provide 140 t of thrust. It also provides roll control during the main propulsion phase.

At Europe’s Spaceport these Ariane 5 parts will be checked and prepared for assembly and integration before the mating of Webb on its top.

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.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace

The MTG-I1 team in Kourou is performing daily tests to prepare the first Meteosat Third Generation satellite for its upcoming launch in December.

Once in geostationary orbit, this new satellite, which carries two new extremely sensitive instruments, promises to further bolster Europe's leadership in weather forecasting.

Credits: ESA

This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The Webb image exquisitely captures Uranus’s seasonal north polar cap, including the bright, white, inner cap and the dark lane in the bottom of the polar cap. Uranus’s dim inner and outer rings are also visible in this image, including the elusive Zeta ring – the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet.

This Webb image also shows nine of the planet’s 27 moons. They are the blue dots that surround the planet’s rings. Clockwise starting at 2 o’clock, they are: Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, Juliet, and Perdita. The orbits of these moons share the 98-degree tilt of their parent planet relative to the plane of the Solar System.

One day on Uranus is about 17 hours, so the planet’s rotation is relatively quick. This makes it supremely difficult for observatories with a sharp eye like Webb to capture one simple image of the entire planet – storms and other atmospheric features, and the planet’s moons, move visibly within minutes. This image combines several longer and shorter exposures of this dynamic system to correct for those slight changes throughout the observing time

[Image description: The planet Uranus on a black background. The planet appears blue with a large, white patch taking up the right half. The patch is whitest at the centre, then fades into blue as it expands from right to left. A thin outline of Uranus is also white. Around the planet is a system of nested rings. The outermost ring is the brightest while the innermost ring is the faintest. Unlike Saturn’s horizontal rings, the rings of Uranus are vertical and so they appear to surround the planet in an oval shape. There are nine blueish white dots scattered around the rings.]

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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

The Christmas tree is up at ESA’s ESTEC technical heart in the Netherlands, seen here reflected in the main mirror of a tenth scale model of the NASA-ESA-CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

The Christmas tree’s lights will have taken about 15 billionths of a second to travel to this multi-segment mirror, but the actual JWST’s 6.5 m mirror will observe cosmic sights from far further away.

Scheduled for launch by Ariane 5 in 2021, JWST is designed to collect almost six times more light than the current Hubble Space Telescope, peering back in infrared to the era of the first galaxies in the Universe and hunting out planets around other stars.

Credits: ESA–G. Porter

The turquoise waters southeast of the Kuwaiti island of Failaka are captured in this image acquired by the Φsat-2 mission.

Failaka is about 20 km off Kuwait’s coast at the head of the Persian Gulf. The various colours in the water come from a combination of wind patterns over the region and sediment in the water surrounding the island.

Throughout the year, wind blows sand and dust from soil disposal activities towards the Gulf – and the particles become sediment in the water around Failaka. The island’s position in the path of the prevailing wind creates the swirling patterns that appear in hues of blue and green in the image.

This Φsat-2 true-colour image was acquired on 25 March 2025, during the satellite’s nine-month commissioning phase after its launch in August 2024. Commissioning was concluded in the second quarter of this year and the satellite is now delivering scientific data.

Orbiting at an altitude of 510 km, Φ-sat-2 is a cubesat that generates images using seven multispectral bands, from visible to near-infrared, with a ground sampling distance of about 5 m. This type of remote-sensing instrument is particularly useful for environmental monitoring, land management and mapping.

The mission was designed with the purpose of demonstrating and testing the use of onboard Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Earth observation. This image shows some of the mission’s AI capabilities, such as inspecting the images to determine the presence of the ocean, the absence of clouds and autonomously detect and classify vessels. The small, bright red feature visible at the bottom of the image is a commercial ship.

The same AI application can also establish whether or not a given scene (or area) of marine traffic requires further monitoring or investigation. Other AI applications on board are used to compress satellite images, to detect marine pollution and wildfires and to identify and analyse disaster areas, for example zones affected by earthquakes or floods, and convert satellite images into street maps that can be used by emergency response teams.

Credits: ESA

ESA’s Euclid spacecraft finished its ocean cruise safe and sound on 30 April at Port Canaveral in Florida. Subsequently, the satellite was moved by road to the Astrotech facility near Cape Canaveral.

Euclid will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, no earlier than July, before starting its 1.5 million km journey to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. In orbit, Euclid will map billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light years, across more than one third of the sky.

Euclid’s cosmic map will help us understand the Universe’s mysterious components: dark matter and dark energy. Together they appear to make up 95% of the Universe, while the normal matter that we know and are made of (together with stars, planets and all we see) makes up the other 5%.

Astronomers will use Euclid observations to study the evolution of the expansion of the Universe and the large-scale distribution of galaxies over cosmic history. From this, we can learn more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

Credits: Thales Alenia Space / ImagIn

The James Webb Space Telescope was fuelled inside the payload preparation facility at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of its launch on Ariane 5.

Webb’s thrusters will use this propellant to make critical course-corrections after separation from Ariane 5, to maintain its prescribed orbit about one and a half million kilometres from Earth, and to repoint the observatory and manage its momentum during operations.

Fuelling any satellite is a particularly delicate operation requiring setup of the equipment and connections, fuelling, and then pressurisation.

Webb’s propellant tanks were filled separately with 133 kg of dinitrogen tetroxide oxidiser and 168 kg hydrazine. Oxidiser improves the burn efficiency of the hydrazine fuel.

These propellants are extremely toxic so only a few specialists wearing Self-Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble, or ‘scape’ suits, remained in the dedicated fuelling hall for fuelling which took 10 days and ended on 3 December.

The next steps will start soon for ‘combined operations’. This is when specialists working separately to prepare Webb and Ariane 5 will come together as one team. They will place Webb atop its Ariane 5 launch vehicle and encapsulate it inside Ariane 5’s fairing.

Then, no longer visible, Webb, joined with its Ariane 5 launch vehicle will be transferred to the Final Assembly building for the final preparations before launch.

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 third (pictured) and fourth European Service Modules are currently in production at Airbus facilities in Bremen, Germany. They are a key element of the Orion spacecraft, the first to return humans to the Moon since the 1970s.

These modules provide the spacecraft with propulsion, power and thermal control, and will supply astronauts with water and oxygen. The Orion spacecraft is composed of a European Service Module, a Crew Module Adapter and a Crew Module. The latter two components are provided by NASA.

Powering flights to the Moon is a collaborative effort. The components and hardware used in the European Service Modules are built and supplied by more than twenty different companies from ten different countries in Europe.

When ready for launch, each module will have a total mass of 13500 kg, almost two-thirds of which is propellant (rocket fuel). More than 11 km of cables are needed to send commands and receive information from the many on-board sensors. As can be seen in the photo, tie-wraps (yellow) come in handy when it comes to keeping all these cables organised.

The first European Service Module is already attached to the Orion spacecraft and awaiting launch for Artemis I later this year. The second European Service Module has been formally transferred to NASA and is completing integration at the Operations and Checkout building at the Kennedy Space Center. It will be used on the Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission to fly all the way to the Moon in half a century.

By delivering six European Service Modules, ESA is ensuring NASA’s Artemis programme continues to develop a sustainable presence on and around the Moon in international partnership.

Learn more about Orion and Europe’s involvement here. Follow the latest updates via the Orion blog.

Credits: ESA–A. Conigli

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer trains underwater with the European Robotic Arm (ERA) simulator in the Hydrolab facility at Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) in Moscow, Russia.

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.

It will take five spacewalks to get the robotic arm fit for space operations. ESA astronauts Matthias Maurer and Samantha Cristoforetti will support the installation both from inside and outside the Station by taking part in a few spacewalks.

ERA’s first tasks in orbit are to set up the airlock and install a large radiator for the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, also called ‘Nauka’.

Credits: GCTC

The hot firing model of the Ariane 6 upper stage has been installed on the P5.2 test bench at the DLR German Aerospace Center in Lampoldshausen, Germany.

After arrival from the ArianeGroup facilities in Bremen, this 5.4 m-diameter upper stage was hoisted out of its container, tilted vertical and installed on the test stand.

The upper stage will now undergo a campaign of tests to simulate all aspects of flight including stage preparation such as fuelling with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and draining its tanks.

In tests lasting about 18 hours each, data will be gathered on non-propulsive ballistic phases, tank pressurisation to increase performance, Vinci engine reignitions, exhaust nozzle manoeuvres, ending with passivation where all remaining internal energy is removed.

Credits: DLR-Fotomedien

Credits: ESA/JürgenMai

This striking image shows the densely packed globular cluster known as NGC 2210, which is situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC lies about 157 000 light-years from Earth, and is a so-called satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, meaning that the two galaxies are gravitationally bound. Globular clusters are very stable, tightly bound clusters of thousands or even millions of stars. Their stability means that they can last a long time, and therefore globular clusters are often studied in order to investigate potentially very old stellar populations.

In fact, 2017 research that made use of some of the data that were also used to build this image revealed that a sample of LMC globular clusters were incredibly close in age to some of the oldest stellar clusters found in the Milky Way’s halo. They found that NGC 2210 specifically probably clocks in at around 11.6 billion years of age. Even though this is only a couple of billion years younger than the Universe itself, it made NGC 2210 by far the youngest globular cluster in their sample. All other LMC globular clusters studied in the same work were found to be even older, with four of them over 13 billion years old. This is interesting, because it tells astronomers that the oldest globular clusters in the LMC formed contemporaneously with the oldest clusters in the Milky Way, even though the two galaxies formed independently.

As well as being a source of interesting research, this old-but-relatively-young cluster is also extremely beautiful, with its highly concentrated population of stars. The night sky would look very different from the perspective of an inhabitant of a planet orbiting one of the stars in a globular cluster’s centre: the sky would appear to be stuffed full of stars, in a stellar environment that is thousands of times more crowded than our own.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, F. Niederhofer; CC BY 4.0

One of the main activities in recent weeks for the BepiColombo team at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou has been the installation of multi-layered insulation foils and sewing of high-temperature blankets on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter.

The insulation is to protect the spacecraft from the extreme thermal conditions that will be experienced in Mercury orbit.

While conventional multi-layered insulation appears gold-coloured, the upper layer of the module’s striking white high-temperature blanket provides the focus of this image.

The white blankets are made from quartz fibres. Because the fabric is not electrically conductive, to control the build-up of electrostatic charge on the surface of the spacecraft, conducting threads have been woven through the outer layer every 10 cm. The edges of the outer blanket are hand-sewn together once installed on the module, as seen in this image.

The face of the spacecraft the engineer is working on is the panel that will always look at Mercury’s surface and as such many of the science instruments are focused here. This includes the orbiter’s cameras and spectrometers, a laser altimeter and particle analyser.

The panel also has fixtures to connect the module to the Transfer Module during the cruise to Mercury.

The face of the spacecraft pointing to the left in this orientation is the spacecraft radiator, which will eventually be fitted with ‘fins’ designed to reflect heat directionally, allowing the spacecraft to fly at low altitude over the hot surface of the planet. Heat generated by spacecraft subsystems and payload components, as well as heat that comes from the Sun and Mercury and ‘leaks’ through the blankets into the spacecraft, will be conducted to the radiator by heat pipes and ultimately radiated into space.

The oval shapes correlate to star trackers, used for navigation, while a spectrometer is connected with ground support equipment towards the top. At the back of this face, the magnetometer boom can be seen folded against the spacecraft – it has now also been fitted with multi-layered insulation.

For more images of the launch preparations at Kourou visit the BepiColombo image gallery.

Credits: ESA–B. Guillaume

The 73rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2022), taking place from 18 to 22 September at the Paris Convention Centre in Paris. A week of lively interactions awaits the world space community, this year under the theme 'Space for @ll'.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

Scene: the entrance of a cave, Riegelberg, Germany. An intrepid group of explorers carefully approach the opening, ready to seek out origins of life on this planet.

This scene is not out of a sci-fi film but from last week’s Pangaea field training course. Named after the ancient supercontinent, Pangaea equips future explorers with a better understanding of planetary geology and includes collecting and documenting interesting rock samples to assess the most likely places where to find traces of life on other planets.

Now in its third year, the 2018 campaign includes participants ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and ‘Spaceship EAC’ lead Aidan Cowley.

Lead by European planetary geologists, the crew attended lectures, worked with satellite imagery, and used robotic tools to analyse rock samples. They put knowledge into practice at the Ries crater in Germany, one of the best-preserved impact craters on Earth and the place to find extra-terrestrial minerals.

Around 15 million years ago, a one-kilometre-diameter asteroid hit Earth at 20 km/s releasing one trillion times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The result is still visible in west Bavaria today: a 25 km-crater with a depth of roughly 200 metres.

At the Ries crater Pangaea participants find the best resemblance on Earth to a Moon crater. With eyes set on returning to our rocky satellite, practical knowledge of lunar formation is vital. Future astronauts must understand both the science and operations of lunar geology to make the right moves while on the Moon.

The structure in this image is made out of a megablock of limestone that was cracked open by the Ries impact event and is the ideal classroom for learning about cave formation. Tracing the origins of such rocky structures helps to tell the greater story of life on Earth and of detecting life on other planets.

This week the Pangaea course moves on to the Italian Dolomites to study layers that reveal a past characterised by an abundance of running water. The veins in the terrain are similar to those found on Mars and suggest sedimentary processes on the Red Planet.

Pangaea’s last stop will be the alien landscapes of Lanzarote, Spain, in November. This is one of the best areas on Earth to understand the geological interactions between volcanic activity and water – two key factors in the search for life.

Follow the Pangaea course on social media and keep up to date with field activities via the blog.

Credits: ESA–A. Romeo

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has observed the well-known Ring Nebula with unprecedented detail. Formed by a star throwing off its outer layers as it runs out of fuel, the Ring Nebula is an archetypal planetary nebula. Also known as M57 and NGC 6720, it is both relatively close to Earth at roughly 2,500 light-years away.

This new image provides unprecedented spatial resolution and spectral sensitivity. In particular, Webb’s MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument) reveals particular details in the concentric features in the outer regions of the nebulae’s ring (right).

There are some 20,000 dense globules in the nebula, which are rich in molecular hydrogen. In contrast, the inner region shows very hot gas. The main shell contains a thin ring of enhanced emission from

carbon-based molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Roughly ten concentric arcs located just beyond the outer edge of the main ring. The arcs are thought to originate from the interaction of the central star with a low-mass companion orbiting at a distance comparable to that between the Earth and the dwarf planet Pluto. In this way, nebulae like the Ring Nebula reveal a kind of astronomical archaeology, as astronomers study the nebula to learn about the star that created it.

[Image description: This image of the Ring Nebula appears as a distorted doughnut. The nebula’s inner cavity hosts shades of red and orange, while the detailed ring transitions through shades of yellow in the inner regions and blue/purple in the outer region. The ring’s inner region has distinct filament elements.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow, N. Cox, R. Wesson

The Orion spacecraft with integrated European Service Module sit atop the Space Launch System, imaged at sunrise at historic Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 27 August.

The Flight Readiness Review has deemed the trio GO for launch, marking the dawn of a new era in space exploration.

The first in a series of missions that will return humans to the Moon, including taking the first European, Artemis I is scheduled for launch no earlier than Monday 29 August, at 14:33 CEST.

This mission will put NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module to the test during a journey beyond the Moon and back. No crew will be on board Orion this time, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams on Earth.

The crew module, however, won’t be empty. Two mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, will occupy the passenger seats. Their female-shaped plastic bodies are filled with over 5600 sensors each to measure the radiation load during their trip around the Moon. The specially trained woolly astronaut, Shaun the Sheep, has also been assigned a seat.

The spacecraft will enter lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and propel itself almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled.

The second Artemis mission will see four astronauts travel around the Moon on a flyby voyage around our natural satellite.

Mission duration depends on the launch date and even time. It will last between 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits of the Moon mission designers decide to make.

This flexibility in mission length is necessary to allow the mission to end as intended with a splashdown during daylight hours in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, USA.

Two more dates are available if a launch on 29 August is not possible. The Artemis Moon mission can also be launched on 2 September and 5 September. Check all the possible launch options on ESA’s Orion blog.

Orion is the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight outside Earth orbit and high-speed reentry from the vicinity of the Moon. More than just a crew module, Orion includes the European Service Module (ESM), the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion.

ESM provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.

Watch launch coverage on ESA Web TV starting at 12:30 CEST here. Follow @esaspaceflight for updates and live Twitter coverage.

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over Shanghai, China. One of the most populous cities in the world and home to over 24 million people, the city is visible in the lower right of the image just above the Yangtze River mouth. As a significant global financial centre it is also the site of the world’s busiest container ports because of its strategic location on the Yangtze River delta.

The image covers an area of over 1200 km, showing Beijing at the centre-top, the salt flats close to the Mongolian border in the top left, and North Korea, with its capital, Pyongyang, just visible in the top right of the image. A large number of urban settlements represented as grey flecks are interspersed with agricultural fields, dominating the central part of the image.

This true colour image taken using Sentinel-3A’s Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) shows the huge amount of sediment carried into the ocean along the coast.

Meanwhile, Taihu Lake is shown in green in the lower right part of the image. In 2007, an algal bloom on the lake caused major problems with water supplies in the neighbouring city of Wuxi. Such algal blooms may well be linked to the discharge of phosphates found in fertilizers used in industry and agriculture into the water.

Steps have been taken to limit the use of such fertilisers in a bid to reduce algal blooms, which can significantly alter the ecology of the environment below the surface and pose a threat to various forms of water life.

Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. Since 2016, Sentinel-3A has been measuring our oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics and to provide critical information for marine operations, and more.

This image, which was captured on 29 April 2017, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

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

The Scalable Radiation Monitor (SRM) was photographed floating inside the Cupola of the International Space Station.

You can revisit Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski’s mission on the Ignis website, explore the digital launch kit, and connect with him on Instagram and X.

Credits: ESA-S. Uznański-Wiśniewski

The Nissan Navara ‘Dark Sky’ concept vehicle features a bespoke off-road trailer allowing a high-powered telescope to be safely transported to remote ‘dark-sky’ locations.

Visit our website to learn more about the Nissan Navara 'Dark Sky'

Credits: Nissan

The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week is NGC 1637, a spiral galaxy located 38 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus.

This image comes from an observing programme dedicated to studying star formation in nearby galaxies. Stars form in cold, dusty gas clouds that collapse under their own gravity. As young stars grow, they heat their nurseries through starlight, winds, and powerful outflows. Together, these factors play a role in controlling the rate at which future generations of stars form.

Evidence of star formation is scattered all around NGC 1637, if you know where to look. The galaxy’s spiral arms are dotted with what appear to be pink clouds, many of which are accompanied by bright blue stars. The pinkish colour comes from hydrogen atoms that have been excited by ultraviolet light from young, massive stars. This contrasts with the warm yellow glow of the galaxy’s centre, which is home to a densely packed collection of older, redder stars.

The stars that set their birthplaces aglow are comparatively short-lived, and many of these stars will explode as supernovae just a few million years after they’re born. In 1999, NGC 1637 played host to a supernova, pithily named SN 1999EM, that was lauded as the brightest supernova seen that year. When a massive star expires as a supernova, the explosion outshines its entire home galaxy for a short time. While a supernova marks the end of a star’s life, it can also jump start the formation of new stars by compressing nearby clouds of gas, beginning the stellar lifecycle anew.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy filling the view. Its disc is filled with bright red spots where stars are forming, dark reddish threads of dust that obscure light, and bluish glowing areas where older stars are concentrated. It has a large, glowing yellow oval area at the centre, from which two spiral arms wind through the galaxy’s disc. The bottom side of the disc is rounded while the top side is somewhat squared-off.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker; CC BY 4.0

The Orion spacecraft with integrated European Service Module sit atop the Space Launch System, imaged at sunrise at historic Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA on 27 August.

The Flight Readiness Review has deemed the trio GO for launch, marking the dawn of a new era in space exploration.

The first in a series of missions that will return humans to the Moon, including taking the first European, Artemis I is scheduled for launch no earlier than Monday 29 August, at 14:33 CEST.

This mission will put NASA’s Orion spacecraft and ESA’s European Service Module to the test during a journey beyond the Moon and back. No crew will be on board Orion this time, and the spacecraft will be controlled by teams on Earth.

The crew module, however, won’t be empty. Two mannequins, named Helga and Zohar, will occupy the passenger seats. Their female-shaped plastic bodies are filled with over 5600 sensors each to measure the radiation load during their trip around the Moon. The specially trained woolly astronaut, Shaun the Sheep, has also been assigned a seat.

The spacecraft will enter lunar orbit using the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and propel itself almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled.

The second Artemis mission will see four astronauts travel around the Moon on a flyby voyage around our natural satellite.

Mission duration depends on the launch date and even time. It will last between 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits of the Moon mission designers decide to make.

This flexibility in mission length is necessary to allow the mission to end as intended with a splashdown during daylight hours in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California, USA.

Two more dates are available if a launch on 29 August is not possible. The Artemis Moon mission can also be launched on 2 September and 5 September. Check all the possible launch options on ESA’s Orion blog.

Orion is the only spacecraft capable of human spaceflight outside Earth orbit and high-speed reentry from the vicinity of the Moon. More than just a crew module, Orion includes the European Service Module (ESM), the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion.

ESM provides for all astronauts’ basic needs, such as water, oxygen, nitrogen, temperature control, power and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.

Watch launch coverage on ESA Web TV starting at 12:30 CEST here. Follow @esaspaceflight for updates and live Twitter coverage.

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

This image depicts the blue compact dwarf galaxy NGC 5253, as seen by the High Resolution Channel (HRC) of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

ACS is a third-generation scientific instrument on Hubble, and was installed in 2002 as part of Servicing Mission 3B. It originally had three sub-instruments or “channels”: the Wide Field Channel (WFC), as its name and the name of ACS both suggest, is used to survey broad fields of distant and faint galaxies including the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field, while the Solar Blind Channel is optimised for viewing ultraviolet light emitted by planets like Jupiter by blocking out sunlight. Both of these are still operational.

HRC is the third channel, and it was designed to take a close and extremely detailed look into the centre of celestial objects like the centres of galaxies, star clusters and star-forming regions. Its high resolution allowed astronomers to distinguish many stars in a small area, allowing them to examine dense regions in depth. NGC 5253, a starburst galaxy filled with extraordinary star clusters and continually forming stars, is a perfect target for ACS with HRC. This image shows the galaxy’s nucleus in detail, where super star clusters lurk amongst the dark dust clouds. A broader view of the galaxy can be seen here.

HRC was only operational for about five years, between ACS’s installation and electronics failures in 2007 that took it offline. While ACS was partially repaired in Hubble’s last servicing mission in 2009, HRC could not be restored. Close-in, high-resolution images of galaxy cores like this one are, therefore, something of a rarity.

[Image Description: The bright centre of a galaxy. It is filled with stars, most of which are bright blue points. There are some star clusters which appear as larger shining dots surrounded closely by more stars. Clouds of gas and dust can be seen behind the galaxy core, where they are lit up and appear pink in colour, and in front of it, where they block out some of its light and appear dark in colour.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. D. Vacca; CC BY 4.0

On 10 April, BepiColombo closes in on Earth for a gravity-assist flyby on its way to its final destination, Mercury. At closest approach, 06:24:58 CEST, the spacecraft flies only 12 700 km above the surface of our planet.

This graphic provides a simplified overview of the key operations that will take place before, during and after the flyby, such as the warm up of the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) on 9 April to prepare for the 34-minute eclipse phase following closest approach, between 07:01 and 07:35 CEST, during which the spacecraft will be in Earth's shadow and thus not receiving any sunlight.

Several instruments and sensors on the two science orbiters that make up the mission – the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) – will be switched on during the flyby, as indicated on the right side of the graphic. The data gathered during the flyby include images of the Moon and measurements of Earth’s magnetic field, which will be used to calibrate the instruments.

The three monitoring cameras mounted on the MTM are also programmed to take several 'selfies' of the spacecraft with Earth upon approach and departure.

A simulated view of the flyby in an ‘inertial frame’ – in which the spacecraft is moving in relation to a still Earth – is available here.

Find out more about BepiColombo's Earth flyby, details of the gravity-assist manouvre and how to observe the flyby in the sky.

BepiColombo, a joint mission of ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is on a seven-year cruise to Mercury, the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System. Launched in October 2018, BepiColombo follows an intricate trajectory that involves nine gravity-assist flyby manoeuvres. In addition to the flyby at Earth, BepiColombo will perform two flybys at Venus and six at Mercury, its target planet. The manoeuvres slow down the spacecraft as it needs to constantly brake against the gravitational pull of the Sun in order to be able to enter the correct orbit around Mercury in 2025, ahead of commencing science operations in early 2026.

Credits: ESA

The OMEGA infrared spectrometer on board ESA’s Mars Express, and CRISM onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), have identified iron-magnesium rich clays like smectite over hundreds of square kilometres around the Oxia Planum site. The origin of the clays – perhaps due to alteration of volcanic sediments – is of keen interest to researchers looking for a terrain where traces of life have been preserved and could be studied by a rover.

This image was taken by MRO’s high resolution camera HiRISE and shows a relatively flat surface in this region. Images like these have been used in the assessment of the various landing site candidates.

The image is centred at 18.275ºN / 335.368°E

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

This new Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects in the upper portion of the image are thought to host two further protostars.

This image was captured with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam). Infrared imaging is powerful in studying newborn stars and their outflows, because the youngest stars are invariably still embedded within the gas and dust from which they are formed. The infrared emission of the star’s outflows penetrates the obscuring gas and dust, making Herbig-Haro objects ideal for observation with Webb’s sensitive infrared instruments. Molecules excited by the turbulent conditions, including molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide, emit infrared light that Webb can collect to visualise the structure of the outflows. NIRCam is particularly good at observing the hot (thousands of degree Celsius) molecules that are excited as a result of shocks.

Using ground-based observations, researchers have previously found that for cold molecular gas associated with HH 797, most of the red-shifted gas (moving away from us) is found to the south (bottom right), while the blue-shifted gas (moving towards us) is to the north (bottom left). A gradient was also found across the outflow, such that at a given distance from the young central star, the velocity of the gas near the eastern edge of the jet is more red-shifted than that of the gas on the western edge. Astronomers in the past thought this was due to the outflow’s rotation. In this higher resolution Webb image, however, we can see that what was thought to be one outflow is in fact made up of two almost parallel outflows with their own separate series of shocks (which explains the velocity asymmetries). The source, located in the small dark region (bottom right of centre), and already known from previous observations, is therefore not a single but a double star. Each star is producing its own dramatic outflow. Other outflows are also seen in this image, including one from the protostar in the top right of centre along with its illuminated cavity walls.

[Image Description: In the lower half of the image is a narrow, horizontal nebula that stretches from edge to edge. It is brightly coloured with more variety on its right side. In the upper half there is a glowing point with multi-coloured light radiating from it in all directions. A bright star with long diffraction spikes lies along the right edge, and a few smaller stars are spread around. The background is covered in a thin haze.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, T. Ray (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies)

The swirls of the galaxy IC 1776 stand in splendid isolation in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies over 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces.

IC 1776 recently played host to a catastrophically violent explosion — a supernova — which was discovered in 2015 by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search, a robotic telescope which scours the night sky in search of transient phenomena such as supernovae. A network of automatic robotic telescopes are spread across the globe, operated by both professional and amateur astronomers, and, without human intervention, reveal short-lived astronomical phenomena such as wandering asteroids, gravitational microlensing, or supernovae.

Hubble investigated the aftermath of the supernova SN 2015ap during two different observing programmes, both designed to comb through the debris left by supernovae explosions in order to better understand these energetic events. A variety of telescopes automatically follow up the detection of supernovae to obtain early measurements of these events’ brightnesses and spectra. Complementing these measurements with later observations which reveal the lingering energy of supernovae can shed light on the systems which gave rise to these cosmic cataclysms in the first place.

[Image description: A spiral galaxy. It is irregularly-shaped and its spiral arms are difficult to distinguish. The edges are faint and the core has a pale yellow glow. It is dotted with small, wispy, blue regions where stars are forming. A few stars and small galaxies in warm colours are visible around it.]

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

This Hubble Picture of the Week depicts the spiral galaxy ESO 422-41, which lies about 34 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Columba. The patchy, star-filled structure of the galaxy’s spiral arms and the glow from its dense core are laid out in intricate detail here by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images of this galaxy have, however, a decades-long history.

The name ESO 422-41 comes from its identification in the European Southern Observatory (B) Atlas of the Southern Sky. In the times before automated sky surveys with space observatories such as ESA’s Gaia, many stars, galaxies and nebulae were discovered by means of large photographic surveys. Astronomers used the most advanced large telescopes of the time to produce hundreds of photographs, covering an area of the sky. They later studied the resulting photographs, attempting to catalogue all the new astronomical objects revealed.

In the 1970s a new telescope at ESO’s La Silla facility in Chile performed such a survey of the southern sky, which still had not been examined in as much depth as the sky in the north. At the time, the premier technology for recording images was glass plates treated with chemicals. The resulting collection of photographic plates became the ESO (B) Atlas of the Southern Sky. Astronomers at ESO and in Uppsala, Sweden collaborated to study the plates, recording hundreds of galaxies — ESO 422-41 being just one of those — star clusters, and nebulae. Many were new to astronomy.

Astronomical sky surveying has since transitioned through digital, computer-aided surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Legacy Surveys, to surveys made by space telescopes including Gaia and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer. Even so, photographic sky surveys contributed immensely to astronomical knowledge for decades, and the archives of glass plates serve as an important historical reference for large swathes of the sky. Some are still actively used today, for instance to study variable stars through time. And the objects that these surveys revealed, including ESO 422-41, can now be studied in depth by telescopes such as Hubble.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, with a brightly shining core and two large arms. The arms are broad, faint overall and quite patchy, and feature several small bright spots where stars are forming. A few foreground stars with small diffraction spikes can be seen in front of the galaxy.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick; CC BY 4.0