The International Space Station is a maze of modules filled with racks, cables and experiments running 24/7. Upgrading and shifting units from one place to another becomes a tricky task in space – there is no up or down, and everything is weightless.

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst has been recently busy with one of the facilities in Europe’s Columbus module. The Fluid Science Laboratory measures fluid dynamics in weightlessness.

Scientists are interested in how foams, emulsions and granular materials – materials easily deformed by thermal fluctuations and external forces – behave without the effects of gravity.

On Earth, buoyancy-driven convection and sedimentation can mask the underlying phenomena that scientists would like to observe. Without gravity, it is possible to study the samples disentangled from theses processes.

After 10 years of service, it was time for the Fluid Science Laboratory to get a revamp. Alexander installed a new video management unit to record experiments for analysis on Earth. He also installed the Soft Matter Dynamics instrument, at the bottom of the unfastened Fluid Science Laboratory in this image.

This new instrument is equipped with cameras and sensors to detect very small changes in the samples with high accuracy. Soft matter is anything that can be deformed by mechanical or thermal means at room temperature.

“The instrument allows us to observe the dynamics of soft matter materials down to the microsecond,” explains Marco Braibanti, complex fluids scientists at ESA.

Soft matter research can lead to industrial applications. Many components found in food, cosmetics and pharmacy products must stay stable for long periods of time. Experiments with the Soft Matter Dynamics can help improve the stability of foams, emulsions, gels and aerosols.

With this latest upgrade the Fluid Science Laboratory is ready to receive yet another unit later in 2019: the Multiscale Boiling experiment. Scientists will study boiling phenomena and the role of various forces acting on vapour bubbles.

The Fluid Science Laboratory is one of many instruments supporting sophisticated research in Europe’s Columbus module. Celebrating its 10th year in operation, the lab is the European hub for research in life and physical sciences, space science, Earth observation and technology demonstrations on the International Space Station.

Alexander is performing many more experiments during his six month Horizons mission. Follow along for all the exciting science he’s performing and on the Horizons mission blog.

Credits: ESA/NASA

This rugged control panel has been designed to be used by a cosmonaut in a spacesuit, on the outside of the International Space Station.

Known as the ‘External Man Machine Interface’, it will be used to control the European Robotic Arm, which is due to reach the Station as part of Russia’s long-awaited Nauka (meaning ‘Science’) Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) next year.

ESA designed the European Robotic Arm (ERA) as part of its contributions to the ISS. The 11.3-m long, seven degrees of freedom robotic manipulator will be the third arm to reach the Station, following Canada’s ‘Canadarm’ and Japan’s Remote Manipulator System. Serving the Russian segment of ISS, ERA will be able to manipulate payloads of up to 8 tonnes, with a positioning accuracy of 5 mm.

“The Russians wanted to give their spacewalkers the option of direct control over ERA,” explains ESA robotics engineer Lodewijk Aris.

“So we built this external interface along with as a pair of internal interfaces. External control is one of the attributes that make ERA unique among the Station arms. The interface is designed to endure the space environment for at least a decade – when not in use the hinged cover is closed, to protect it from thermal extremes, radiation and micrometeorites.

“This is a qualification model – its flight model is with Russia’s Energia company along with ERA itself. The qualification model of ERA is also here in ESTEC, which we will be using for tests and anomaly investigations post-launch.

“We’ll be demonstrating part of this ERA ‘Iron Bird’ during the ESA Open Day on Sunday 6 October. The whole arm is too bulky for our facilities, but we’ll be controlling its wrist live during the Open Day, using the laptop-style internal interface.”

Able to move in a similar manner to a human arm, ERA is symmetrical in design around its central elbow joint, with both ends of the arm concluding in end effectors that can function together with their wrists either as ‘shoulders’ or ‘hands’.

Its shoulder side will be connected to one of four different ‘base plates’ around the MLM, providing data and power links, while its wrist-and-hand side will be able to take payloads from the module’s airlock and place them on a selection of payload mounting units. ERA will be relocated between base plates as required.

ERA’s end effectors also feature cameras for visual inspection and screwdriver-like ‘integrated service tool’ for securing payloads using a standardised pin latch attachment system. The combination of a laser-based lighting unit and force sensor will allow precise manipulation of payloads, including installing and removing them.

As a safety feature, ERA includes a detailed virtual map of the ISS to prevent any accidental collision with Station structure – which has been kept updated as the Station grew during its wait for flight.

“The MLM, equipped with its own solar panels, an airlock and Soyuz docking port as well as ERA should offer a significant boost to ISS science,” adds Aris. “Directly after its in-orbit validation phase, ERA will have the crucial role of installing the MLM’s radiator and airlock – with backup from the ERA operations room here in the ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands – before being formally handed over to the Russians for operational use.”

The launch of the 20-tonne MLM by Proton rocket is currently planned from Kazakhstan’s Baikonour cosmodrome in December 2020.

Credits: ESA–SJM Photography

On Friday 17 December, the Ariane 5 rocket fairing was closed around the James Webb Space Telescope. This protective fairing, or ‘nose cone’, will shield the telescope during liftoff and its journey through the atmosphere on 24 December.

Earlier this week, Webb was placed on top of Ariane 5 and a protective ‘shower curtain’ was put up to avoid any contamination.

On the day of encapsulation in the fairing, a protective cover on top of Webb was removed and the fairing was lowered down over the observatory and locked in place for liftoff.

This was a particularly delicate operation, assisted by a laser guiding system, because the margins between the folded up observatory (4.5 m wide) and the rocket fairing (5.4 m wide) are small.

The fairing is equipped with specialised environmental controls that keep the observatory in a perfectly controlled temperature and humidity range during its final few days on Earth.

Now that Webb has been securely attached to its Ariane 5 launch vehicle, and enclosed within its protective fairing, mechanical operations involving the observatory at its launch site in French Guiana have formally concluded.

Final electrical and software configurations will occur on the launch pad during the final hours before liftoff. Webb will switch to internal battery power roughly 20 minutes prior to liftoff, and within 15 minutes prior the observatory and its launch vehicle will both be fully cleared for flight.

Ariane 5’s rollout to the launch pad is scheduled to begin Wednesday 22 December, and this is where final health checks and preparations for liftoff will occur.

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 - S.Martin

The Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) crew lifts off to the International Space Station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, on 25 June at 02:31 EDT, local time (07:31 BST/08:31 CEST).

ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski travels to his new home in space in the Dragon spacecraft. Sławosz is part of Axiom Mission 4 alongside Peggy Whitson (USA), Shubhanshu Shukla (India) and Tibor Kapu (Hungary).

During their journey on the Dragon spacecraft to the orbital outpost Sławosz and Tibor will serve as mission specialists, Shubhanshu will be the crew’s pilot and Peggy will be commander.

The Polish project astronaut is the second of a new generation of European astronauts to fly on a commercial human spaceflight opportunity with Axiom Space. Sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT), and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the mission will include an ambitious technological and scientific programme with several experiments led by ESA and proposed by the Polish space industry. The mission, known as Ignis will officially begin once Sławosz enters the Station.

Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski was selected in November 2022 as a member of the ESA astronaut reserve and joined ESA as a project astronaut on 1 September 2023 for training familiarisation at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

Follow Sławosz’s journey on the Ignis website, check our launch kit and connect with him on his Instagram and X accounts.

Credits: ESA - S.Corvaja

On 17 December at 05:01 GMT (06:01 CET), two new Galileo satellites lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 6 rocket. This marked the 14th launch for Europe’s satellite navigation operational satellite programme, reinforcing Europe’s resilience and autonomy.

The flight, designated VA266, was the first launch of Galileo satellites on Europe’s newest heavy-lift launcher Ariane 6.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is responsible for carrying out the Galileo launch with Arianespace on behalf of the European Commission. The Galileo satellites were manufactured by OHB, under contract with ESA. Once in orbit, the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) will bring the satellites into service and oversee their operation.

Follow the launch campaign

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The International Space Station is an exciting place for experiments. This one in particular was making waves in space. Called Fluidics, the experiment studies fluid dynamics in microgravity and recently performed another successful round of science on board the Space Station.

Developed by French space agency CNES and co-funded by Airbus Defense and Space, the Fluidics or Fluid Dynamics in Space experiment is probing how fluids behave in weightlessness.

Have you ever tried walking while carrying a full cup of water? Your steps invariably cause the water to slosh about, making spills hard to avoid. Now imagine a satellite turning – the fuel inside will slosh, affecting the satellite’s stability. The experiment will help improve the performance of satellite propellant systems, extending their working lives by using every last drop in their tanks.

A second part of the Fluidics experiment will look at capillary wave turbulence in liquids. On Earth, gravity and surface tension influence how energy dissipates in waves or ripples. In space, scientists can observe how surface forces behave without gravity.

By looking at capillary wave turbulence without gravity interfering, researchers can single out non-linear interactions. This could help us improve climate models forecasting the sea states and better understand wave formation on Earth, like rogue waves for example.

The experiment is made up of five small, transparent spheres housed in a black centrifuge seen here. Three spheres hold water for the wave-turbulence research; the other two carry a special liquid with low viscosity and little surface tension for sloshing.

Fluidics was first installed and run by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet during his Proxima mission in 2016. The most recent session was completed by NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy in the European laboratory on board the Space Station.

Learn more about the Fluidics experiment with this infographic.

Credits: ESA/NASA

Scientists have combined Euclid’s recently released image of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 2390 with ESA XMM-Newton’s X-ray observation of the same site to showcase the blazing hot gas that fills the space between the galaxies.

Abell 2390 is a giant conglomeration of many galaxies like the Milky Way, located 2.7 billion light-years from Earth. Euclid’s image was obtained from observations in visible and near-infrared light and features more than 50 000 galaxies, thousands of which are part of the cluster. Yet, we cannot directly see most of the mass that makes up this cluster in Euclid’s sparkling view.

A galaxy cluster like Abell 2390 is a gigantic pile of dark matter that makes up about 80% of its total mass. Most of the ‘normal’ matter in the pile is in the form of scorching hot gas, which makes up about 15% of the cluster. The galaxies, which add to only a few percent of the total mass, sit in this pile like raisins in a cake.

The temperature of the gas ranges between 10 to 100 million degrees Celsius. Here, electrons are stripped from the atoms in the gas and become ionised. The sizzling mixture of charged particles produces the X-rays captured by XMM-Newton.

In the image, the X-ray light appears as a blue glow that permeates the expanses between the galaxies. The diffuse light is brighter towards the centre of the cluster, indicating that there the gas becomes hotter and more concentrated.

By mapping where the hot gas is located and studying how it behaves, astronomers learn more about how galaxy clusters grow, and about how galaxies interact and evolve in this dynamic environment.

The gigantic, curved arcs in Euclid’s image are the result of gravitational lensing where the light travelling to us from more distant galaxies is bent and distorted by the matter in the foreground (‘normal’ and dark matter). Euclid uses lensing as a key technique for exploring the dark Universe, indirectly mapping the amount and distribution of dark matter both in galaxy clusters and elsewhere.

XMM-Newton observations of Abell 2390 were taken in 2001 and are available from ESASky. Euclid’s observation of Abell 2390 can be found in ESASky here.

Credits: ESA/XMM-Newton/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

XMM-Newton: Ignacio de la Calle. Euclid: processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi

This tiny fingernail-length space thruster chip runs on the greenest propellant of all: water.

Designed to manoeuvre the smallest classes of satellite, the operation of this Iridium Catalysed Electrolysis CubeSat Thruster (ICE-Cube Thruster) developed with Imperial College in the UK is based on electrolysis.

Avoiding any need for bulky gaseous propellant storage, an associated electrolyser runs a 20-watt current through water to produce hydrogen and oxygen to propel the thruster.

The ICE-Cube Thruster is so small in scale – with its combustion chamber and nozzle measuring less than 1mm in length – that it could only be assembled using a MEMS (Micro-Electrical Mechanical Systems) approach, borrowing methods from the microelectronics sector.

A test campaign achieved 1.25 millinewtons of thrust at a specific impulse of 185 seconds on a sustained basis. Testing took place through an ESA General Support Technology Programme De-Risk activity, to prove the thruster’s feasibility in a laboratory testing.

The experimental data gathered during this activity will help guide development of a flight-representative ‘Engineering Model’ of the propulsion system, including the electrolyser.

Credits: Imperial College

On 2 September 2020, Vega flight VV16 lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana to progressively deliver 53 light satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits at 515 km and 530 km altitude on a mission lasting 124 minutes.

This proof-of-concept flight demonstrates and validates a new rideshare launch service for light satellites using the Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) dispenser developed by ESA. The SSMS is light and has a modular design that can be configured to meet the requirements of the mission, securing anything from the smallest 1 kg CubeSats up to 500 kg minisatellites.

There were 21 customers sharing this launch.

ESA has contributed to the development of four payloads on board – the 113 kg ESAIL microsatellite and three CubeSats: Simba, Picasso and FSSCat which carries pioneering AI technology named Φ-sat-1.

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

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst landed on Earth for the second time on 20 December 2018 together with NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Prokopiev. Their Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft landed in the steppe of Kazakhstan at 05:02 GMT (11:02 local time). The landing concluded Alexander’s Horizons mission that saw him take over command of the International Space Station during Expedition 57.

The trio’s landing in the Kazakh steppe marked the successful conclusion of over six months in space during which Alexander conducted over 60 European experiments, became the second ever European commander of the International Space Station, welcomed six resupply vehicles, installed the first commercial facility for research in the Columbus laboratory, delivered an important message on climate change for leaders at the COP24 climate change conference, captured real-time footage of a Soyuz launch abort and much, much more.

Horizons was Alexander’s second mission to the International Space Station – the first was Blue Dot in 2014.

Alexander will take his time to readapt to Earth’s gravity supported by ESA’s team of space medicine experts at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. He will also continue to provide ground-based data for researchers to support experiments performed in space.

Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

This Hubble Picture of the Week features the galaxy LEDA 857074, located in the constellation Eridanus. LEDA 857074 is a barred spiral galaxy, with partially broken spiral arms. It also has a particularly bright spot right in its bar: this is a supernova snapped by Hubble, named SN 2022ADQZ, and quite relevant to this Picture of the Week.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed a vast range of celestial objects, from galaxies, to nebulae, to star clusters, to planets in the Solar System and beyond. Observing programmes usually seek to gather data so that astronomers can answer a specific question. Naturally, this means most scheduled observations target an object that astronomers have already researched. Some are famous, like the Crab Nebula or the globular cluster Omega Centauri; others might not be so well known to the public, but still be featured in hundreds of scientific papers, such as the Spider Galaxy or NGC 4753. Not so with this galaxy: LEDA 857074 is named in fewer than five papers, one of which is the Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database itself. Virtually no data have been recorded about it, other than its position: since its discovery, it simply hasn’t been studied. So how did it attract the gaze of the legendary Hubble?

The supernova is the answer — SN 2022ADQZ was detected by an automated survey in late 2022, and led to Hubble being pointed at its host galaxy, LEDA 857074, in early 2023. Astronomers have catalogued millions of galaxies, so while today tens of thousands of supernovae are detected annually, the chance that one is spotted in any particular galaxy is slim. We also do not know how actively LEDA 857074 is forming stars, and therefore how often it might host a supernova. This galaxy is therefore an unlikely and lucky target of Hubble, thanks to this supernova shining a spotlight on it! It now joins the ranks of many more famous celestial objects, with its own Hubble image.

[Image Description: A close-in view of a barred spiral galaxy. The bright, glowing bar crosses the centre of the galaxy, with blurred spiral arms curving away from its ends and continuing out of view. It’s surrounded by bright points of light that indicate stars and galaxies. The galaxy also hosts a bright supernova in its central bar.]

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

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

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

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to identify a new possible example of a rare class of black holes. Called NGC 6099 HLX-1, this bright X-ray source seems to reside in a compact star cluster in a giant elliptical galaxy.

Just a few years after its 1990 launch, Hubble discovered that galaxies throughout the Universe can contain supermassive black holes at their centers weighing millions or billions of times the mass of our Sun. In addition, galaxies also contain as many as millions of small black holes weighing less than 100 times the mass of the Sun. These form when massive stars reach the end of their lives.

Far more elusive are intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), weighing between a few hundred to a few 100,000 times the mass of our Sun. This not-too-big, not-too-small category of black holes is often invisible to us because IMBHs don’t gobble as much gas and stars as the supermassive ones, which would emit powerful radiation. They have to be caught in the act of foraging in order to be found. When they occasionally devour a hapless bypassing star — in what astronomers call a tidal disruption event— they pour out a gusher of radiation.

The newest probable IMBH is located on the galaxy NGC 6099’s outskirts at approximately 40,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center, as described in a new study in the Astrophysical Journal. The galaxy is located about 450 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules.

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a pair of galaxies: NGC 6099 (lower left) and NGC 6098 (upper right). The white dot labeled HLX-1 is the visible-light component of the location of a compact star cluster where the intermediate-mass black hole is tearing apart a star.

Credits: NASA, ESA, Y.C. Chang (National Tsing Hua University), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

This image of the spiral galaxy UGC 11105 is not as bright and vivid as some other Hubble Pictures of the Week. This softly luminous galaxy — lying in the constellation Hercules, about 110 million light-years from Earth — seems outshone by the sparkling foreground stars that surround it. The type II supernova which took place in this galaxy in 2019, while no longer visible in this image, definitely outshone the galaxy at the time! To be more precise, UGC 11105 has an apparent magnitude of around 13.6 in the optical light regime (this image was created using data that covers the heart of the optical regime, in addition to ultraviolet data). Astronomers have different ways of quantifying how bright celestial objects are, and apparent magnitude is one of them.

Firstly, the ‘apparent’ part of this quantity refers to the fact that apparent magnitude only describes how bright objects appear to be from Earth, which is not the same thing as measuring how bright they actually are. For example, in reality the variable star Betelgeuse is about 21 000 times brighter than our Sun, but because the Sun is much, much closer to Earth, Betelgeuse appears to be vastly less bright than it. The ‘magnitude’ part is a little harder to describe, because the magnitude scale does not have a unit associated with it, unlike, for example, mass, which we measure in kilograms, or length, which we measure in metres. Magnitude values only have meaning relative to other magnitude values. Furthermore, the scale is not linear, but is a type of mathematical scale known as ‘reverse logarithmic’, which also means that lower-magnitude objects are brighter than higher-magnitude objects.

As an example, UGC 11105 has an apparent magnitude of around 13.6 in the optical, whereas the Sun has an apparent magnitude of about -26.8. Accounting for the reverse logarithmic scale, this means that the Sun appears to be about 14 thousand trillion times brighter than UGC 11105 from our perspective here on Earth, even though UGC 11105 is an entire galaxy! The faintest stars that humans can see with the naked eye come in at about sixth magnitude, with most galaxies being much dimmer than this. Hubble, however, has been known to detect objects with apparent magnitudes up to the extraordinary value of 31, so UGC 11105 does not really present much of a challenge.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, with two prominent arms that are tightly wound around the brighter core. The arms disperse into a wide halo of stars and dust at their ends, giving the galaxy an oval shape. It is flanked by a number of bright stars in the foreground, each with a little cross over it due to light diffraction, and some distant background galaxies as well.]

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

This Hubble Picture of the Week — taken using NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) — shows Arp 107, a celestial object that comprises a pair of galaxies in the midst of a collision. The larger galaxy (in the left of this image) is an extremely energetic galaxy type known as a Seyfert galaxy, which house active galactic nuclei at their cores. Seyfert galaxies are notable because despite the immense brightness of the active core, radiation from the entire galaxy can be observed. This is evident in this image, where the spiraling whorls of the whole galaxy are readily visible. The smaller companion is connected to the larger by a tenuous-seeming ‘bridge’, composed of dust and gas. The colliding galactic duo lie about 465 million light-years from Earth.

Arp 107 is part of a catalogue of 338 galaxies known as the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which was compiled in 1966 by Halton Arp. It was observed by Hubble as part of an observing programme that specifically sought to fill in an observational ‘gap’, by taking limited observations of members of the Arp catalogue. Part of the intention of the observing programme was to provide the public with images of these spectacular and not-easily-defined galaxies, and as such, it has provided a rich source for Hubble Pictures of the Week. In fact, several recent releases, including this one and this one, have made use of observations from the same observing programme.

[Image Description: A pair of merging galaxies. The galaxy on the left has a large, single spiral arm curving out from the core and around to below it, with very visible glowing dust and gas. The right galaxy has a bright core but only a bit of very faint material. A broad curtain of gas connects the two galaxies’ cores and hangs beneath them. A few small stars and galaxies are scattered around the black background.]

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

Sara García Alonso was selected as a member of the ESA Astronaut Reserve in November 2022. She began her Astronaut Reserve training at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) near Cologne, Germany, on 28 October 2024. The programme includes selected modules of ESA’s one-year basic training, typically completed by career astronauts, and equips members of the astronaut reserve with the skills needed to support Europe’s future space exploration and scientific research. Training covers technical and operational skills, spacecraft systems, survival exercises in water and winter conditions, as well as initial spacewalk training.

Credits: ESA - A. Conigli

Astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to look toward M82’s centre, where a galactic wind is being launched as a result of rapid star formation and subsequent supernovae. Studying the galactic wind can offer insight into how the loss of gas shapes the future growth of the galaxy.

This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows M82’s galactic wind via emission from sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are very small dust grains that survive in cooler temperatures but are destroyed in hot conditions. The structure of the emission resembles that of hot, ionised gas, suggesting PAHs may be replenished by continued ionisation of molecular gas.

In this image, light at 3.35 microns is coloured red, 2.50 microns is green, and 1.64 microns is blue (filters F335M, F250M, and F164N, respectively).

[Image description: An edge-on spiral starburst galaxy with a bright white, glowing core set against the black background of space. A white band of the edge-on disc extends from lower left to upper right. Dark brown tendrils of dust are scattered thinly along this band. Many white points in various sizes — stars or star clusters — are scattered throughout the image, but are most heavily concentrated toward the centre. Many clumpy, red filaments extend vertically above and below the plane of the galaxy.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Bolatto (UMD); CC BY 4.0

Researchers from the University of Oslo have applied a technique to extract the detailed flow field of Khumbu icefall in the Nepalese mountains, from a large collection of Copernicus Sentinel-2 data — helping climbers ascend Mount Everest.

When high altitude mountaineers want to climb Mount Everest from the Nepalese side, they follow a route over and along Khumbu glacier. Part of the glacier, the icefall, runs over a steep cliff making it extremely dangerous.

Velocity patterns, generated by satellites, can be used to map dangerous areas on a glacier. But over the fast-moving icefall of Khumbu glacier, it has not been possible to observe glacier flow because the glacier ice funnels through a narrow corridor of rock, causing fracture ice to flow downward and making feature tracking difficult.

Thanks to the large dataset from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, the researchers used a novel image matching technique, called ensemble matching, to generate a detailed high-resolution velocity map of glacier velocity – despite challenging image conditions.

Read full story: Copernicus Sentinel-2 monitors glacier icefall, helping climbers ascend Mount Everest

Credits: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, processed by the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo

Quasi-optical terahertz detectors from German company ACST, on show during ESA’s Industry Space Days at its ESTEC technical centre this week.

Between infrared and microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz waves can be used to survey galactic evolution and gather data on ozone depletion as well as in terrestrial airport body scanners.

More than 1 500 attendees and upwards of 850 European space companies participated in the two-day Industry Space Days, Europe’s leading conference on the business of space.

This year saw a special focus on the needs of small-medium enterprises. Also under discussion was the miniature satellites known as CubeSats, making space accessible to even the smallest companies, and fast evolving into a dynamic global market.

Attendees were also given guided tours of ESA’s suite of technical laboratories located at Noordwijk-based ESTEC in the Netherlands. These unique facilities are placed at the disposal of all European space companies as well as ESA missions.

To rewatch the two days of Industry Space Days main stage talks, go here.

Credits: ESA - SJM Photography

Clouds of dust visible on the martian surface from the perspective of the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on ESA’s Mars Express. The clouds form part of a large dust storm churning at the martian North Pole on 29 May 2019.

The pattern of small cloud cells is caused by closed-cell convection, a type of convection which creates similar cloud shapes on Earth. The granular cells have horizontal sizes of 20–40 km.

Imaging of this storm by the VMC allowed the measurement of the height of the cells.

Measurement of the size of shadows cast by the cells, combined with knowledge of the position of the Sun, revealed that the cells are between 6–11 km above the surface of the Red Planet.

Read more

Credits: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao

Orion is NASA’s next spacecraft to send humans into space. It is designed to send astronauts farther into space than ever before, beyond the Moon to asteroids and even Mars.

ESA has designed and is overseeing the development of Orion’s service module, the part of the spacecraft that supplies air, electricity 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.

The Orion spacecraft is built by NASA with ESA providing the service module. The arrangement stems from the international partnership for the International Space Station. NASA’s decision to cooperate with ESA on a critical element for the mission is a strong sign of trust and confidence in ESA’s capabilities.

More than 20 companies around Europe are now building the European Service Module as NASA works on Orion and the Space Launch System.

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

Credits: ESA–K. Oldenburg

This Hubble Picture of the week features NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy located 49 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado. This galaxy is a multi-talented light show, showing off an impressive array of different celestial lights. Like any spiral galaxy, its disc is filled with billions of shining stars that give it a beautiful glow. Along its two large arms, bubbles of hydrogen gas are made to shine a striking red light by the powerful radiation of newly-forming stars within. Near to the centre lie some particularly spectacular stars; newly-formed and extremely hot, they are embedded in a ring of hot gas and are emitting powerful X-rays. And in the very centre sits an even more brilliant source of X-rays, an active galactic nucleus created by the heated accretion disc around NGC 1672’s supermassive black hole; this makes NGC 1672 a Seyfert galaxy.

But a highlight of this image is the most fleeting and temporary of these lights: supernova SN 2017GAX, visible in just one of the six Hubble images that make up this composite image. This was a Type I supernova caused by the core-collapse and subsequent explosion of a giant star, going from invisibility to a new light in the sky in just a matter of days. In that image from later that year, the supernova is already fading, and so is only just visible here as a small green dot, just below the crook of the spiral arm on the right side. In fact this was on purpose, as astronomers wanted to look for any companion star that the supernova progenitor may have had — something impossible to spot beside a live supernova! Look for it as a small green dot, just below the crook of the spiral arm on the right side. If you can't find it, try looking at this collage.

Recently, NGC 1672 was also among a crop of galaxies imaged with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, showing the ring of gas and the structure of dust in its spiral arms. A Hubble image was also released previously in 2007.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy with an oval-shaped disc. Two large arms curve out away from the ends of the disc. The arms are traced by bright pink patches where stars are forming and by dark reddish threads of dust. The core is very bright and star-filled. Some large stars appear in front of the galaxy. Directly under the point where the right arm joins the disc, a fading supernova is visible as a green dot.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Fox, L. Jenkins, S. Van Dyk, A. Filippenko, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, D. de Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble); CC BY 4.0

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

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet trains for the Time experiment at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA ahead of his Alpha mission to the International Space Station in 2021.

This European experiment on the International Space Station investigates the hypothesis that time subjectively speeds up in microgravity and was first run in space in 2017.

Whether an activity takes seconds or hours depends on your point of view. For astronauts living off-planet and experiencing roughly 16 sunrises and sunsets a day, the concept of time is even more warped. If astronauts float through space, do they also cruise through an altered sense of time?

Since perceptions of time and space are believed to share the same neural processes, and research on depth perception in weightlessness has shown that astronauts often underestimate distance, scientists speculate that for astronauts time also flies in space.

Thomas demonstrates the experiment perfectly in this image, wearing a virtual reality headset to block external visual cues that could influence results. While wearing this headset, astronauts are tasked with gauging how long a visual target appears before them and their reaction times to these prompts are recorded to process speed and attention.

The astronauts run the experiment before flight, on the International Space Station and again when they land to compare results.

Scientists are not only collecting data on the neurological mechanisms at work here. The relativity of time, after all, implies that it is all in your head. As much as we can objectively measure and plot time, how individual humans perceive it is not just neurological but also psychological.

This is an important factor to life both on and off Earth.

As home-like as the Space Station tries to be for its astronaut inhabitants, it still lacks many of the comforts that we know on Earth. Naturally, this can affect mental health and in turn astronauts’ cognitive abilities. Being alert and focused in space is crucial to safety. An astronaut misjudging time can delay reaction and risk the safety and success of crews and missions.

Understanding the neurological and psychological triggers that warp our sense of time means countermeasures can be developed to calibrate our mental clocks.

Bringing these countermeasures down to Earth could improve the lives of those who suffer from isolation or confinement, something of particular relevance during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Check out this infographic for more on the Time experiment.

Credits: ESA/NASA - James Blair

Ferocious bushfires have been sweeping across Australia since September, fuelled by record-breaking temperatures, drought and wind. The country has always experienced fires, but this season has been horrific. A staggering 10 million hectares of land have been burned, at least 24 people have been killed and it has been reported that almost half a billion animals have perished. This Copernicus Sentinel-3 image shows smoke pouring from numerous fires in New South Wales on 3 January.

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

This view 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 a bird’s-eye view of an impact crater near Mars’s equator. This patch of ground sits at the northern end of the Eumenides Dorsum mountains; these mountains extend far out of frame to the west of the volcanic region of Tharsis, and form part of Medusae Fossae Formation. The dark patch in the crater rim is likely a patch of volcanic sand.

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[Image description: A close-up view of a large impact crater on Mars. The crater has steep, sharply defined walls and a wide, flat floor with uneven ridges. Surrounding the crater is a gently sloping, textured surface in shades of light tan and reddish-brown. A small patch of darker material appears near the upper right inner wall of the crater.]

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

After arrival at ESTEC, the European Space Agency’s Plato spacecraft was moved to a tent providing a clean environment for its sensitive instruments and cameras. Here, the spacecraft is rotated upright from its horizontal transport position.

[Image description: In a cleanroom environment, a group of engineers wearing protective coats, gloves, and face masks are working on a large spacecraft component. The component is mounted on a white wheeled platform. The top of the spacecraft carries 26 cylindrical cameras. The workspace is surrounded by structural supports and white fabric walls, creating a clean and controlled environment.]

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Credits: ESA-SJM Photography

This image shows the full survey of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster made using the NIRCam instrument on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This is the long-wavelength colour composite, which focuses on the gas, dust, and molecules in the region with unprecedented sensitivity in the thermal infrared.

The cavity is mostly filled with ionised gas, seen here in purple, while the surroundings have a mix of dust and molecular gas seen in reds, browns, and greens. The Bright Bay to the upper left is being eroded by the massive stars at the centre of the region and there are many pillars of gas and dust which are being carved.

This young star-forming region is just a million years old and contains thousands of new stars spanning a range of masses from 40 down to less than 0.1 times the mass of the Sun. The most massive and hottest stars in the region, notably the Trapezium in the centre, have sculpted a cavity in the surface of the giant molecular cloud from which they were born, which can be readily seen in this image.

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: An image of a young star-forming region filled with with wispy purple, green, and red nebulosity. The purple ionised gas is seen mostly towards the centre, with browns, greens, and reds behind, while the periphery is mostly bright green and darker brown to the left. There is a large spray of yellow, orange, red, and purple towards the top centre, and the nebula fades to near black to the right. There are thousands of stars sprinkled across the field, concentrated towards the centre, but they generally appear fainter at longer wavelengths, with some exceptions. The brightest sources in the field have extensive diffraction spikes characteristic of Webb.

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

ESA's astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

The five candidates are Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois, and Marco Sieber. The group is part of the 17-member astronaut class of 2022, selected from 22 500 applicants from across ESA Member States.

The astronaut candidates will be trained to the highest level for future space missions. Basic training includes learning about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalks and survival training.

The astronaut candidates are joined by Australian Space Agency astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged the Sombrero galaxy with its MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), resolving the clumpy nature of the dust along the galaxy’s outer ring.

The mid-infrared light highlights the gas and dust that are part of star formation taking place among the Sombrero galaxy’s outer disk. The rings of the Sombrero galaxy produce less than one solar mass of stars per year, in comparison to the Milky Way’s roughly two solar masses a year. It’s not a particular hotbed of star formation.

The Sombrero galaxy is around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

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[Image description: Image of a galaxy on the black background of space. The galaxy is a very oblong, blue disk that extends from left to right at an angle (from about 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock). The galaxy has a small bright core at the centre. There is an inner disk that is clearer, with speckles of stars scattered throughout. The outer disk of the galaxy is whiteish-blue, and clumpy, like clouds in the sky. There are different coloured dots, distant galaxies, speckled among the black background of space surrounding the galaxy.]

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

The map shows fires taking place across the globe between May 2016 and June 2023, using data from the World Fire Atlas. The atlas provides a detailed analysis of wildfires across the globe and utilised nighttime data from the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite. The data have been overlaid onto ESA’s World Cover map which uses data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission from 2021.

Working like a thermometer in the sky, the sensor measures thermal infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth's land surfaces which is used to detect the fires.

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Credits: ESA

During the first step of humankind’s first-ever lunar-Earth flyby, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission captured this stunning view of the Moon.

The image was taken by Juice monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) at 23:25 CEST on 19 August 2024, soon after Juice made its closest approach to the Moon. This successful flyby of the Moon slightly redirected Juice’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Earth on 20 August 2024.

The image shows some sign of real colour differences in the large-scale features on the lunar surface.

The Juice monitoring cameras were designed to monitor the spacecraft’s various booms and antennas, especially during the challenging deployment period following launch.

They were not designed to carry out science or image the Moon. A scientific camera called JANUS is providing high-resolution imagery during the cruise phase flybys of Earth, Moon and Venus, and of Jupiter and its icy moons once in the Jupiter system in 2031.

JMC1 is located on the front* of the spacecraft and looks diagonally up into a field of view that sees deployed antennas, and depending on their orientation, part of one of the solar arrays. JMC images provide 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. The images shown here are lightly processed by Simeon Schmauß and Mark McCaughrean.

Guide to Juice’s monitoring cameras

More information on the lunar-Earth flyby

Rewatch the livestream of Juice’s first Moon images, including Q&A with the team

More images from Juice's monitoring cameras in ESA's Planetary Science Archive

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

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

Acknowledgements: Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughrean

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Gulf of Taranto, located on the inner heel of southern Italy.

Taranto, an important coastal city, is visible on the bottom right of the image. Founded by a Greek colony in the 8th century, the city is now an important commercial port.

The islets of San Pietro and San Paolo, known as the Cheradi Islands, protect the Mar Grande, the main commercial port of the city. It is separated from the Mar Piccolo, an inland lagoon, by a cape which closes the gulf. The industrial district, which is visible northwest of the city, has a high number of factories, oil refineries, steelworks and iron foundries.

Along the coast, the Aleppo pine forest of the Stornara Nature Reserve is clearly visible in dark green. It takes its name from the many starlings that migrate there during winter. The reserve was founded in 1977 and covers an area of approximately 1500 hectares.

Directly above the forest, many various patches of agricultural fields can be seen. Favoured by the Mediterranean climate, the food sector has been one of the strongest areas of the Apulian economy. Fruit, vegetables and cereals are grown in a range of crop types throughout the region, depending on the time of year. The blue patches visible are greenhouses.

Considered as the 2019 European Capital of Culture along with Plovdiv, in Bulgaria, Matera can be seen in the top left of the image, in the Basilicata region.

Matera hosts an important space hub. The Giuseppe Colombo Centre for Space Geodesy, founded by the Italian Space Agency, is located here. It sends regular laser beams to the moon, where they reach reflectors that were placed there during the original Apollo missions and the Lunokhod Soviet robotic missions. These lasers measure the distance from the Earth to the moon, expanding our knowledge of the moon’s internal structure.

Located next door, the Matera Space Centre is one of the ground stations for the reception and processing of data acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel satellites for ESA.

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, captured on 6 March 2019, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

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

Jezero crater and its surroundings on Mars display a rich array of minerals that have been altered by water in the planet’s past. These minerals are predominately clays and carbonate salts. Of the minerals identified in this particular region, carbonate is a salt, Fe/Mg phyllosilicates are iron- and magnesium-rich clays, and hydrated silica is a form of silicon dioxide that forms the gemstone opal on Earth. The close-up data were obtained from a global map of minerals produced by ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2020, is currently exploring Jezero crater and its surroundings.

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Credits: ESA/Mars Express (OMEGA and HRSC) and NASA/Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (CRISM and HiRISE)

This high-resolution image shows newly discovered frost at the top of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano not only on Mars but in the entire Solar System. The frost appears blue on the floor of the volcano’s caldera (summit crater) and around its northern rim. It is absent on the well-lit steep slopes seen on the left of this image.

This frost was recently discovered by ESA’s ExoMars and Mars Express missions. The researchers spotted frost on not only Olympus Mons but on the other Tharsis volcanoes of Arsia Mons, Ascraeus Mons and Ceraunius Tholus. This is the first time that water frost has been found near Mars’s equator, a part of the planet where it was thought improbable for frost to exist.

The landscape on the right side of the image is filled with wrinkle ridges that lie inside the caldera, while the rippled structures on the centre-left are collapsed caldera rim terraces.

The image is false colour, meaning that the colours shown here are not those that would be seen by the human eye. This is because the CaSSIS instrument onboard ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is sensitive to near-infrared light (which is invisible to our eyes), and the image has stretched contrast to better show the details of the terrain. In this false-colour image the water ice frost appears blue. False-colour images are really useful for scientists, revealing more information than can be seen with the human eye. Read more on how CaSSIS constructs its blue-hued images, and how this allows us to explore the Red Planet.

The image resolution is 4.5 m/pixel, and the Local Solar Time is 7:11 AM.

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[Image description: This rectangular slice of Mars shows the terrain atop Mars’s volcano Olympus Mons. Rippled, uneven, stepped terrain can be seen, with different illuminations. The right-hand side of the image is blue-toned, representing the newly discovered water ice frost.]

Credits: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

"The north pole of Saturn sits at the center of its own domain. Around it swirl the clouds, driven by the fast winds of Saturn. Beyond that orbits Saturn's retinue of moons and the countless small particles that form the ring. Although the poles of Saturn are at the center of all of this motion, not everything travels around them in circles. Some of the jet-stream patterns, such as the hexagon-shaped pattern seen here, have wavy, uneven shapes" - Cassini Imaging Team

This false color image was created from NASA Cassini's raw images in infrared, green & blue filters, taken on Jan. 14, 2017.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Mindaugas Macijauskas

The Copernicus Sentinel-1B satellite takes us over central Italy. From the Apennine Mountains in the top right, to the fertile, former lakebed of the Avezzano plain in the centre right, this bright, false-colour image captures the diversity and beauty of the region’s landscapes.

Dual-polarisation radar technology has been used, resulting in vibrant shades of green for most of the land surface shown. Built up areas, such as Italy’s capital city of Rome, appear in shades of red and pink. Meanwhile, the structure of the agricultural fields of Altopiano in the Abruzzo region is clearly reflected in a combination of blue and violet hues.

This radar technology allows us to see the crater lake structures of the volcanic lakes of Nemi and Albano in the bottom left clearly. The same is true for Lago di Vico with the volcano and crater clearly visible in the top left of the image.

The central region of Italy is an important one for the space industry. For example, ESA’s centre for Earth observation, which celebrates its 50-year anniversary this week, is located in this area.

This region is also prone to earthquakes. In August 2016, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck the small towns of Amatrice, Accumoli and Pescara del Tronto. It was followed by two aftershocks. A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in Norcia followed in October the same year. The tremor of this last earthquake was felt across the country. It was the most powerful one to hit Italy since 1980.

Sentinel-1’s radar technology can provide images with a resolution of 10 m and within hours of acquisition to aid emergency response. This imagery can support impact assessments for many types of hazard including floods and earthquakes.

This image, which was captured on 6 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

Integrated in October last year at ArianeGroup in Bremen, Germany, this ‘hot-firing model’ of the complete Ariane 6 upper stage is fully operational having undergone extensive functional tests. Its new reignitable Vinci engine is connected to two liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks and is equipped with all lines, valves and electronic and hydraulic instrumentation and control systems.

Credits: ArianeGroup/ Frank T. Koch / Hill Media GmbH

This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 941, which lies about 55 million light-years from Earth. The data used for this image were collected by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The beautiful NGC 941 is undoubtedly the main attraction in this image; however, this hazy-looking galaxy was not the motivation for the data being collected. That distinction belongs to an astronomical event that took place in the galaxy years before: the supernova SN 2005ad. The location of this faded supernova was observed as part of a study of multiple hydrogen-rich supernovae, also known as type II supernovae, in order to better understand the environments in which certain types of supernovae take place. Whilst the study was conducted by professional astronomers, SN 2005ad itself owes its discovery to a distinguished amateur astronomer named Kōichi Itagaki, who has discovered over 170 supernovae.

This might raise the question of how an amateur astronomer could spot something like a supernova event before professional astronomers — who have access to telescopes such as Hubble. The answer is in part that the detection of supernovae is a mixture of skill, facilities and luck. Most astronomical events happen over time spans that dwarf human lifetimes, but supernova explosions are extraordinarily fast, appearing very suddenly and then brightening and dimming over a period of days or weeks. Another aspect is that professional astronomers often do not spend that much time actually observing. There is a great deal of competition for time on telescopes such as Hubble, and then data from a few hours of observations might take weeks, months, or sometimes even years to process and analyse to their full potential. Amateur astronomers can spend much more time actually observing the skies, and sometimes have extremely impressive systems of telescopes, computers and software that they can put to use.

So many supernovae are spotted by skilful amateurs such as Itagaki that there is actually an online system set up for reporting them (the Transient Name Server). This is a big help to professional astronomers, because with supernova events time is truly of the essence. After the discovery of SN 2005ab was reported, professional astronomers were able to follow up with spectroscopic studies and confirm it as a type II supernova, which eventually led to its location being included in this study with Hubble. Such a study wouldn’t be possible without a rich library of previous supernovae, built with the keen eyes of amateur astronomers.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, seen face-on from Earth. The spiral arms of the galaxy are bright but not well defined, merging into a swirling disc with a faint halo of dimmer gas around it. The core glows brightly in a lighter colour and has a bit of faint dust crossing it. Two redder, visually smaller galaxies and a bright star are prominent around the galaxy, with more tiny objects in the background.]

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

The largest object ever built in space celebrates 23 years of continuous human presence today. ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet took this picture while flying around the International Space Station, looking back at the amazing piece of spacecraft engineering he called home for six months during his Alpha mission.

“It was absolutely incredible to view the Space Station from afar with the cosmos as backdrop,” said Thomas of his fly around the Space Station during the trip back to Earth on the Crew Dragon capsule.

Expedition 1 was the first crew to inhabit the orbital outpost for a long stay of over four months. NASA astronaut William M. Shepherd and Russia’s Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev opened the hatch on 2 November 2000, beginning an uninterrupted chain of missions.

Since then, there have always been humans in space. Anyone 23 years old or younger has lived with a crewed station travelling 400 km above their heads at 28 000 km per hour, orbiting Earth approximately 16 times every day.

The first tasks of the Expedition 1 crew included turning on the lights and the hot water dispenser, as well as activating the toilet and looking for connector cables. The Space Station was much smaller back then – just three habitable modules compared to the 16 it boasts today. Today’s outpost has the size of a football field with dozens of science experiments running at any given time.

Over these 23 years, 269 astronauts and 70 expeditions from more than 20 countries have visited the Space Station. A collaboration between five space agencies, the International Space Station has become a symbol of peaceful cooperation across borders. It has brought humankind together to work in space and keeps pursuing scientific knowledge and exploration.

Both the space landscape and the International Space Station have evolved in the last two decades. Over the past few years, a new economy is developing in low-Earth orbit, where private companies are joining the adventure supporting research, cargo deliveries and human trips into space.

Credits: ESA/NASA–T. Pesquet

Henderson Island lies in the South Pacific, about halfway between New Zealand and Chile. As one of the best examples of a coral atoll, Henderson Island is a UN World Heritage site and one of the world’s biggest marine reserves. However, while this remote, uninhabited, tiny landmass may look idyllic and untouched by humans, it’s one of the most plastic-polluted places on Earth.

It is estimated that around 10 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the oceans every year. Carried by currents, it can form rubbish patches or eventually be washed up on shores far from where it entered the ocean. On Henderson, for example, items from as far afield as Russia, USA, Europe and South America have been found.

Ocean plastic has serious consequences for wildlife and the environment. Marine animals not only get caught up in this plastic but also ingest it. Even when it has been broken down into microfragments by weathering and waves, it still endangers animals and also enters the food chain, with unknown long-term consequences for animal life and our own health.

Celebrated every 22 April since 1970, Earth Day demonstrates support for environmental protection. This year, Earth Day is dedicated to providing information and inspiration needed to change our attitude towards plastic.

This image, which was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite on 22 March 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

Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449. This galaxy, also known as Caldwell 21, resides roughly 12.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is part of the M94 galaxy group, which lies close to the Local Group that hosts our Milky Way.

NGC 4449 has been forming stars for several billion years, but it is currently experiencing a period of star formation at a much higher rate than in the past. Such unusually explosive and intense star formation activity is called a starburst and for that reason NGC 4449 is known as a starburst galaxy. In fact, at the current rate of star formation, the gas supply that feeds the production of stars would only last for another billion years or so. Starbursts usually occur in the central regions of galaxies, but NGC 4449 displays more widespread star formation activity, and the very youngest stars are observed both in the nucleus and in streams surrounding the galaxy. It's likely that the current widespread starburst was triggered by interaction or merging with a smaller companion; indeed, astronomers think NGC 4449's star formation has been influenced by interactions with several of its neighbours.

NGC 4449 resembles primordial star-forming galaxies which grew by merging with and accreting smaller stellar systems. Since NGC 4449 is close enough to be observed in great detail, it is the ideal laboratory for astronomers to study what may have occurred during galaxy formation and evolution in the early Universe.

This new image makes use of data from two of Webb’s instruments: MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera). Observations in the infrared reveal the galaxy’s creeping tendrils of gas, dust and stars. The bright blue spots reveal countless individual stars, while the bright yellow regions that weave throughout the galaxy indicate concentrations of active stellar nurseries, where new stars are forming. The orange-red areas indicate the distribution of a type of carbon-based compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAHs) — the MIRI F770W filter is particularly suited to imaging these important molecules. The bright red spots correspond to regions rich in hydrogen that have been ionised by the radiation from the newly formed stars. The diffuse gradient of blue light around the central region shows the distribution of older stars. The compact light-blue regions within the red ionised gas, mostly concentrated in the galaxy’s outer region, show the distribution of young star clusters.

NGC 4449 was observed by Webb as part of a series of observations collectively titled Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers, or FEAST (PI: A. Adamo). Two other targets of the FEAST programme, M51, and M83, were the subjects of previous ESA/Webb Picture of the Month images in 2023.

[Image Description: A close view of the central area of a dwarf galaxy. A huge number of stars fill the whole galaxy as tiny glowing points. They are brightest around the galaxy’s shining core. Thick clouds of gas and dust billow out across the scene, curling like moving flames. They glow in warm colours following their location: orange around the galaxy’s core, and around glowing star clusters in the bottom-left, and dark red elsewhere.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team

These 366 images of the Sun were made by ESA’s Proba-2 satellite in 2020.

This satellite is continuously monitoring the changing activity of the Sun. One image was selected to represent each day of the year (including leap day 29 February in 2020). Click here for an animated version.

The images were taken by the satellite’s SWAP camera, which works at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to capture the Sun’s hot turbulent atmosphere (the corona) at temperatures of about a million degrees Celsius.

In two images – 21 June and 14 December – a partial solar eclipse is visible from Proba-2’s point-of-view.

2020 marked the start of a new solar activity cycle – cycle 25 – which lasts about 11 years on average. At the beginning of the year the Sun still showed low levels of activity, but at the end of the year it already showed signs of waking up.

In the images of November and December, multiple active regions are visible. These regions represent areas of intense magnetic activity that can produce some of the most dramatic space weather events, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. One of these powerful ejections was captured by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on 29 November.

2020 was an important year for solar research, with the launch of ESA's Solar Orbiter mission on 10 February. One of the key questions for ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission is to understand what drives the 11-year solar cycle.

With its suite of 10 state-of-the-art instruments, Solar Orbiter will perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high-latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection. The mission will provide unprecedented insight into how our parent star works and how we can better predict periods of stormy space weather.

Proba-2 has already supported Solar Orbiter during the mission’s preparation, as technology heritage has passed from the satellite’s SWAP imager to the Solar Orbiter Extreme Ultraviolet Imager. Proba-2 will continue observing the Sun and supporting scientific campaigns on Solar Orbiter and other missions in the coming years.

Credits: ESA/Royal Observatory of Belgium

The truly massive galaxy cluster 2MASX J05101744-4519179 basks in the centre of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This distant galaxy cluster is a cosmic leviathan that is highly luminous at X-ray wavelengths. Observing galaxy clusters like 2MASX J05101744-4519179 can advance our understanding of the evolution and interactions of dark and luminous matter in galaxy clusters, and also reveals powerful gravitational ‘telescopes’ that magnify distant objects through gravitational lensing. Knowing the location of these lenses can enable future observations with both Hubble and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The cluster 2MASX J05101744-4519179 is located in the constellation Pictor, around 2.6 billion light-years from Earth.

Two of Hubble’s instruments joined forces to create this image: Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Both are third-generation instruments that offer superb image quality and high sensitivity to astronomers studying a range of scientific questions. Both instruments provide images of wide areas of the night sky, but view slightly different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. WFC3 spans the spectrum from the ultraviolet through to visible light and the near-infrared. In contrast to the wide panchromatic coverage of WFC3, ACS was optimised for visible-light observations.

Getting the best from Hubble requires instruments to use built-in corrective optics to account for the effects of the primary mirror's aberration. During the construction of Hubble, a faulty instrument caused the primary mirror to be very precisely ground to slightly the wrong shape by only 0.0002 mm. A corrective instrument called COSTAR was developed to account for this tiny discrepancy, and later instruments like WFC3 and ACS were built with their own corrective optics.

[Image Description: A cluster of elliptical galaxies, visible as a crowd of oval shapes, each glowing around a bright core. The elliptical galaxy that appears largest by far is in the centre, with the other largest galaxies close to it. They are surrounded by a variety of more distant stars and galaxies, in many shapes and sizes but all much smaller, on a dark background.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Ebeling; CC BY 4.0

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

This image shows LEDA 42160, a galaxy about 52 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The dwarf galaxy is one of many forcing its way through the comparatively dense gas in the Virgo cluster, a massive cluster of galaxies. The pressure exerted by this intergalactic gas, known as ram pressure, has dramatic effects on star formation in LEDA 42160, which are presently being studied using the Hubble Space Telescope.

LEDA 42160 falls into the category of ‘Magellanic spiral galaxy’, or type Sm for short, under the de Vaucouleurs galaxy classification system. Magellanic spiral galaxies can be further sub-categorised as barred (SBm), unbarred (SAm) and weakly barred (SABm), where a ‘bar’ is an elongated bar-shape at a galaxy’s core. Generally speaking, Magellanic spiral galaxies are dwarf galaxies with only one single spiral arm. They are named after their prototype, the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is an SBm galaxy. Magellanic spiral galaxies are an interesting example of how galaxy categorisation is actually more nuanced than simply ‘spiral’, ‘elliptical’ or ‘irregular’.

[Image Description: A distorted dwarf galaxy, obscured by dust and by bright outbursts caused by star formation, floats roughly in the centre. A few distant galaxies are visible in the background around it, many as little spirals, and also including a prominent elliptical galaxy. A bright star hangs above the galaxy in the foreground, marked by cross-shaped diffraction spikes.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Sun; CC BY 4.0

This is a version of the ESA logo like no other: seen through a microscope it measures just over 17 thousandths of a millimetre across, about half the diameter of the average human skin cell.

The logo was carved out of a piece of nickel-based space-grade alloy Inconel using Xenon atoms shot from a plasma ion beam.

While the logo measures 17.43 micrometres (thousandths of a millimetre) in length it is just 700 nanometres (millionths of a millimetre) deep. Click here for an angled view.

“The logo was blasted out of a polished Inconel surface,” explains ESA Young Graduate Trainee Felix Schmidt, serving in ESA’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory.

“We created it as practice, in preparation for a project on modelling micromechanical testing. Achieving accurate cuts on a given material is tricky, with many parameters needing to be optimised to get the correct size and depth of the geometry, but this logo shows the kind of accuracy we can reach.”

To get an idea of its actual size, see the logo beside a human hair in this microscopic view – created using stacks of visible light microscope images to achieve the depth of field to get both objects in focus at once.

Felix adds: “Next the plan is to cut out a pillar of metal, then crush it using a nano-indenter, having meanwhile created a high-fidelity ‘digital twin’ of the pillar to accurately model how it behaves as force is exerted on it.”

ESA is already active at creating ‘digital twins’ of space systems at higher scales, explains engineer Michael Mallon, working on digital spacecraft design and verification, “but our aim here is to demonstrate a predictive capability right down to the meso-scale, the next level up from atoms.”

Credits: ESA-F. Schmidt

A standard 3D printer cannot produce anything bigger than the size limits of the printer itself. But this new IMPERIAL 3D printer, designed for use in space by a Europe-wide industrial consortium, can print high performance polymer parts of unlimited size along one dimension.

What is also known as ‘Additive manufacturing’ is an essential enabling technology for deep space crewed missions. Built to operate in weightlessness – meaning it can work upside down on Earth – this printer has been specially designed with ‘out-of-Earth’ manufacturing in mind, enabling future space explorers to produce structures, tools and spare parts as needed.

The project was undertaken for ESA by a consortium led by OHB in Germany, with Azimut Space in Germany, Athlone Institute of Technology in the Republic of Ireland and BEEVERYCREATIVE in Portugal developing the 3D printer. Now this ground-based prototype is complete, the next step would be to test it in orbit aboard the International Space Station.

Watch a video showing the 3D printer here.

Credits: BEEVERYCREATIVE

If you cannot take the heat, stay out of planetary exploration.

Rollin’ Justin, the humanoid robot developed by the German Aerospace Center, DLR proved to be able to handle it just fine.

Last week ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst conducted the SUPVIS-Justin experiment, part of ESA’s METERON project that aims to demonstrate the technology needed to allow astronauts orbiting other planets to direct robots on the surface.

Using a basic tablet with a dedicated app, Alexander interacted with Justin by sending a series of commands from the International Space Station. Justin, located at the DLR site in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, performed maintenance and assembly tasks for two hours in his simulated Mars environment.

The demonstration honed in on Justin’s semi-autonomous ability to assess his situation and proceed from there. Alexander in turn had to supervise Justin based on the robot’s feedback. This feature was key in the second half of the experiment, which was designed to test how responsive the telerobotic systems are in unexpected situations. Tasked with retrieving an antenna from the lander and mounting it on a special payload unit, Justin encountered smoke coming from inside the unit. Alexander reacted by asking Justin to investigate further.

The problem turned out to be a malfunctioning computation unit, imaged here, which Alexander commanded Justin to remove and place in the lander.

Together, the duo successfully brought the situation under control, thanks to Justin’s situational awareness and the intuitive interface of the app.

Advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence means we can better use robots to fulfil tasks normally left to humans, especially in more dangerous situations like inhospitable planetary surfaces. With the help of robots, humans can more safely and efficiently build habitats and scout the surface of other planets in the future.

The experiment was first performed by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli during his mission in 2017, along with NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik and Jack Fischer. It quickly became a hit among the Space Station’s crew members. NASA astronaut Scott Tingle performed the second experiment last March. European researchers will work with the feedback from astronauts to improve the interface.

Watch a replay of the experiment here. Follow Alexander for more exciting science during his Horizons mission.

As for Rollin’ Justin, he will be back to run more METERON experiments in the future.

Credits: Roger Riedel/DLR