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

Reaching a major milestone, engineers have connected successfully the two halves of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope for the first time at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California. Once it reaches space, Webb will explore the cosmos using infrared light, from planets and moons within our Solar System to the most ancient and distant galaxies.

To combine both halves of Webb, engineers carefully lifted the telescope (which includes the mirrors and science instruments) above the already-combined sunshield and spacecraft using a crane. Team members slowly guided the telescope into place, ensuring that all primary points of contact were perfectly aligned and seated properly. The observatory has been mechanically connected; next steps will be to electrically connect the halves, and then test the electrical connections.

Later, engineers will fully deploy the intricate five-layer sunshield, which is designed to keep Webb's mirrors and scientific instruments cold by blocking infrared light from Earth, the Moon and Sun. The ability of the sunshield to deploy to its correct shape is critical to mission success.

Webb is scheduled for launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in March 2021.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. As part of its contribution to the project, ESA provides the NIRSpec instrument, the Optical Bench Assembly of the MIRI instrument, the Ariane 5 launcher, and staff to support mission operations at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, USA.

Read more about the assembly of the two halves

Credits: NASA/Chris Gunn

This week’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week shows a tiny patch of sky in the constellation Hydra. The stars and galaxies depicted here span a mind-bending range of distances. Nearest to us in this image are stars within our own Milky Way galaxy, which are marked by diffraction spikes. The bright star that sits just at the edge of the prominent bluish galaxy is only 3230 light-years away, as measured by ESA's Gaia space observatory.

Behind this star is a galaxy named LEDA 803211. At 622 million light-years distant, this galaxy is close enough that its bright galactic nucleus is clearly visible, as are numerous star clusters scattered around its patchy disc. Many of the more distant galaxies in this frame appear star-like, with no discernible structure, but without the diffraction spikes of a star in our galaxy.

Of all the galaxies in this frame, one pair stands out in particular: a smooth golden galaxy encircled by a nearly complete ring in the upper-right corner of the image. This curious configuration is the result of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant object is warped and magnified by the gravity of a massive foreground object, like a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. Einstein predicted the curving of spacetime by matter in his general theory of relativity, and galaxies seemingly stretched into rings like the one in this image are called Einstein rings.

The lensed galaxy, whose image we see as the ring, lies incredibly far away from Earth: we are seeing it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The galaxy acting as the gravitational lens itself is likely much closer. A nearly perfect alignment of the two galaxies is necessary to give us this rare kind of glimpse into galactic life in the early days of the Universe.

[Image Description: Many mostly small, bright objects scattered over a dark background in space. In the top half on the right is an elliptical galaxy, a round light larger than the others, with a slightly warped ring of light around it. In the bottom half there is a barred spiral galaxy, big enough that we can see its bluish arms and its core in detail. Other objects include distant galaxies and nearby stars.]

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

Astronomers estimate 50 000 sources of near-infrared light are represented in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Their light has travelled through various distances to reach the telescope’s detectors, representing the vastness of space in a single image. A foreground star in our own galaxy, to the right of the image centre, displays Webb’s distinctive diffraction spikes. Bright white sources surrounded by a hazy glow are the galaxies of Pandora’s Cluster, a conglomeration of already-massive clusters of galaxies coming together to form a mega cluster. The concentration of mass is so great that the fabric of spacetime is warped by gravity, creating a natural, super-magnifying glass called a 'gravitational lens' that astronomers can use to see very distant sources of light beyond the cluster that would otherwise be undetectable, even to Webb.

These lensed sources appear red in the image, and often as elongated arcs distorted by the gravitational lens. Many of these are galaxies from the early Universe, with their contents magnified and stretched out for astronomers to study.

[Image Description: A crowded galaxy field on a black background, with one large star dominating the image just right of center. Three areas are concentrated with larger white hazy blobs on the left, lower right, and upper right above the single star. Scattered between these areas are many smaller sources of light; some also have a hazy white glow, while many other are red or orange.]

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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, I. Labbe (Swinburne University of Technology), R. Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh), A. Pagan (STScI); CC BY 4.0

The Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument on the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft got its first good look at the Sun's south pole in March 2025.

The image shows an intensity map, revealing the locations of clumps of carbon ions.

The data shown here were recorded on 22–23 March 2025, when Solar Orbiter was facing the Sun from an angle of 17° below the solar equator. The images are each composed of three observations that were subsequently stitched together.

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. The Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument is a European-led facility instrument, led by the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS) in Paris, France.  

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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.

Credits: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/SPICE Team, M. Janvier (ESA) & J. Plowman (SwRI); CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti trains with the European Robotic Arm (ERA) simulator at the 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

A team of astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to survey the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82), which is located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. M82 hosts a frenzy of star formation, sprouting new stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way galaxy. Webb’s infrared capabilities enabled scientists to peer through curtains of dust and gas that have historically obscured the star formation process.

This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows the centre of M82 with an unprecedented level of detail. With Webb’s resolution, astronomers can distinguish small, bright compact sources that are either individual stars or star clusters. Obtaining an accurate count of the stars and clusters that compose M82’s centre can help astronomers understand the different phases of star formation and the timelines for each stage.

In this image, light at 2.12 microns is coloured red, 1.64 microns is green, and 1.40 microns is blue (filters F212N, 164N, and F140M, respectively).

[Image description: A section of M82 as imaged by Webb. An edge-on spiral starburst galaxy with a bright white, glowing core set against the black background of space. Dark brown tendrils of dust are scattered heavily toward the galaxy’s centre. Many white points in various sizes — stars or star clusters — are scattered throughout the image, but are most heavily concentrated toward the centre.]

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

Those in distress activate emergency beacons linked to the international Cospas Sarsat system, which picks up SOS messages via satellite and relays them to search and rescue authorities. The flashlight-sized emergency beacon transmits at 406 Mhz. This signal is picked up by participating satellites – Galileo being the single biggest contributor. Uniquely, Galileo satellites inform those in distress that their signal has been received, via their ‘Return Link Service’. The signals are relayed to regional ‘Local User Terminals’ around the globe. Four such stations were constructed as part of the Galileo system – three at the corners of Europe and a fourth in the Indian Ocean. These stations pass on the information to the nearest search and rescue site to send help. The aim is to localise an SOS call to within 2 km in 10 minutes or less. Galileo has already contributed to the saving of thousands of lives.

Credits: ESA-F. Zonno

Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a supernova remnant located about 11 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. It spans approximately 10 light-years. This image, released in April 2023, uses data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to reveal Cas A in a new light.

On the remnant’s exterior, particularly at the top and left, lie curtains of material ,appearing orange and red, that are due to emission from warm dust. This marks where ejected material from the exploded star is ramming into surrounding circumstellar material.

Interior to this outer shell lie mottled filaments of bright pink studded with clumps and knots. This is material from the star itself, and likely shines due to a mix of various heavy elements and dust emission. The stellar material can also be seen as fainter wisps near the cavity’s interior.

A loop represented in green extends across the right side of the central cavity. Its shape and complexity are unexpected and challenging for scientists to understand.

[Image description: A roughly square image is rotated clockwise about 45 degrees. Within the image is a roughly circular nebula with a complex structure. On the circle’s exterior lie curtains of material glowing orange. Interior to this outer shell lies a ring of mottled filaments of bright pink studded with clumps and knots. At centre right, a greenish loop extends from the right side of the ring into the central cavity. Translucent wisps of blue, green, and red appear throughout the image.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (UGent), J. DePasquale (STScI)

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to the direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

The scale bar is labelled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. (It takes 75 000 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometres. The field of view shown in this image is approximately 450 000 light-years across.

This image shows invisible near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colours. The colour key shows which NIRCam and MIRI filters were used when collecting the light. The colour of each filter name is the visible light colour used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.

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[Image description: Alt Text: A pair of interacting galaxies. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The north arrow points in the 10 o’clock direction. The east arrow points toward 6 o’clock. At the lower right is a scale bar labelled in light-years. The length of the scale bar is one-sixth the total width of the image. Below the image is a colour key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light colour is assigned to each filter. From left to right, the NIRCam filters are: F090W is blue; F150W is blue; F200W is green; F277W is green; F356W is red; and F444W is red. From left to right, the MIRI filters are: F770W is yellow; F1000W is orange; and F1500W is red.]

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

The Vega-C Interstage 1/2 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 22 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.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

Roll-Out rom VIFF to Pad The US Atlas V 411 rocket with ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft inside rolled out ahead of launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday 8 February 2020.

Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led space mission with strong NASA participation to study the Sun, its outer atmosphere and what drives the dynamic outflow of solar wind that affects Earth. The spacecraft will observe the Sun's atmosphere up close with high spatial resolution telescopes and compare these observations with measurements taken in the environment directly surrounding the spacecraft – together creating a detailed picture of how the Sun affects the space environment around Earth and further out in the Solar System.

Thanks to its unique — and difficult to achieve — orbit, Solar Orbiter will also provide the first-ever pictures of the Sun's polar regions, offering key insights into the poorly-understood magnetic environment there, which helps drive the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and its periodic outpouring of solar storms. Solar Orbiter relies on a combination of 10 instruments, built throughout Europe and in the US. The instruments, combining both remote-sensing observations and in situ measurements, were carefully chosen and designed so as to support and amplify each other’s observations, together providing the single, most comprehensive and integrated view of the Sun and its environment ever achieved.

More about Solar Orbiter

Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja

This is a montage of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly 10 years, from 2014 to 2024. This long baseline allows astronomers to track seasonal changes in each planet's turbulent atmosphere, with the sharpness of the NASA planetary flyby probes of the 1980s. These images were taken under a program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy).

From upper-left toward center, the hazy white polar cap on the three teal-colored Uranus images appears more face-on as the planet approaches northern summer.

From center-right to far-center right, three images of the blue planet Neptune show the coming and going of clouds as the Sun's radiation level changes. Several of Neptune's mysterious dark spots have come and gone sequentially over OPAL's decade of observations.

Seven views of yellow-brown Saturn stretch across the center of the mosaic in a triangle—one for each year of OPAL observations—showing the tilt of the angle of the ring plane relative to the view from Earth. Approximately every 15 years the relatively paper-thin rings (about one mile thick) can be seen edge-on. In 2018 they were near their maximum tilt toward Earth. Colorful changes in Saturn's bands of clouds can be followed as the weather changes.

At bottom center, three images of Jupiter spanning nearly a decade, form a triangle. There are notable changes in Jupiter's banded cloud structure of zones and belts. OPAL measured shrinking of the legendary Great Red Spot, while its rotation period speeds up.

[Image description: A montage of Hubble Space Telescope images of our solar system’s four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, taken under the OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) program over a duration of 10 years, from 2014 to 2024.]

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

Space agencies of Europe, assemble!

Last week, ESA, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and French space agency CNES joined forces to run a special parabolic flight campaign entirely dedicated to life science experiments. Between 4 and 7 June, eight experiments were run in three different levels of partial gravity, another first for a parabolic flight campaign.

During our more common zero-gravity parabolic flights, research teams are subjected to 20-second bursts of weightlessness during which they run experiments ranging from life sciences, to technology demonstrations, to material physics. Results offer an indication of how various mechanisms work without gravity and are compared to results on the ground. But what happens at varying degrees of weightlessness?

To help fill in the graph, scientists were offered a unique opportunity to run experiments at one-quarter, one-half, and three-quarters gravity. The aim is to better understand biological dependence on gravity. Ultimately, if humans are to embark on long-term spaceflight and live on the Moon and Mars, we need to determine the levels of gravity in which humans can live and work.

One experiment investigated the effects of partial gravity on brain function. Previous studies have shown that short exposure to microgravity increased neurocognitive functions due to increased blood flow to the brain. However, longer-term spaceflight, in which increased blood flow to the brain is more permanent, showed negative effects on cognition. In this campaign, studying the phenomenon in partial gravity is helping scientists better understand where we draw the line for optimal performance.

Another team subjected baby plant roots to doses of partial gravity and monitored root growth using lasers to investigate how the roots manage to stay “grounded” in the absence of gravity. We know plants adapt to weightlessness rather quickly, but researchers still need a clearer picture of what’s happening on a cellular level. Extra-terrestrial farming is vital to human survival off-planet, and adapting agriculture to altered gravity is an important step to making this possible. For a full list of experiments, see here.

Parabolic flights are one of a few ways to recreate microgravity conditions on Earth, but how is this achieved? The A310 Zero-G aircraft, operated by Novespace in Bordeaux, France, repeatedly performs a special manoeuvre. After pulling up sharply to 50 degrees, the pilots reduce the thrust and pitch of the airplane to cancel air-drag and lift. This places the plane on a parabolic flight path, exactly as if it has been thrown upwards and released. It then essentially falls over the top of the parabola, creating 20 seconds of 0g. When it reaches 50 degrees nose-down, the plane then pulls out of the descent to normal flight.

To achieve partial gravity, the angle at which the plane pulls up and pulls out is shallower, and the pilots carefully cancel out only part of the lift. This creates about 25 seconds of one-quarter gravity, or 35 seconds of half-gravity, or 50 seconds of three-quarters gravity. The manoeuvre is performed every three minutes for a total of 31 times per flight. Watch a tour of the Zero-G aircraft here.

In addition to this unique collaboration between ESA, DLR, and CNES, the partial gravity parabolic flight campaign also featured a special guest experiment by NASA and pilot-turned-ESA-astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

"It was a real privilege to work on this unique campaign, not only because of the constructive collaboration with my colleagues from DLR and CNES, but also to provide such an interesting suite of experiments with rare and much-needed data,” said Neil Melville, Coordinator of Parabolic flight and Drop Tower campaigns. He is pictured on the left, alongside Katrin Stang of DLR and Sébastien Rouquette of CNES)

“We are certainly looking forward to the results the science teams will publish once their analyses are completed, and hope to perform a similar campaign in the future."

ESA conducts 0g parabolic flight campaigns twice per year for microgravity research. Learn more here.

Credits: Novespace

Artist’s impression of the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover. This image shows a front view of the rover with the drill in a vertical position.

The primary goal of the mission is to determine if there has ever been life on Mars, and to better understand the history of water on the planet. The ExoMars rover, named Rosalind Franklin, includes a drill to access the sub-surface of Mars as well as a miniature life-search laboratory kept within an ultra-clean zone.

Credits: ESA/Mlabspace

Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is Messier 106, also known as NGC 4258. This is a nearby spiral galaxy that resides roughly 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, practically a neighbour by cosmic standards. Messier 106 is one of the brightest and nearest spiral galaxies to our own and two supernovae have been observed in this galaxy in 1981 and 2014.

At its heart, as in most spiral galaxies, is a supermassive black hole, but this one is particularly active. Unlike the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which pulls in wisps of gas only occasionally, Messier 106’s black hole is actively gobbling up material. As the gas spirals towards the black hole, it heats up and emits powerful radiation.

This image was captured with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam). This observation was taken as part of a dedicated programme to study the galaxy’s active galactic nucleus, the galaxy’s bright central region that is dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas as it falls into the black hole. The blue regions in this image reflect stellar distribution throughout the central region of the galaxy. The orange regions indicate warmer dust and the stronger red hues represent colder dust. The teal, green and yellow tones near the centre of the image depict varying gas distributions throughout the region.

The galaxy has a remarkable feature – it is known to have two ‘anomalous’ extra arms visible in radio and X-ray wavelengths, rather than in the visible. Unlike the normal arms, these are composed of hot gas instead of stars. Astronomers believe these extra arms result from the black hole’s activity, a feedback effect seen in other galaxies as well. They are likely caused by outflowing material produced by the violent churning of gas around the black hole, creating a phenomenon analogous to a wave crashing up out of the ocean when it hits a rock near the shore.

Despite carrying his name, Messier 106 was neither discovered nor catalogued by the renowned 18th century astronomer Charles Messier. Discovered by his assistant, Pierre Méchain, the galaxy was never added to the catalogue in his lifetime. Along with six other objects discovered but not logged by the pair, Messier 106 was posthumously added to the Messier catalogue in the 20th century.

[Image Description: The central region of a spiral galaxy. Its core is a small bright point radiating bright, bluish-white light over the scene. The white light is diffuse and many point-like stars in the galaxy (and even background galaxies) can be seen through it. The galaxy’s arms can be seen as broad, swirling streaks of glowing gas and dust, coloured red and orange. Two additional arms are revealed in green.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Glenn; CC BY 4.0

This view offers a perspective of Arcadia Planitia as if viewing the scene from above, and was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express.

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[Image description: A high-resolution, colour-enhanced satellite view of a Martian landscape. It features a boundary between two different surface regions. The upper left patch is more yellow, with a grey boundary diving it from a larger red patch at the bottom right. The surface appears barren, dry, rough and rocky. The different colours suggest elevation changes or different types of material.]

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

On 21 November, the Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite lifted off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, US. This is the view inside ESA mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, during launch.

The Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite is the first of two identical satellites to provide critical measurements of sea-level change. Since sea-level rise is a key indicator of climate change, accurately monitoring the changing height of the sea surface over decades is essential for climate science, for policy-making and, ultimately, for protecting the lives of those in low-lying regions at risk. Once in orbit and commissioned, this new mission will take the role of radar altimetry reference mission, continuing the long-term record of measurements of sea-surface height started in 1992 by the French–US Topex Poseidon and then the Jason series of satellite missions.

The Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission is a true example of international cooperation. While Sentinel-6 is one of the European Union’s family of Copernicus missions, its implementation is the result of the unique collaboration between ESA, NASA, Eumetsat and NOAA, with contribution from the French space agency CNES.

Read more about the Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission.

Credits: ESA/J Mai

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.

A closer look reveals a casual ‘photobomber’ – Earth shows itself as a dark circle outlined by a light crescent at the top centre of the image, peeking out from behind the spacecraft structure.

The image was taken by Juice monitoring camera 2 (JMC2) at 23:15 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.

JMC2 was designed and positioned to monitor the multi-stage deployment of Juice’s 16 m-long Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna. RIME is an ice-penetrating radar that will be used to remotely probe the subsurface structure of the large moons of Jupiter.

The Juice monitoring cameras were not designed to make science observations 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.

JMC2 is located on the top* of the spacecraft. 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: "top" means +Z side of the spacecraft and the centre of the field of view of JMC2 lies roughly in the XY plane. The -Z side of the spacecraft is attached to the launcher, which rotates around the Z axis during the ascent phase.

Credits: ESA

This stunning new mosaic of images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope showcases the nearby star-forming cluster, NGC 1333. The nebula is in the Perseus molecular cloud, and located approximately 960 light-years away.

Webb’s superb sensitivity allows astronomers to investigate young objects with extremely low masses. Some of the faintest ‘stars’ in the picture are in fact newly born free-floating brown dwarfs with masses comparable to those of giant planets.

The same cluster was featured as the 33rd anniversary image of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in April of 2023. Hubble’s image just scratched the surface of this region, because clouds of dust obscure much of the star formation process. Observing with larger aperture and in the infrared part of the spectrum, Webb is capable of peering through the dusty veil to reveal newborn stars, brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects.

The centre of the image presents a deep peek into the heart of the NGC1333 cloud. Across the image we see large patches of orange, which represent gas glowing in the infrared. These so-called Herbig-Haro objects form when ionised material ejected from young stars collides with the surrounding cloud. They are hallmarks of a very active site of star formation.

Many of the young stars in this image are surrounded by disks of gas and dust, which may eventually produce planetary systems. On the right hand side in the image, we can glimpse the shadow of one of these disks oriented edge-on - two dark cones emanating on opposite sides, seen against a bright background.

Similar to the young stars in this mosaic, our own Sun and planets formed inside a dusty molecular cloud, 4.6 billion years ago. Our Sun didn’t form in isolation but as part of a cluster, which was perhaps even more massive than NGC 1333. The cluster in the mosaic, only 1-3 million years old, presents us with an opportunity to study stars like our Sun, as well as brown dwarfs and free-floating planets, in their nascent stages.

The images were captured as part of the Webb observation programme 1202 (PI: A. Scholz) to survey a large portion of NGC1333. These data constitute the first deep spectroscopic survey of the young cluster, and have identified brown dwarfs down to planetary masses using the observatory’s Near-InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS). The first results from this survey have been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

[Image Description: Several images of parts of a nebula in space have been aligned to form a single large image of the nebula. It depicts clouds of gas and dust in blue and orange colours as well as brightly shining stars in various sizes. Around the edge there are some black rectangles where there was no image of that region of space.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Scholz, K. Muzic, A. Langeveld, R. Jayawardhana; CC BY 4.0

Today at 10:15 CEST, ESA’s Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) began its journey to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States.

ACES carries the most accurate clocks ever flown in space – PHARAO and the Space Hydrogen Maser – designed to keep time so precisely that they would lose just one second every 300 million years. Developed by the French space agency CNES and Safran Timing Technologies in Switzerland, these European-built clocks will work with a sophisticated time transfer time using microwave and laser links to synchronise the best clocks all over Earth.

Later this week, the Station’s Canadian robotic arm will install ACES on the exterior of ESA’s Columbus module. From its vantage point 400 km above Earth, ACES will link its ultra-precise clocks with the best timekeepers on the ground, enabling groundbreaking tests of fundamental physics, including Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Over its 30-month mission, it will carry out extended measurement sessions to investigate the very nature of time and enhance global time synchronisation.

ACES is a fully European mission led by ESA, with Airbus as a prime contractor, and will be operated from control centres in France and Germany (CADMOS and Col-CC).

“The launch of ACES marks a major milestone for European science and international cooperation in space. With this mission, we are placing the most precise timepiece ever sent to orbit aboard the International Space Station — opening new frontiers in fundamental physics, time transfer, and global synchronization. ACES is a shining example of what Europe can achieve when we unite cutting-edge technology, scientific ambition, and strong partnerships”, says Daniel Neuenschwander, Director of Human & Robotic Exploration at ESA.

Would you like to find out more? Here’s seven things you probably didn’t know about ACES.

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

Another fluid experiment joins long running research on foam stability on the International Space Station. The Foam-Coarsening experiment, developed by Airbus for ESA, is scheduled to be activated this month in the Fluid Science Laboratory in the European Columbus module.

The foams come in self-contained cells, imaged above, and hold liquids that will be shaken (not stirred) and analysed with laser optics and high-resolution cameras. Researchers are keen to observe how foams behave in microgravity.

On Earth, the mixture of gas and liquid that makes up a foam quickly starts to change. Gravity pulls the liquid between the bubbles downwards, and the small bubbles shrink while the larger ones tend to grow at the expense of others. Due to drainage, coarsening (or enlarging) and rupture of the bubbles, a foam starts to collapse back to a liquid state.

But in space foams are more stable because there is no drainage in weightlessness. This allows scientists to study the slower phenomena of a bubble becoming bigger and bursting, which on Earth are masked by the drainage that destabilises the foam.

ESA astronaut Frank De Winne performed the Foam-Stability experiment in 2009 by shaking liquid solutions and recording what happened next. The samples ranged from pure water to protein-based fluids, like the ones used for chocolate foams, and antifoaming agents.

After just ten seconds, the fluids stabilised more quickly and produced more foam than on Earth. Scientists discovered that it was possible to create super-stable foams in zero gravity.

Building on this extensive foam research, Foam-Coarsening will investigate foam behaviour at different liquid stages, particularly as it transitions from a solid- to liquid-like state.

The results from this research will not just apply to the foam in your morning cappuccino. Foams are used in a wide range of areas from food production to cleaning and sealing products, cosmetics and personal hygiene products, and even construction.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir installed the experiment in the Fluid Science Laboratory on 6 March after removing the Multiscale boiling experiment known as Rubi.

Credits: Airbus–Arne Piontek

The Vega-C Interstage 1/2 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 22 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.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

Captured on 14 April 2018 by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite, this image shows western Pakistan and an important wetland area.

The image depicts the fragmented coast, part of the Indus River Delta. A river delta forms when sediment carried from the river enters a stagnant body of water, creating an alluvial fan, which in this case extends 150 km along the coastline. The Indus River, visible on the right, veers through the Sindh Province and is one of the longest rivers in the world, rising in Tibet and flowing around 3000 km before emptying into the Arabian Sea.

The Indus Delta consists of creeks, swamps, marshes and the seventh largest mangrove forest in the world.

However, owing to major irrigation works and dams built on the river, as well as low rainfall, the amount of silt discharged into the sea has reduced, affecting the mangrove and local community significantly. A huge proportion of the delta has been lost and the survival of the delta freshwater species, including the Indus river dolphin, are at risk.

Also responsible for pollution is the port city of Karachi, which is partially visible in the top left of the image.

To the top right, there are two important bodies of water on the edge of the stony desert, both of which are also wildlife sanctuaries. The artificial, square-shaped Haleji Lake, was expanded in World War II, for the use of additional water for the troops. The freshwater lake supports an abundance of aquatic vegetation, and is home to a number of species of birds.

To the far right, the freshwater Keenjhar Lake is a major source of drinking water for Karachi, as well as for Thatta, which is to the right of the yellow-beige patch of land.

Both lakes, as well as the River Indus Delta, are sites of wetland designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. – an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. The mission is mostly used to track changes in the way land is being used and to monitor the health of our vegetation. The vegetation in this false-colour image appears in red.

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

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

The James Webb Space Telescope arrived safely at Pariacabo harbour in French Guiana on 12 October 2021 ahead of its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport.

Few space science missions have been as eagerly anticipated as the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). As the next great space science observatory following Hubble, Webb is designed to resolve unanswered questions about the Universe and see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe. Webb will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space.

Webb arrived from California on board the MN Colibri which sailed the Panama Canal to French Guiana on a 16-day voyage. The shallow Kourou river was specially dredged to ensure a clear passage and the vessel followed high tide to safely reach port.

Though the telescope weighs only six tonnes, it is more than 10.5 m high and almost 4.5 m wide when folded. It was shipped in its folded position in a 30 m long container which, with auxiliary equipment, weighs more than 70 tonnes. This is such an exceptional mission that a heavy-load tractor unit was brought on board MN Colibri to carefully transport Webb to the Spaceport.

Webb was taken to a dedicated spacecraft preparation facility. Here it will be unpacked and examined to ensure that it is undamaged from its voyage and in good working order.

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).

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

The James Webb Space Telescope arrived safely at Pariacabo harbour in French Guiana on 12 October 2021 ahead of its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport.

Few space science missions have been as eagerly anticipated as the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). As the next great space science observatory following Hubble, Webb is designed to resolve unanswered questions about the Universe and see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe. Webb will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space.

Webb arrived from California on board the MN Colibri which sailed the Panama Canal to French Guiana on a 16-day voyage. The shallow Kourou river was specially dredged to ensure a clear passage and the vessel followed high tide to safely reach port.

Though the telescope weighs only six tonnes, it is more than 10.5 m high and almost 4.5 m wide when folded. It was shipped in its folded position in a 30 m long container which, with auxiliary equipment, weighs more than 70 tonnes. This is such an exceptional mission that a heavy-load tractor unit was brought on board MN Colibri to carefully transport Webb to the Spaceport.

Webb was taken to a dedicated spacecraft preparation facility. Here it will be unpacked and examined to ensure that it is undamaged from its voyage and in good working order.

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).

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

The glittering, glitzy contents of the globular cluster NGC 6652 sparkle in this star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The core of the cluster is suffused with the pale blue light of countless stars, and a handful of particularly bright foreground stars are adorned with criss-crossing diffraction spikes. NGC 6652 lies in our own Milky Way galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius, just under 30 000 light-years from Earth and only 6500 light-years from the Galactic centre.

Globular clusters are stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters containing anywhere between tens of thousands and millions of stars. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars in globular clusters is what gives these star-studded objects their regular, spherical shape.

This image combines data from two of Hubble’s third-generation instruments; the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. As well as two instruments, this image draws on two different observing programmes from two different teams of astronomers. The first team set out to survey globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy in the hope of shedding light on topics ranging from the ages of these objects to the gravitational potential of the galaxy as a whole. The second team of astronomers used a trio of exquisitely sensitive filters in Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to disentangle the proportions of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in globular clusters such as NGC 6652.

[Image Description: A dense spherical cluster of stars. The stars merge into a bright core in the centre, and spread out to the edges gradually, giving way to an empty, dark background. Most of the stars are small points of light. A few stars with cross-shaped diffraction spikes appear larger, and stand out in front.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto

Galileo is Europe's largest satellite constellation and the world's most precise satellite navigation system, delivering metre-level positioning accuracy to around four billion users worldwide. It currently comprises 28 satellies along three orbital planes, to ensure a minimum of four satellites are visible from anywhere on Earth.

Credits: ESA-F. Zonno

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

A team using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a new type of astronomical object —a starless, gas-rich, dark-matter cloud that is considered a “relic” or remnant of early galaxy formation. Nicknamed “Cloud-9,” this is the first confirmed detection of such an object in the Universe

This image shows the blank field of the surrounding region of Cloud-9, which is 2,000 light-years from Earth. The image identifying its location can be found here.

[Image description: A dark field with stars and galaxies of various sizes speckled throughout the image. A particularly bright star is visible in the upper left region of the image.]

Credits: NASA, ESA. G. Anand (STScI), and A. Benitez-Llambay (Univ. of Milan-Bicocca); Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

This drone took to the sky over Finland to assess the suitability of one particular terrestrial technology for space: the radar systems found in many of today’s cars, responsible for automated cruise control and other safe driving functions.

ESA worked with the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland to test the suitability of automotive 77 GHz ‘frequency-modulated continuous-wave’ (FMCW) radar for entry, descent and landing on a planetary surface and for in-orbit rendezvous scenarios.

“These kinds of radars are commonplace in automotive vehicles today; the first one using the E-band millimetre-wave frequencies was introduced by Mercedes Benz before the turn of the century,” explains ESA microwave engineer Vaclav Valenta, overseeing the project.

“Most current space-based altimeters and ranging radar systems operate in the pulsed mode - emitting a pulse and then measuring the time it takes for reflected pulse to be received. By contrast, FMCW radars emit a continuous signal that is chirped, that is, swept rapidly in frequency – so the reflected signals can be continuously compared with the transmitted one without any interruption and processed according to build up a coherent picture of multiple targets. This brings several advantages over pulsed radar systems.”

The principle is not new, FMCW radar at lower frequencies acquired space heritage long time ago – already the Apollo landing and rendezvous radar relied on the FMCW principle, likewise, the Huygens probe that landed on the surface of the Saturn’s moon Titan back in 2005 employed FMCW radar. However, those radars operated at much lower frequencies than the FMCW system deployed in this project.

Vaclav adds: “It’s a very simple, straightforward implementation. That is why it is so interesting for us – we know it is cutting edge technology and we can at the same time benefit from economies of scale because millions of these radar chipsets are being produced, to a high level of reliability.”

The test campaign in Torbacka, Finland, assessed the performance of a drone-mounted lander radar using automotive radar chipsets. They were tasked with mimicking the planned descent of ESA’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover.

“We’re also interested in the use of FMCW radar for orbital rendezvous, but focused on entry, descent and landing because this is especially challenging due to the relatively low output power of these chips, at the level of few milliwatts,” comments Henrik Forstén of VTT.

“Therefore, if you want to have a first signal acquisition at an altitude of 6 km – which was the requirement from ExoMars – then we had to boost the signal gain, which is why we added horn antennas to the drone’s radar payload. For practical reasons drone tests were carried out at up to 500 m, though the functionality was verified up to 6 km overall.”

Vaclav explains: “In the end we demonstrated we can achieve the necessary range, velocity, and measurement rates for a radar that is extremely cost-effective, compact and low power. We would like to perform de-risking activities, for instance to confirm the various chipsets can endure space radiation, then the next step would really be to fly a demonstrator mission in space.”

The project was supported through ESA’s Technology Development Element, investigating promising new technologies for space.

Credits: VTT

It has been an emotional time – years of delays, a tense countdown, a mighty launch and the hiccups in orbit for Russia’s science module ‘Nauka’ together with its travelling companion, the European Robotic Arm (ERA).

The duo is destined to upgrade the International Space Station with a new research facility and a walking robot upon their arrival tomorrow, 29 July. ‘Nauka’, also known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), is the largest space lab ever launched into space by Russia.

Philippe Schoonejans, project manager of the robotic arm for ESA, took this picture a few kilometres away from the launch pad while the Proton-M rocket soared into the sky from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on 21 July. He was not alone – a dozen colleagues from ESA and the European space industry witnessed the historic launch.

“What an incredible power and what a rattling noise. First, I saw it go and only later the sound came and I felt my shirt move! It was a very emotional moment to see the ERA going into space,” he recalls.

Philippe sighed with relief after waiting 14 years for a liftoff that kept being pushed back. Both Nauka and ERA have had a history of delays and programmatic challenges along the way. And yet again, adversity insisted in being part of the journey to the International Space Station.

As expected, Nauka deployed its solar panels and antennas about 13 minutes after launch, and the eight-day journey to the Space Station began.

However, soon after missing telemetry was reported at the mission control centre in Moscow, Russia. The glitch was detected when the spacecraft did not complete its first burn, aimed at raising its orbit.

During the whole week, flight engineers have been busy running critical propulsion tests and carrying out orbital corrections.

As if this were not enough, the uncertainty was intensified by the troubleshooting of the Kurs rendezvous system on Nauka. Like other Russian modules and spacecraft, Nauka can rendezvous and dock automatically with the International Space Station using its own engines.

Hectic days at mission control culminated last Sunday with the assurance that the spacecraft could reach the Station relying on its own power and navigation systems. Those were four days of suspens e also for the ERA team.

The Pirs docking compartment left the Space Station after 20 years of service and burned up safely in the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean last Monday. Its departure has made room for the new module.

Nauka is now on track to intercept the International Space Station tomorrow, 29 July. Docking to the Zvezda module is scheduled at 15:25 CEST (14:25 BST).

The 13-m long research facility has plenty of room for material science and biotechnology, and features an extra sleeping pod and a new bathroom for cosmonauts. The module can generate oxygen for up to six people and can recycle urine into drinkable water.

The European Robotic Arm travels as a passenger attached to the spacecraft, bringing new potential to the Russian parts of the Space Station. Nauka will be the home base for the first robot that can move back and forwards around the Russian parts, helping install new elements and transporting astronauts during spacewalks.

More on the smart spacewalker in our online brochure, available in English, Dutch and Russian.

Credits: ESA–P. Schoonejans

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 grooves and ridges known as ‘yardangs’ near Mars’s Eumenides Dorsum mountains.

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[Image description: A section of Mars’s surface showing a broad area covered with dense, elongated ridges and grooves that fan out diagonally across the image. The terrain is rough and textured in this region, contrasting with the smoother, lighter-coloured surrounding plains. The overall colour is a mix of tan and reddish-brown tones.]

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

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

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

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

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The surface of the Moon is mostly made of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, aluminium and titanium. At its centre there may be a small, molten iron core.

Image description: Symbols of chemical elements from periodic table.

Credits: ESA

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer is back in Cologne, Germany, after 177 days in space and 175 days aboard the International Space Station for his first mission ‘Cosmic Kiss’.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying Matthias and his Crew-3 crew mates, NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron, splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, USA, at 06:43 BST/07:43 CEST on Friday 6 May. The journey from Space Station to splashdown took just over 23 hours.

After its water landing, the Crew Dragon capsule was hoisted aboard a recovery boat where the hatch was opened, and the astronauts were welcomed home.

Matthias underwent initial medical checks aboard the boat before being flown by helicopter to shore and boarding a plane to Cologne. He will spend the next weeks participating in debriefings, providing samples for scientific evaluation and readapting to Earth’s gravity at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre (EAC) and the German Aerospace Centre’s (DLR) ‘Envihab’ facility.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

Martian moon Deimos appears dark, framed by the brighter planet Mars behind it, in this visible light monochromatic Asteroid Framing Camera image, acquired by ESA’s Hera spacecraft during its gravity-assist flyby on 12 March 2025.

The car-sized planetary defence spacecraft was approximately 1000 km from the 12.4-km-diameter Deimos moon when this image was acquired. Deimos orbits approximately 23 500 km from the surface of Mars and is tidally locked, so that this side of the dark moon is rarely seen.

At the top of the image is the bright Terra Sabaea region, close to the martian equator, outlined by darker regions about it, with part of the 450 km-diameter Huygen crater seen to the right side of the image. To the bottom right corner is part of Hellas Basin, among the largest known impact craters in the Solar System with a diameter of 2300 km and a depth of more than 7 km.

Hera’s 1020x1020 pixel Asteroid Framing Camera is employed for both navigation and scientific investigation.

Credits: ESA

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission shows us a cloudy view of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma. The volcano started erupting on 19 September after days of small tremors.

The image, captured on 20 September, has been processed using the mission’s shortwave-infrared band to show the ongoing activity in the volcano.

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

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

ESA’s Mars Express has spotted the aftermath of martian winds whipping up sand grains and acting as a cosmic sandblaster, carving out long channels with intermittent ridges – known as yardangs – 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.

We've added labels to highlight features and regions of note. Be sure to click on these labels to explore the landscape in detail!

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Notes: This image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 16 October 2024 (orbit 26245). It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. North is to the right. The ground resolution of the original image is approximately 20 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 12°N/200°E. The dark patch in the crater rim is likely a patch of volcanic sand.

[Image description: A satellite view of a section of Mars’s surface. The terrain is mostly smooth and sandy-coloured, with a large circular impact crater on the right side. The crater has a raised rim and a flat centre. To the left, there is a broad area of darker, rough-textured streaks spreading diagonally, contrasting with the lighter surrounding surface. The overall colour palette is shades of tan and reddish-brown, typical of Martian soil.]

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

The changing face of the Chilean glaciers in the Laguna San Rafael National Park is featured in these satellite images from 1987 and 2024.

Located on the Pacific coast of southern Chile, the park covers an area of around 17 000 sq km and includes the Northern Patagonian Ice Field – a remnant of the Patagonian Ice Sheet that once covered the region. Today, despite the ice field being just a fraction of its previous size, it is still the second largest continuous mass of ice outside the polar regions.

As we can see in the images, the ice mass feeds glaciers that have changed in size between 1987 and 2024. The Landsat-5 image on the left was acquired on 9 February 1987, while the image on the right captured the ice field on 9 February 2024 as seen by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

The west part of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field feeds 28 exit glaciers. The largest two, San Rafael and San Quintín, are pictured here. Both glaciers have been receding dramatically due to global warming.

The San Rafael glacier, in the upper left, is one of the most actively calving glaciers in the world. It calves west towards the Pacific Ocean and into an arc-shaped lake, Laguna San Rafael, visible directly to the left of the glacier. The lake is formed and fed by the retreat of the glacier.

Like Laguna San Rafael, many lakes in the area are fed by water from melting glaciers. In the images, the colour of the water varies from dark blue to aquamarine depending on the amount of suspended fine sediment present. This sediment is called ‘glacier milk’ and is a result of abrasion as glaciers move over the underlying rock. This is particularly clear in San Rafael lake, where we can also see icebergs floating in the water.

Directly below San Rafael lies the San Quintín glacier, the second largest in the ice field. The glacier drains to the west and, taking a closer look at its terminus in both images, we can see how, in 1987, the glacier almost terminated on land, but, with its retreat, the basin filled with water and formed the proglacial lake we see in 2024.

Glaciers around the world are affected by climate change. As temperatures rise and glaciers and ice sheets melt, the water eventually runs into the ocean, causing sea levels to rise. Rising seas are one of the most distinctive and potentially devastating consequences of Earth’s warming climate.

Satellite observations can greatly contribute to the precise monitoring of glacier change. The pace at which glaciers are losing mass in the long term is very important to making informed future adaptation decisions.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2024), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Europe’s first MetOp Second Generation, MetOp-SG-A1, weather satellite – which hosts the Copernicus Sentinel-5 mission – has launched aboard an Ariane 6 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 13 August at 02:37 CEST (12 August 21:37 Kourou time).

MetOp-SG-A1 is the first in a series of three successive pairs of satellites. The mission as a whole not only ensures the continued delivery of global observations from polar orbit for weather forecasting and climate analysis for more than 20 years, but also offers enhanced accuracy and resolution compared to the original MetOp mission – along with new measurement capabilities to expand its scientific reach.

This new weather satellite also carries the Copernicus Sentinel-5 mission to deliver daily global data on air pollutants and atmospheric trace gases as well as aerosols and ultraviolet radiation.

Ariane 6 is Europe’s heavy launcher and a key element of ESA’s efforts to ensure autonomous access to space for Europe’s citizens. Ariane 6 has three stages: two or four boosters, and a main and upper stage. For this flight, VA264, the rocket was used in its two-booster configuration.

Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut

On 11 October 2022, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope spent over 20 hours observing the long-studied Ultra Deep Field of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope for the first time. The general observer program (GO 1963) focused on analysing the field in wavelengths between approximately 2 and 4 microns. This image was taken by the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Hubble’s view is presented on the left and Webb’s view is presented on the right.

The Webb image observes the field at depths comparable to Hubble – revealing galaxies of similar faintness – in just one-tenth as much observing time. It includes 1.8-micron light shown in blue, 2.1-micron light shown in green, 4.3-micron light shown in yellow, 4.6-micron light shown in orange, and 4.8-micron light shown in red (filters F182M, F210M, F430M, F460M, and F480M).

The Hubble image required 800 exposures taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between 24 September 2003 and 16 January 2004.

Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.

[Image Description: Two images are shown side-by-side of the same field of galaxies. On the left is the image from the Hubble Space Telescope. On the right is the image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Both images contain thousands of galaxies in various sizes, shapes, and colours.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale (STScI)

This dream-like Picture of the Week features the galaxy known as NGC 3156. It is a lenticular galaxy, meaning that it falls somewhere between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy. It lies about 73 million light-years from Earth, in the minor equatorial constellation Sextans.

Sextans is a small constellation that belongs to the Hercules family of constellations. It itself is a constellation with an astronomical theme, being named for the instrument known as the sextant. Sextants are often thought of as navigational instruments that were invented in the 18th century. However, the sextant as an astronomical tool has been around for much longer than that: Islamic scholars developed astronomical sextants many hundreds of years earlier in order to measure angles in the sky. A particularly striking example is the enormous sextant with a radius of 36 metres that was developed by Ulugh Beg of the Timurid dynasty in the fifteenth century, located in Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. These early sextants may have been a development of the quadrant, a measuring device proposed by Ptolemy. A sextant, as the name suggests, is shaped like one-sixth of a circle, approximately the shape of the constellation.

Sextants are no longer in use in modern astronomy, having been replaced by instruments that are capable of measuring the positions of stars and astronomical objects much more accurately and precisely. NGC 3156 has been studied in many ways other than determining its precise position — from its cohort of globular clusters, to its relatively recent star formation, to the stars that are being destroyed by the supermassive black hole at its centre.

[Image Description: A large elliptical galaxy. It appears to be formed of faint, grey, concentric ovals that grow progressively brighter towards the core, where there is a very bright point, and fade away at the edge. Two threads of dark red dust cross the galaxy’s disc, near the centre. The background is black and mostly empty, with only a few point stars and small galaxies.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sharples, S. Kaviraj, W. Keel; CC BY 4.0

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week peers into the dusty recesses of the nearest massive star-forming region to Earth, the Orion Nebula. Just 1300 light-years away, the Orion Nebula is visible to the naked eye below the three stars that form the ‘belt’ in the constellation Orion. The nebula is home to hundreds of newborn stars including the subject of this image: the protostars HOPS 150 and HOPS 153.

These protostars get their names from the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey, which was carried out with ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory. The object that can be seen in the upper-right corner of this image is HOPS 150: it’s a binary system, two young protostars orbiting each other. Each has a small, dusty disc of material surrounding it that it is feeding from. The dark line that cuts across the bright glow of these protostars is a cloud of gas and dust, over 2 000 times wider than the distance between Earth and the Sun, falling in on the pair of protostars. Based on the amount of infrared versus other wavelengths of light HOPS 150 is emitting, the protostars are mid-way down the path to becoming mature stars.

Extending across the left side of the image is a narrow, colourful outflow called a jet. This jet comes from the nearby protostar HOPS 153, out of frame. HOPS 153 is a significantly younger stellar object than its neighbour, still deeply embedded in its birth nebula and enshrouded by a cloud of cold, dense gas. While Hubble cannot penetrate this gas to see the protostar, the jet HOPS 153 has emitted is brightly visible as it plows into the surrounding gas and dust of the Orion Nebula.

The transition from tightly swaddled protostar to fully fledged star will dramatically affect HOPS 153’s surroundings. As gas falls onto the protostar, its jets spew material and energy into interstellar space, carving out bubbles and heating the gas. By stirring up and warming nearby gas, HOPS 153 may regulate the formation of new stars in its neighbourhood and even slow its own growth.

[Image Description: An area in the Orion nebula filled with dark, puffy clouds. On the left side a large area of clouds, crossed by a dark bar, is lit up in red and whitish colours by a protostar within. At the other side a large jet of material ejected by the protostar appears, made of thin, wispy, blue and pink clouds. A couple of foreground stars shine brightly in front of the nebula.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Megeath; CC BY 4.0

Front row:

Elvira Fortunato, Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Portugal,

Martin Kupka, Minister of Transport, Czech Republic,

Leonore Gewessler, Federal Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Innovation and Technology, Austria,

Franz Fayot, Minister of the Economy, Minister for Development Coordination and Humanitarian Affairs, Luxembourg,

Teresa Riesgo, Secretary General for Innovation at Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain,

Adolofo Urso, Minister of Enterprises and Made in Italy,

Philippe Battiste, President of French space agency, CNES,

ESA - European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher,

Anna Christmann, Federal Government Coordinator of German Aerospace Policy, Germany,

Anna Rathsman, Director General of the Swedish Space Agency, Sweden,

George Freeman, Minister for Science, Research & Innovation, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, United Kingdom,

Thomas Dermine, State Secretary for Economic Recovery and Strategic Investments in charge of Science Policy, Belgium,

Martina Hirayama, State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation, Switzerland,

Sebastiaan-Ioan Burudja, Minister of Research and Digitalization, Romania,

Timo Pesonen, Director General, Directorate General for Defence Industry and Space, European Commission (DG-Defis).

Second Row:

Ján Horeccký, Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport, Slovakia,

Anita Muižniece, Minister for Education and Science, Ministry of Education and Science, Latvia,

Athanasios Staveris-Polykalas, Secretary General of Telecommunications and Post, Ministry of Digital Governance, Greece,

Annemarie Falktoft, Deputy Director, Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science, Denmark,

Anne Marit Bjørnflaten, State Secretary, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, Norway,

Maria Nilsson, State Secretary, Ministry of Education and Research, Sweden,

Damien English, Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail, Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ireland,

Ilona Lundström, Director General, Innovations and Enterprise Financing, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, Finland,

Guido Biessen, Acting Director General for Enterprise and Innovation, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, Netherlands,

Sille Kraam, Deputy Secretary General for Economic Development, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, Estonia,

Kamila Król, Undersecretary of State, Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, Poland,

Matevž Frangež, Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport, Slovakia,

Eglė Markevičiūtė, Vice-Minister of the Economy and Innovation of the Republic of Lithuania.

Third Row:

Lisa Campbell, President of the Canadia Space Agency (CSA),

Keith Azzopardi Tanti, Permanent Secretary for Youth, Research and Innovation, Malta,

Alexander Georgiev Poulev, Minister of Growth and Education, Bulgaria,

Peter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Hungary,

Nicolas Walter, CEO, European Science Foundation (ESF),

Rodrigo da Costa, Executive Director, European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA),

Philippe Merlo, Director, European Green Sky Directorate, EGSD, EUROCONTROL,

Sorin Dumitro Ducaru, Director, European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen),

Leendert Bal, Head of Department for Safety, Security and Surveillance, European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA),

Philip Evans, Director General, European Origanisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT),

Emilio Fajardo, Director Industry, Synergies & Enablers, European Defence Agency (EDA).

(absent from the photo: Robert Habeck, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Germany)

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This oblique perspective view shows a part of Mars nicknamed Inca City. The reason for this is no mystery, with the linear, almost geometric network of ridges being reminiscent of Inca ruins. More formally known as Angustus Labyrinthus, Inca City was discovered in 1972 by NASA’s Mariner 9 probe.

The image was generated from a digital terrain model and the nadir (downward-pointing) and colour channels of Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera.

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[Image description: This rectangular image shows part of the martian surface as if the viewer is looking down and across the landscape, with the ground appearing in swirled tones of brown and tan. Stretching out towards the viewer from the top of the frame is a raised network of linear, grid-like ridges and walls; this structure is Inca City.]

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

A month after fires ravaged the island of Rhodes in July 2023, more fires have ripped through Greece this week as southern Europe swelters under a late summer heatwave. This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image shows the ongoing blaze near Alexandroupoli in the Evros region of northeast Greece – close to the Türkiye border.

Hot, dry and windy conditions have seen dozens of wildfires break out across Greece, with the most severe entering its fourth day and encroaching on the northeast port city of Alexandroupoli.

This satellite image is a blend between a natural colour and a shortwave infrared composite to highlight the fire front, which was approximately 70 km long when this image was captured on 23 August. The fire has produced a plume of smoke that stretched 1600 km southwest towards Tunisia. Burned area can be seen in the image in dark brown.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission is based on a constellation of two identical satellites, each carrying an innovative wide swath high-resolution multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands for monitoring changes in Earth’s land and vegetation.

In response to the fires, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service has been activated in North Attica, Rodopi, Euboea Island, the Sterea Ellada Region, and East Macedonia. The service uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in cases of disaster, the international humanitarian community, respond to emergencies.

Climate change and land-use change are projected to make wildfires more frequent and intense. In light of the devastating wildfires, ESA has reopened its World Fire Atlas which provides a detailed analysis of wildfires taking place across the globe.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is being prepared for launch in the latest photos from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Here, engineers are attaching the spacecraft to the golden cylinder that we see directly underneath; this ‘payload adapter’ will connect Juice to the Ariane 5 launcher that will carry it into space. The process involved tightening the clamp band and connecting cables. This activity marks the start of the so-called 'combined operations' that ESA runs together with Arianespace in the run up to launch.

Next Juice will be ready for fuelling. Usually spacecraft are first fuelled and then connected to the payload adapter, but for technical reasons the order has been swapped for Juice. After fuelling, Juice will be positioned on top of the Ariane 5, ready for launch on 13 April.

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

Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG – P. Baudon