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

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

This image features a relatively small galaxy known as UGC 5189A, which is located about 150 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. This galaxy was observed by Hubble to study a supernova explosion in 2010 known as SN 2010jl. This particular supernova was notable for having been an exceptionally luminous supernova event. In fact, over a period of three years, SN 2010jl released at least 2.5 billion times more visible energy alone than our Sun emitted over the same timeframe across all wavelengths.

Even after supernovae have faded to non-observable levels, it can still be of interest to study the environments where they occurred. This can provide astronomers with valuable information: supernovae can take place for a variety of reasons, and understanding the environments in which they took place can help improve our understanding of the conditions necessary for them to be triggered. Furthermore, follow-up studies after supernovae can improve our understanding of the immediate aftermath of such events, from their potent effects on the gas and dust around them, to the stellar remnants they leave behind.

To this end, UGC 5189A has been observed many times by Hubble since 2010. This image is from data collected in three of the latest Hubble studies of UGC 5189A, which also examined several other relatively nearby galaxies that recently hosted supernovae — ‘relatively nearby’, in this context, meaning roughly 100 million light years away.

[Image Description: A galaxy that is flat and misshapen. Above and on its right it is covered by plumes of shining gas and dust, while its centre and left side are more dim and patchy. A trail of dark, dim dust stretches from below the galaxy up and off to the left, where there are three more bright patches. The background around the galaxy is quite dark, with only a few small background galaxies and one star visible.]

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

German ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer has been officially assigned his first flight to the International Space Station and he may now reveal the name of his mission: Cosmic Kiss.

Matthias is scheduled to launch to the Space Station with NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Crew Programme.

Matthias officially joined ESA’s Astronaut Corps in 2015 and is the only ESA astronaut yet to fly to space. Originally from the southwest German state of Saarland, Matthias has studied in four different countries, gained a doctorate in materials science engineering and achieved national recognition for outstanding research.

Since joining ESA as an astronaut, he has been busy completing astronaut training in Europe and the US, taking part in ESA and NASA analogue studies underground and underwater and participating in sea survival training off the coast of China. He is currently serving as backup crew to fellow ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

Alongside his official assignment, Matthias Maurer also revealed the name of his first space mission: Cosmic Kiss. He describes this carefully selected mission name as a 'declaration of love for space'.

Matthias sports his mission patch on his left arm in this image. The patch features several cosmic elements including Earth, the Moon and the Pleiades star cluster. It also depicts Mars, one of ESA’s three key destinations for exploration over the next 10 years, as a small red dot beckoning in the distance. However, its most prominent feature is a simplified, almost heart-like International Space Station, connected through a human heartbeat that stretches from Earth to the Moon. Read more about the mission patch design and rationale here.

While this is the first mission for the German ESA astronaut, it may also provide a rare opportunity for two European astronauts to meet in space. ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will be nearing the end of his six-month Alpha mission by the time Matthias is scheduled to arrive for his six-month mission. Both astronauts will carry out science and operations in space on behalf of researchers and international partners worldwide.

Credits: ESA

The Artemis II rocket has reached its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States, ready for a historic journey. Over the weekend, engineers slowly and carefully rolled the nearly 100-metre-tall Space Launch System rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B. The 6.5-km journey took around 12 hours and was carried out using NASA’s crawler-transporter, which has been moving rockets to launch pads for over 50 years.

Standing nearly 100 m tall, the Space Launch System will weigh approximately 2.6 million kg once fully fuelled and ready for liftoff. At its top sits the Orion spacecraft, bearing the ESA and NASA logos and designed to carry four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby mission. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight of the Artemis programme and the first time humans have ventured towards the Moon in over 50 years.

Their journey depends on our European Service Module, built by industry from more than 10 countries across Europe. This powerhouse will take over once Orion separates from the rocket, supplying electricity from its four seven-metre long solar arrays, providing air and water for the crew, and performing key propulsion burns during the mission, including the critical trans-lunar injection that sends the spacecraft on its trajectory towards the Moon.

European engineers will be at mission control around the clock, monitoring operations from ESA’s ESTEC site in the Netherlands and alongside NASA teams in the Mision Evaluation Room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The European Service Module’s main engine carries a unique legacy. Originally flown on six Space Shuttle missions between 2000 and 2002, the engine was refurbished and tested after two decades in storage and installed on the second European Service Module at Airbus in Bremen, Germany, giving this historic piece of hardware a new role in deep-space exploration.

The next major milestone is the wet dress rehearsal, during which teams will practise fuelling the rocket and running through the launch countdown, bringing Artemis II one step closer to launch.

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

The SpaceX Crew Dragon is launched on a Falcon 9 rocket and brings four astronauts to the International Space Station. Launching from Cape Canaveral at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, the spacecraft is the third type to bring ESA astronauts to space.

This infographic shows the steps after liftoff until the Crew Dragon reaches Earth orbit.

Credits: ESA

What lurks behind the dense, dusty clouds of this galactic neighbour? There lies the star-powered heart of the galaxy Messier 82 (M82), also known as the Cigar Galaxy. Located just 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (The Great Bear), the Cigar Galaxy is considered a nearby galaxy. As this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week shows in great detail, it’s home to brilliant stars whose light is shaded by sculptural clouds, clumps and streaks of dust and gas.

It’s no surprise that the Cigar Galaxy is so packed with stars, obscured though they might be by the distinctive clouds pictured here. Forming stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way, the Cigar Galaxy is what astronomers call a starburst galaxy. The intense starburst period that grips this galaxy has given rise to super star clusters in the galaxy’s heart. Each of these super star clusters contains hundreds of thousands of stars and is more luminous than a typical star cluster. Researchers used Hubble to home in on these massive clusters and reveal how they form and evolve.

This image compares two sets of data captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). On the left is an image of the Cigar Galaxy released in 2006, in celebration of Hubble’s 16th birthday. It was taken with ACS’s Wide Field Channel that is designed for broad surveys. On the right, newly processed data from the ACS High Resolution Channel creates a new view of the highly active super star clusters in M82’s heart. The High Resolution Channel, operational from 2002 to 2007, excelled at detailed observations of crowded, starry environments like the centres of starburst galaxies.

[Image Description: On the left is an image of the galaxy M82, showing its blue disc from the side, with plumes of red gas erupting from the top and bottom. It is labelled “Hubble/ACS/WFC”. A small box in the galaxy’s centre is pulled out to a second image on the right, labelled “Hubble/ACS/HRC”. This close-in view of the centre shows thick clumps of gas and dust obscuring the brilliant bluish light from newly forming star clusters.]

View the HRC image in full size

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI), W. D. Vacca; CC BY 4.0

The Vega-C Zefiro 9 third stage has now been transferred to and integrated at the Vega Launch Zone (Zone de Lancement Vega) ZLV at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 10 May 2022.

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

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

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

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

This anaglyph provides a 3D view of a large crater, Erythraeum Chaos and surrounding landscape when viewed using red–green or red–blue glasses. It was derived from data acquired by the nadir channel and one stereo channel.

This scene is part of the region imaged on 13 March 2007 and 22 February 2017 during orbits 4090 and 16648. The image mosaic is centred on 346°E/23°S, with a ground resolution of 15–17 m/pixel.

More information

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

If it wasn’t for launch capabilities we would never have delved deep into the echo of the Big Bang nor lived out the adventures of Rosetta and Philae at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Nor would we have captured some of the Universe’s most energetic phenomena, or be on our way to the innermost planet of the Solar System. Some of ESA’s biggest science missions only got off the ground – literally – thanks to the mighty Ariane 5, one of the most reliable launchers that gives access to space from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

ESA has been using the Ariane family of launch vehicles right back since Ariane 1, which launched the comet-chaser Giotto, ESA’s first deep space mission, in 1985. Later, the astrometry satellite Hipparcos rode into space on an Ariane 4 in 1989 and the Infrared Space Observatory launched in 1995.

One of the first Ariane 5 flights took XMM-Newton into space twenty years ago, in December 1999 (leftmost image). The X-ray space observatory is an impressive workhorse, enabling ground-breaking discoveries on a range of cosmic mysteries from enigmatic black holes to the evolution of galaxies across the Universe.

SMART-1, Europe’s first mission to the Moon, got its ride to space in 2003 (second image from left). It was used to test solar electric propulsion and other technologies, while performing scientific observations of the Moon. BepiColombo launched in 2018 (far right) on the 101st Ariane 5 launch; it is using electric propulsion, in combination with planetary gravity assists, to reach Mercury.

In between, Rosetta began its ten year journey through the Solar System starting with a boost into space on an Ariane 5 (middle image), and in 2009 Herschel and Planck shared a ride on the same launcher (second from right) from which they would both proceed to the second Lagrange point, L2, 1.5 million km from Earth in the opposite direction to the Sun, to reveal the Universe in new light. Observing in infrared wavelengths, Herschel unlocked the secrets of how stars and galaxies form and evolve, while Planck captured the most ancient light in the Universe, released only 380 000 years after the Big Bang, in greater detail than ever, shedding light on our 13.8 billion year long cosmic history.

Europe’s next generation launchers, including Ariane 6, will provide new opportunities for ESA’s upcoming science missions to fulfil their scientific goals from their various viewpoints in our Solar System.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace

ESA’s next CubeSat mission seen enduring the scorching heat of simulated atmospheric reentry inside the world’s largest plasma wind tunnel.

Equipped with a cork-based heatshield, titanium side walls and silicon carbide deployable panels, the QARMAN (QubeSat for Aerothermodynamic Research and Measurements on Ablation) CubeSat survived six and a half minutes of testing inside Italy’s Scirocco Plasma Wind Tunnel.

An arc jet using up to 70 megawatts of power – enough to light up a town of 80 000 people – converted air into hot plasma at temperatures of several thousand degrees Celsius, which sped towards QARMAN at seven times the speed of sound. See video of the test here.

“This test marked the world premiere in arc jet testing of a complete, full-scale spacecraft,” explains test engineering group leader Eduardo Trifoni. “It also represents a tremendous step forward in our ground testing, since up to now only single components were tested at a time.”

CubeSats are low-cost nanosatellites based around standard 10 cm units and typically end their spaceflights burning up in the atmosphere as their orbits gradually decay. But the three-unit QARMAN is designed with this fiery fate in mind.

Designed and manufactured for ESA by Belgium’s Von Karman Institute, QARMAN will use temperature and pressure sensors together with an emission spectrometer to gather precious data on the extreme conditions of reentry as its leading edges are enveloped in scorching plasma.

“The precious outcome of this test gives us confidence that the QARMAN design will indeed make it through the reentry phase,” said project leader Davide Masutti of the Von Karman Institute. “The results of the real flight are now the missing element to consolidate our design strategy based on ground-testing, numerical models and flight data.”

QARMAN is due to be deployed from the International Space Station next year. It will orbit Earth for around four months before reentering the atmosphere. It will survive reentry but not its fall to Earth. Instead its data will be transmitted to Iridium telecom satellites.

Credits: CIRA

This composite image of Arp 107, created with data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) and MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument), reveals a wealth of information about the star formation taking place in these two galaxies and how they collided hundreds of million years ago.

The near-infrared data, shown in white, show older stars, which shine brightly in both galaxies, as well as the tenuous gas bridge that runs between them. The vibrant background galaxies are also brightly illuminated at these wavelengths.

On the other hand, MIRI data show the young stars and star-forming regions in vibrant orange and red. Our view in the mid-infrared provides the best view of the collision point, given the noticeable gap at the top of the spiral galaxy. This collision not only began a new bout of star formation in the region, but also produced an endearing smile.

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[Image description: A pair of interacting galaxies. The larger of the two galaxies is slightly right of centre, and is composed of a hazy, bright, white centre and a ring of gaseous filaments, which are different shades of red and orange. Toward the bottom left and bottom right of the ring are filaments of gas spiralling inward toward the core. At the top left of the ring is a noticeable gap, bordered by two large, orange pockets of dust and gas. The smaller galaxy is made of hazy and white gas and dust, which become more diffuse further away from its centre. To this galaxy’s bottom left, there is a smaller, more diffuse gas cloud that wafts outward toward the edges of the image. Many red, orange, and white galaxies are spread throughout, with some being hazier in appearance and others having more defined spiral patterns.]

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

A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger – thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn’t expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories.

Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOT) are among the brightest known visible-light events in the universe – going off unexpectedly like camera flashbulbs. Only a handful have been found since the first discovery in 2018. Presently, LFBOTS are detected about once per year.

After its initial detection, the latest LFBOT was observed by multiple telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum, from X-rays to radio waves. Only Hubble’s exquisitely sharp resolution could pinpoint its location. Designated AT2023fhn and nicknamed ‘the Finch,’ the transitory event showed all the tell-tale characteristics of an LFBOT. It shined intensely in blue light and evolved rapidly, reaching peak brightness and fading again in a matter of days, unlike supernovae which take weeks or months to dim.

But unlike any other LFBOT seen before, Hubble found that the Finch is located in apparent isolation between two neighbouring galaxies – about 50,000 light-years from a nearby spiral galaxy and about 15,000 light-years from a smaller galaxy – a baffling locale for celestial objects previously thought to exist within host galaxies.

“The Hubble observations were really the crucial thing. They made us realise that this was unusual compared to the other ones like that, because without the Hubble data we would not have known,” said Ashley Chrimes, lead author of the Hubble paper reporting the discovery in an upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). He is also a European Space Agency Research Fellow, formerly of Radboud University, Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

While these awesome explosions have been assumed to be a rare type of supernova (called core-collapse supernovae), the gargantuan stars that turn into supernovae are short-lived by stellar standards. Therefore, the massive progenitor stars to supernovae don’t have time to travel very far from their birthing place – a cluster of newborn stars. All previous LFBOTs have been found in the spiral arms of galaxies where star birth is ongoing.

“The more we learn about LFBOTs, the more they surprise us,” said Chrimes. “We’ve now shown that LFBOTs can occur a long way from the centre of the nearest galaxy, and the location of the Finch is not what we expect for any kind of supernova.”

The Zwicky Transient Facility – an extremely wide-angle ground-based camera that scans the entire northern sky every two days – first alerted astronomers to the Finch on 10 April 2023. Once it was spotted, the researchers triggered a pre-planned program of observations that had been on standby, ready to quickly turn their attention to any potential LFBOT candidates that arose.

Spectroscopic measurements made with the Gemini South telescope in Chile found that the Finch is a scorching 20,000 degrees Celsius. Gemini also helped determine its distance from Earth so its luminosity could be calculated. Together with data from other observatories including the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Array radio telescope, these findings confirmed the explosion was indeed an LFBOT.

The LFBOTs could be the result of stars being torn apart by an intermediate-mass black hole (between 100 to 1,000 solar masses). The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s high resolution and infrared sensitivity might eventually be used to find that the Finch exploded inside a globular star cluster in the outer halo of one of the two neighbouring galaxies. A globular star cluster is the most likely place an intermediate-mass black hole could be found.

To explain the unusual location of the Finch, the researchers are considering the alternative possibility that it is the result of a collision of two neutron stars, travelling far outside their host galaxy, that have been spiralling toward each other for billions of years. Such collisions produce a kilonova – an explosion 1,000 times more powerful than a standard supernova. However, one very speculative theory is that if one of the neutron stars is highly magnetised – a magnetar – it could greatly amplify the power of the explosion even further to 100 times the brightness of a normal supernova.

“The discovery poses many more questions than it answers,” said Chrimes. “More work is needed to figure out which of the many possible explanations is the right one.”

Because astronomical transients can pop up anywhere and at any time, and are relatively fleeting in astronomical terms, researchers rely on wide-field surveys that can continuously monitor large areas of the sky to detect them and alert other observatories like Hubble to do follow-up observations.

A larger sample is needed to converge on a better understanding of the phenomenon, say researchers. Upcoming all-sky survey telescopes may be able to detect more, depending on the underlying astrophysics.

Credits: NASA, ESA, NSF's NOIRLab, M. Garlick , M. Zamani; CC BY 4.0

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Utopia Planitia, a plain that fills one of three major basins in the northern hemisphere of Mars – Utopia – and has a diameter of 3 300 km, in wider context.

The area outlined by the bold white box indicates the area imaged by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on 12 July 2021 during orbit 22150.

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Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite takes us over eastern US. Spanning a huge area, including the states of Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia and Delaware, a number of major cities can be seen in this true-colour image. The megacity of New York is visible in the top right. A megacity is defined by the United Nations as a city with a population of over ten million. According to the latest estimates there will be 43 megacities across the globe by 2030.

Further down the coast, the US capital of Washington, D.C. can be seen in the upper-central part of the image. Washington, D.C. is a territory, not a state. The first part of the capital’s name is in honour of the first president of the US, George Washington, and D.C. stands for District of Columbia, derived from Christopher Columbus.

This true-colour image from Sentinel-3’s Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) shows sediment being carried into the North Atlantic Ocean along the coast. Sediment and potentially algae can also be seen in Lake Erie in the top left. This lake is the fourth-largest of the five Great Lakes of North America. It has a surface area of over 25 000 sq km. Around five million tonnes of a type of rock salt called halite is mined from beneath the lake every year. The state of Ohio is also known for its fertile soil, coal, and natural gas reserves.

The brown that dominates the central part of the image represents mountainous areas and forests, running through West Virginia and beyond. Known as the Mountain State, this is the only state completely within the Appalachian Mountain region. At around 460 m, its average elevation is higher than any other state east of the Mississippi River.

To the north of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, which takes its name from a combination of Latin words, meaning ‘Penn’s woods’, stretches up towards New York. Half of this state is covered by forests, including Allegheny National Forest, which can be seen in the top-centre of the image.

Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. The mission gathers data on our oceans, land, and ice to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics. It provides critical information for a range of applications from marine observation to large-scale vegetation monitoring.

This image, which was captured on 1 May 2018, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

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

Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed an actively growing supermassive black hole within a galaxy just 570 million years after the Big Bang. Part of a class of small, very distant galaxies that have mystified astronomers, CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 represents a vital piece of this puzzle that challenges existing theories about the formation of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe. The discovery connects early black holes with the luminous quasars we observe today.

Over its first three years, Webb's surveys of the early Universe have turned up an increasing number of small, extremely distant, and strikingly red objects. These so-called Little Red Dots (LRDs) remain a tantalising mystery to astronomers, despite their unexpected abundance. The discovery in CANUCS-LRD-z8.6, made possible by Webb’s exceptional capabilities, has assisted in this hunt for answers. Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) enabled researchers to observe the faint light from this distant galaxy and detect key spectral features that point to the presence of an accreting black hole.

Roberta Tripodi, lead author of the study and a researcher of the University of Ljubljana FMF, in Slovenia and INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, in Italy, explained: "This discovery is truly remarkable. We’ve observed a galaxy from less than 600 million years after the Big Bang, and not only is it hosting a supermassive black hole, but the black hole is growing rapidly - far faster than we would expect in such a galaxy at this early time. This challenges our understanding of black hole and galaxy formation in the early Universe and opens up new avenues of research into how these objects came to be."

The team analysed the galaxy's spectrum, which showed gas which had been highly ionised by energetic radiation, and suggested it was rotating quickly around a central source. These features are key characteristics of an accreting supermassive black hole. The precise spectral data yielded an estimate of the black hole’s mass, revealing it to be unusually large for such an early stage in the Universe, and showed that CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 is compact and has not yet produced many heavy elements — a galaxy at an early stage of its evolution. This combination makes it an intriguing subject for study.

Additionally, the Webb spectroscopy allowed the team to measure how much energy is emitted at different wavelengths, from which they were able to characterise the galaxy’s physical properties. This allowed them to determine the mass of the galaxy’s stars and compare it with the black hole’s mass. "The data we received from Webb was absolutely crucial,” added Dr. Nicholas Martis, a collaborator from the University of Ljubljana, FMF, who helped analyse the spectrum of the source. “The spectral features revealed by Webb provided clear signs of an accreting black hole at the centre of the galaxy, something that could not have been observed with previous technology. What makes this even more compelling is that the galaxy’s black hole is overmassive compared to its stellar mass. This suggests that black holes in the early Universe may have grown much faster than the galaxies that host them."

Astronomers have previously observed that the mass of a supermassive black hole and its host galaxy are linked: the larger a galaxy grows, the larger its central black hole also becomes. CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 is the most massive host galaxy known at such an early time, yet its central black hole is even more massive than we would expect, defying the usual relation. The result suggests that black holes may have formed and started growing at an accelerated pace in the early Universe, even in relatively small galaxies.

"This discovery is an exciting step in understanding the formation of the first supermassive black holes in the Universe,” explained Prof. Maruša Bradač, leader of the group at the University of Ljubljana, FMF. “The unexpected rapid growth of the black hole in this galaxy raises questions about the processes that allowed such massive objects to emerge so early. As we continue to analyse the data, we hope to find more galaxies like CANUCS-LRD-z8.6, which could provide us with even greater insights into the origins of black holes and galaxies."

The team is already planning additional observations with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) and Webb to further study the cold gas and dust in the galaxy and to refine their understanding of the black hole’s properties. The ongoing research into this LRD is poised to answer crucial questions about the early Universe, including how black holes and galaxies co-evolved in the first billion years of cosmic history.

As astronomers continue to explore the early Universe with JWST, further surprises are expected to emerge, offering an increasingly detailed picture of how the first supermassive black holes grew and evolved, setting the stage for the formation of the luminous quasars that light up the Universe today.

The results were obtained by the CANUCS collaboration from the Webb observing programme #1208 (PI: C. J. Willott) and have been published today in Nature Communications.

[Image Description: The left side of this visual shows an image of many glowing galaxies in various shapes and colours, including spiral and elliptical galaxies, on a black background. A small box near the top of this image highlights a small collection of galaxies. This box is pulled out to the right side, showing the same area zoomed in to reveal its details up close. This region shows a small circular red galaxy in the centre, which is labelled “CANUCS-LRD-z8.6”.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Rihtaršič (University of Ljubljana, FMF), R. Tripodi (University of Ljubljana, FMF); CC BY 4.0

Closeup of the Rosalind Franklin rover’s drill delivering a ‘dummy’ sample to the sample tray. The image is of the rover ‘ground test model’ – a replica rover situated at the Rover Operations Control Centre, in Turin, Italy, and used for rehearsing commands.

The rover will be the first in Mars exploration that will be able to retrieve soil samples down to 2 m underground, where ancient biomarkers may still be preserved from the harsh radiation on the surface. Upon retrieval of the samples, they will be analysed in a sophisticated laboratory inside the rover.

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Credits: Thales Alenia Space

ExoMars was launched on a Proton-M rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan on 14 March 2016. Around seven months later, it arrived at Mars.

As part of preparations for its main science mission to analyse the atmosphere for gases that may be related to biological or geological activity, and image sites that might be related to these sources, the Trace Gas Orbiter has conducted two campaigns to test its science instruments – one last November and one last week.

Presented here is one of the first image pairs taken by the orbiter’s high-resolution camera on 22 November.

The images together form a stereo pair of part of the Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars. The camera takes one image looking slightly forwards (bottom image in this orientation), and then, after having flown over the area, it rotates to look ‘back’ to take the second part of the image (top), in order to see the same region of the surface from two different angles.

By combining the image pair, a 3D image can be constructed and information about the relative heights of the surface features can be seen.

The images were taken to test the timing of the images as the spacecraft moves over the surface, in order to best reconstruct the stereo images. Additional tests were conducted last week to fine-tune the process.

Noctis Labyrinthus, or ‘Labyrinth of the night’, lies on the western edge of Valles Marineris, the grand canyon of the Solar System, and comprises a vast network of flat-topped plateaus and trenches. Landslides are seen in the flanks of the steep slopes.

Since arriving, the orbiter has also conducted a number of manoeuvres to change its orbital period and inclination, ready to begin the year-long aerobraking phase later this week. This process will use the planet’s atmosphere to gradually slow the spacecraft speed and so move it into a 400 km near-circular orbit, from which the craft will conduct its main science mission.

The images were taken by the CaSSIS camera; the scale here is 7.2 m/pixel and the images correspond to an area on Mars about 15 x 45 km.

Credit: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS – CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This image provides a side-by-side comparison of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) as captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). At first glance, Webb’s NIRCam image appears less colourful than the MIRI image. But this is only because the material from the object is emitting light at many different wavelengths The NIRCam image appears a bit sharper than the MIRI image because of its greater resolution. The outskirts of the main inner shell, which appeared as a deep orange and red in the MIRI image, look like smoke from a campfire in the NIRCam image. This marks where the supernova blast wave is ramming into surrounding circumstellar material. The dust in the circumstellar material is too cool to be detected directly at near-infrared wavelengths, but lights up in the mid-infrared. Also not seen in the near-infrared view is the loop of green light in the central cavity of Cas A that glowed in mid-infrared light, nicknamed the Green Monster by the research team. The circular holes visible in the MIRI image within the Green Monster, however, are faintly outlined in white and purple emission in the NIRCam image. [Image description: A comparison between two images, one on the left (labelled NIRCam), and on the right (labelled MIRI), separated by a white line. On the left, the image is of a roughly circular cloud of gas and dust with a complex structure. The inner shell is made of bright pink and orange filaments that look like tiny pieces of shattered glass. Around the exterior of the inner shell are curtains of wispy gas that look like campfire smoke. On the right is the same nebula seen in different light. The curtains of material outside the inner shell glow orange instead of white. The inner shell looks more mottled, and is a muted pink. At centre right, a greenish loop extends from the right side of the ring into the central cavity.]

A rare dune-side aerial view of ESA’s ESTEC technical centre on the Dutch coast, the location of ESA’s annual Open Day.

On the left of the image can be seen ESTEC’s Test Centre for full-scale testing of satellites, equipped with a suite of simulation facilities to reproduce every aspect of the space environment.

In the centre is the main building, home to ESA laboratories and mission teams, distinguished by an almost 200-m long main corridor. To the right of the main building is the restaurant and tower complex built by renowned Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck in the late 1980s.

On the other side of the car park is the two-tone square-shaped Erasmus building, focused on human spaceflight, and to its right is the T building, home to ESA’s Galileo team.

Come see ESTEC for yourself during the annual ESA Open Day on Sunday, 7 October. To learn more about ESTEC and its history, click here.

Credits: ESA - SJM Photography

Astronauts Panel with German astronauts Matthias Maurer, Thomas Reiter and Reinhold Ewald, as well as DLR's Claudia Stern.

ESA joined the Space Pavilion at ILA 2022 to present the newest programmes, missions and technologies at the heart of Europe’s space effort. The Pavilion also highlights upcoming commercial opportunities in the space sector for German, European and global industry focussing on sustainability and climate change, digitalization, innovation, research and space safety.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

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

A digest-sized science fiction magazine edited by Lester del Rey that ran for eight issues in 1952-53. Two issues of an identically titled magazine were published in 1957 by Republic Features Syndicate and edited by Michael Avallone. The second issue, dated August 1957, proved to be the final issue.

By 1957 the boom in American science fiction magazines had reached its peak. At least 24 science fiction magazines published at least one issue that year. One of the most prominent of these magazines, "Galaxy Science Fiction," had a successful association with two radio shows, "Dimension X" and "X Minus One." This sparked imitators. [Source: Wikipedia]

Standing at the rim of this volcanic edifice, the Pangaea field team stops to take a 360° panoramic photo to show the remote science team at ground control.

Credits: ESA–A. Romeo

The team behind ESA’s Interact Centaur rover are all smiles after ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano successfully manoeuvres the rover in the Netherlands from space.

Last week’s dry-run of the Analog-1 experiment, in which Luca completed a “proficiency run” to test the system, set the stage for another flawless performance on 25 November.

Taking command of the rover (centre) located in a hangar in the Netherlands on Monday, Luca expertly drove it to three sites and used its robotic arm to collect rock samples, all while circling our planet at 28 800 km/h on the International Space Station.

Which samples to collect and save for further analysis was decided by a science team based at ESA’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany in conversation with Luca.

The Human Robot Interaction Lab provided the rover and test infrastructure and is located at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands.

The team finds novel ways for humans and robots to work together, furthering ESA’s exploration strategy that foresees astronauts controlling robots from orbit around the Moon or Mars or from inside a planetary base.

The Analog-1 rover, for example, is equipped with force feedback so astronauts can feel what the robot feels and adjust their grip accordingly using a joystick that allows for six degrees of motion.

The robot also sports “spot turn” wheels, allowing it to get out of tight places.

Both contributed to a successful sampling excursion, despite the 800-millisecond communication delay between Luca in space and the ground teams on Earth.

Acing this test proves the technology that ESA has developed to operate rovers from afar.

Analog-1 is the latest in a series of human-robot test campaigns that make use of the International Space Station. Called the Multi-purpose End-to-End Robotic Operation Network or Meteron, the project is developing the communication networks, robot interfaces and hardware to operate robots from a distance in space.

The Analog-1 experiment demonstrates the value of human-robotic cooperation in space and the technology that will be used as the basis for many of ESA’s exploration projects. Ministers from ESA’s Member States will convene later this month at the Space19+ in Seville, Spain, to decide on the Agency’s future course.

Credits: ESA-G. Porter

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

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

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

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

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

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This Picture of the Week stars Messier 90, a beautiful spiral galaxy located roughly 60 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin). The galaxy is part of the Virgo Cluster, a gathering of galaxies that is over 1200 strong.

This image combines infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light gathered by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This camera was operational between 1994 and 2010, producing images with an unusual staircase-like shape as seen here. This is because the camera was made up of four light detectors with overlapping fields of view, one of which gave a higher magnification than the other three. When the four images are combined together in one picture, the high magnification image needs to be reduced in size in order for the image to align properly. This produces an image with a layout that looks like three steps.

Messier 90 is remarkable; it is one of the few galaxies seen to be travelling toward the Milky Way, not away from it. The galaxy’s light reveals this incoming motion in that it is blueshifted. In simple terms, the galaxy is compressing the wavelength of its light as it moves towards us, like a slinky being squashed when you push on one end. This increases the frequency of the light and shifts it towards the blue end of the spectrum. As our Universe is expanding, almost all of the galaxies we see in the Universe are moving away from us, and we therefore see their light as redshifted, but Messier 90 appears to be a rare exception.

Astronomers think that this blueshift is likely caused by the cluster’s colossal mass accelerating its members to high velocities on bizarre and peculiar orbits, sending them whirling around on odd paths that take them both towards and away from us over time. While the cluster itself is moving away from us, some of its constituent galaxies, such as Messier 90, are moving faster than the cluster as a whole, making it so that from Earth we see the galaxy heading towards us. However, some are also moving in the opposite direction within the cluster, and thus seem to be streaking away from us at very high velocity.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Sargent et al.; CC BY 4.0

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

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

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

Credits: CNES-ESA/Sentinel

Searching for signs of ice on Mars is complex. To explore whether ice lurks beneath the surface of the Red Planet, ESA’s Mars Express uses its radar to probe the interior.

It sends low-frequency radio pulses at Mars and records how they are returned to the spacecraft. These pulses can penetrate some of the material comprising the planet’s crust, bouncing back to Mars Express when they reach a layer of a different density or composition. By analysing the time delays of these returned pulses, scientists can determine the properties of material lying beneath the surface.

This image shows radar echoes from Meridiani Planum, an area near Mars’ equator that is also being explored by NASA’s Opportunity rover.

In the image, reflected echoes from the surface and subsurface, separated in time delay, are plotted along the ground track of the spacecraft’s orbit. The bright white line crossing the frame marks the surface of Mars, while the faint, more diffuse line just below represents echoes from the base of a layer of buried material located far below the surface.

The surface of Meridiani Planum is full of volcanic sands that are known to contain minerals that formed in the presence of water in the planet’s distant past. Previously, it was unclear what kinds of materials lay beneath the surface here, but the Mars Express radar has now penetrated the deposits and revealed that they have a similar property to ice.

However, a recent study instead suggests an ice-free explanation, showing that these radar properties could just as easily be explained by a thick layer of porous sand – perhaps blown into the region by winds. Unlike other geologic materials, such as volcanic ash or very fine dust, a thick layer of sand-sized particles may produce properties in the radar akin to that of an ice-rich deposit.

The echoes are thought to be reflections from the boundary between Meridiani Planum deposits below the surface, and cratered terrain lying deeper still.

These results highlight the difficulty in finding buried ice, and will help scientists to identify areas with and without accessible water ice: a resource critical to the future human exploration and possible colonisation of Mars.

This radargram was obtained by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument, MARSIS, in April 2016. The image covers a width of about 80 km. North is to the left (see annotated version in the published paper for more details).

Credits: ESA/Mars Express/NASA/JPL/KU/Smithsonian

Spiky foam covers the walls of the Maxwell Test Chamber, used for assessing the electromagnetic compatibility of entire satellites.

Maxwell’s 9 m-high metal walls form a ‘Faraday Cage’, blocking electromagnetic signals from outside. The ‘anechoic’ foam pyramids lining these walls absorb internal signals – as well as sound – to prevent any reflection, mimicking the infinite void of space. Then a satellite can be switched on to detect any harmful interference as its various elements operate together.

Maxwell is part of ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, the largest satellite testing establishment in Europe.

Credits: ESA/Guus Schoonewille

When astronomers got their first glimpses of galaxies in the early Universe from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, they were expecting to find galactic pipsqueaks, but instead they found what appeared to be a bevy of Olympic bodybuilders. Some galaxies appeared to have grown so massive, so quickly, that simulations couldn’t account for them. Some researchers suggested this meant that something might be wrong with the theory that explains what the Universe is made of and how it has evolved since the big bang, known as the standard model of cosmology.

According to a new study in the Astrophysical Journal, some of those early galaxies are in fact much less massive than they first appeared. Black holes in some of these galaxies make them appear much brighter and bigger than they really are. The evidence was provided by Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey.

According to this latest study, the galaxies that appeared overly massive likely host black holes rapidly consuming gas. Friction in the fast-moving gas emits heat and light, making these galaxies much brighter than they would be if that light emanated just from stars. This extra light can make it appear that the galaxies contain many more stars, and hence are more massive, than we would otherwise estimate. When scientists remove these galaxies, dubbed “little red dots” (based on their red color and small size), from the analysis, the remaining early galaxies are not too massive to fit within predictions of the standard model.

However, there are still roughly twice as many massive galaxies in Webb’s data of the early Universe than expected from the standard model. One possible reason might be that stars formed more quickly in the early Universe than they do today. Star formation happens when hot gas cools enough to succumb to gravity and condense into one or more stars. But as the gas contracts, it heats up, generating outward pressure. In our region of the Universe, the balance of these opposing forces tends to make the star formation process very slow. But perhaps, according to some theories, because the early Universe was denser than today, it was harder to blow gas out during star formation, allowing the process to go faster.

This image shows a small portion of the field observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the CEERS survey. The light from some of them has traveled for over 13 billion years to reach the telescope. Read more about the full CEERS image here.

[Image description: Thousands of galaxies appear in this view, which is set against the black background of space. There are many overlapping objects at various distances. They include large, blue foreground stars, some with eight diffraction spikes, and white and pink spiral and elliptical galaxies. Numerous tiny red dots appear throughout the scene.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin); CC BY 4.0

This gauzy-looking celestial body is UGC 5829, an irregular galaxy that lies about 30 million light-years away. Despite there not being many observations of this relatively faint galaxy, it has the distinction of having a descriptive soubriquet: the Spider Galaxy. Perhaps the distorted galactic arms with their glowing, star-forming tips bring to mind the clawed legs of an arachnid. Somewhat confusingly, there is another, very similarly nicknamed but otherwise entirely distinct, galaxy known as the Spiderweb Galaxy. This galaxy has also been more extensively imaged (notably by Hubble), despite the fact that it lies about 300 times further from Earth than the Spider Galaxy does.

Fortunately, correct galaxy identification does not depend on casual given names. Rather, known galaxies are recorded in at least one catalogue — and often in several — such as the Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies, which gives the Spider Galaxy its more formal title of UGC 5829. This same galaxy also has several different designations in various other catalogues: it is, for example, LEDA 31923 in the Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database; MCG+06-24-006 in the Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies; and SDSS J104242.78+342657.3 in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Catalogue. The Spiderweb Galaxy isn’t recorded in all of the same catalogues — each is necessarily limited in scope — but it is included in the LEDA catalogue as LEDA 2826829. It is evidently simpler to not conflate the dull but distinct names LEDA 31923 and LEDA 2826829, than the fun but easily confused Spider and Spiderweb!

[Image Description: An irregular galaxy, consisting of a large central body of dull-coloured stars, with distorted arms around it. The arms are spotted with brightly glowing pink areas where stars are forming, and bluish gas that is brighter than the galactic core. Two large arms flank the left and right of the body, and smaller streams of stars emerge from the top. Other, distant, galaxies can be seen on the edges of the image.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Tully, M. Messañ CC BY 4.0

This incredible snapshot from Euclid is a revolution for astronomy. The image shows 1000 galaxies belonging to the Perseus Cluster, and more than 100 000 additional galaxies further away in the background, each containing up to hundreds of billions of stars.

Many of these faint galaxies were previously unseen. Some of them are so distant that their light has taken 10 billion years to reach us. By mapping the distribution and shapes of these galaxies, cosmologists will be able to find out more about how dark matter shaped the Universe that we see today.

This is the first time that such a large image has allowed us to capture so many Perseus galaxies in such a high level of detail. Perseus is one of the most massive structures known in the Universe, located ‘just’ 240 million light-years away from Earth, containing thousands of galaxies, immersed in a vast cloud of hot gas. Astronomers demonstrated that galaxy clusters like Perseus can only have formed if dark matter is present in the Universe.

“If no dark matter existed, galaxies would be distributed evenly throughout the Universe,” explains Euclid Consortium scientist Jean-Charles Cuillandre of the CEA Paris-Saclay in France.

Gravity causes dark matter to form filamentary structures often referred to as the cosmic web. The crossing points between dark matter filaments cause galaxies to stick close together, creating a cluster. The cosmic web permeates the whole Universe, and similar structures are seen way beyond Perseus, as far as 12 million light-years away.

Many galaxies in this cluster are already known, but Jean-Charles and his colleagues are interested in the tiny galaxies that were not visible in images from other telescopes.

“We want to see the extremely faint and small galaxies, called dwarf galaxies. They are dominated by older stars that shine in infrared light. According to cosmological simulations, the Universe should contain many more dwarf galaxies than we have found so far. With Euclid, we will be able to see them, if they indeed exist in such a large number as predicted.”

Astronomers also want to study the shapes of these faint galaxies within the cluster and in the background, because their apparent distortions will tell us how dark matter is distributed within the cluster and in the Universe as a whole. This effect is called weak lensing.

In this image we see over 100 000 galaxies beyond the Perseus Cluster, of which over 50 000 can be used to study weak lensing. Euclid's entire sky survey will be 30 000 times larger than this image, resulting in billions of galaxies being imaged.

Another important feature in Euclid’s image of Perseus is the faint light between galaxies in the core of the cluster. This light is caused by free floating stars, a consequence of galaxies interacting with each other. By studying this intra-cluster light, scientists can trace back the history of the cluster. It also shows how dark matter is distributed.

Euclid will observe numerous galaxy clusters like Perseus, all distributed along the cosmic web of dark matter and thereby providing a 3D view of the dark matter distribution in our Universe. The map of the distribution of galaxies over cosmic time will also teach us about dark energy, which accelerates the expansion of the Universe.

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

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

[Image description]

This square astronomical image shows thousands of galaxies across the black expanse of space. The closest thousand or so galaxies belong to the Perseus Cluster. The most prominent members of the cluster are visible in the centre of the image and appear as large galaxies with haloes around them in yellow/white, comparable to streetlamps in a foggy night. The background of this image is scattered with a hundred thousand more distant galaxies of different shapes, ranging in colour from white to yellow to red. Most galaxies are so far away they appear as single points of light. The more distant a galaxy is, the redder it appears.

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

This is a new artist’s impression of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.

Gaia has changed our impression of the Milky Way. Even seemingly simple ideas about the nature of our galaxy’s central bar and the spiral arms have been overturned. Gaia has shown us that it has more than two spiral arms and that they are less prominent than we previously thought. In addition, Gaia has shown that its central bar is more inclined with respect to the Sun.

No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so we can’t take a selfie, but Gaia is giving us the best insight yet of what our home galaxy looks like. Once all of Gaia’s observations collected over the past decade are made available in two upcoming data releases, we can expect an even sharper view of the Milky Way.

Click here to see an animated version of this artist's impression.

[Image Description: A model image of what our home galaxy, the Milky Way, might look like face-on: as viewed from above the disc of the galaxy, with its spiral arms and bulge in full view. In the centre of the galaxy, the bulge shines as a hazy oval, emitting a faint golden gleam. Starting at the central bulge, several glistening spiral arms coil outwards, creating a perfectly circle-shaped spiral. They give the impression of someone having sprinkled pastel purple glitter on the pitch-black background, in the shape of sparkling, curled-up snakes.]

Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The rocket that will launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft to the Moon with the European Service Module on its way to the launchpad in Florida, USA, for its first full test before the Artemis I launch later this year.

The Space Launch Systems rocket (SLS) left the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at around 23:00 CET (22:00 GMT) on 17 March on the start of its 6.5 km trip to Launchpad LC39B.

In the preceding months the Orion spacecraft with European Service Module had been placed on top of the rocket. The first Artemis mission will send Orion to the Moon and back, farther than any human-rated spacecraft has travelled before. ESA’s European Service Module is the powerhouse that fuels and propels Orion, and provides everything needed to keep astronauts alive with water, oxygen, power and temperature control.

Learn more

Credits: ESA–A. Conigli

At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, the Orion vehicle that will be used for Artemis II is getting ready for this first mission to bring humans around the Moon and back in over 50 years.

The vehicle consists of several parts: the conical crew module on top, where the four astronauts will live during the mission; the crew module adapter directly beneath it, connecting the crew module above and service module below; the cylindrical European Service Module, the powerhouse of Orion providing the crew vehicle with electricity, propulsion, thermal control, air and water; and the conical spacecraft adaptor, which connects Orion to the Space Launch System mega Moon rocket.

The Artemis II vehicle stack was moved into a vacuum chamber at the Kennedy Space Center, where it will undergo several tests to ensure it can withstand the harsh conditions of space. The electromagnetic compatibility and interference tests as well as high-altitude vacuum tests will take place in one of two historical chambers also used to test spacecraft during the Apollo era.

Credits: NASA-A. Stevenson

Official portrait of ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer wearing NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuit ahead of his Cosmic Kiss mission to the International Space Station. This spacesuit is worn by astronauts during US spacewalks outside the International Space Station.

Credits: ESA/NASA

Low-cost solar cells developed by Italian company CESI for terrestrial uses can now be employed in space too.

Individually, each business-card-sized solar cell cannot provide sufficient power to do much. But interconnectors allow them to be stringed together and linked into grids, until they are able to generate sufficient current and voltage to satisfy mission power demands.

The strings of solar cells are generally bonded to panels until an entire array is built, either mounted onto a satellite body or as a deployable wing. The individual cells are protected from the harsh space environment by a very thin layer of glass, just 0.1 – 0.15 mm thick.

CESI developed these low-cost solar cells by optimising their manufacturing process. While this means the cells are less efficient than comparable ones on the market, they offer lower cost while maintaining reliability.

Their testing was supported through ESA’s General Support Technology Programme, readying promising products for spaceflight.

Both the individual solar cells and assemblies have now been qualified in accordance with European Cooperation for Space Standardization standards, meaning that after some higher level qualification tests they can be relied on for future space missions.

Credits: CESI

Scene from a recent solar array deployment test of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice.

Each of the two ‘wings’ comprise five 2.5 x 3.5 m panels arranged in a distinctive cross-shape with a total area of 85 square metres. The panels will provide the necessary power to run the spacecraft and operate the science instruments once exploring the Jupiter system. They are also able to withstand temperatures from +110 to -230ºC.

The next step is mechanical testing, where the spacecraft will be vibrated and submitted to sound waves, simulating the extreme stresses of launch.

Juice is scheduled to launch in a 5-25 April 2023 launch window on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou. It will reach Jupiter in 2031 and will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. The mission will characterise these moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats, explore Jupiter’s complex environment in depth, and study the wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the Universe.

Credits: Airbus

This stereoscopic image shows a region of Mars known as Caralis Chaos, where copious water is thought to have once existed in the form of an ancient lake.

It was generated from data captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on 1 January 2024 during orbit 25235. The anaglyph offers a three-dimensional view when viewed using red-green or red-blue glasses.

Read more

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

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over part of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso deep in the Amazon interior.

This image combines three separate radar images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission taken about two years apart to show change in crops and land cover over time.

Unlike images from satellites carrying optical or ‘camera-like’ instruments, images acquired with imaging radar are interpreted by studying the intensity of the backscatter radar signal, which is related to the roughness of the ground.

Here, the first image, from 2 May 2015, is picked out in blue; the second, from 16 March 2017, picks out changes in green; and the third from 18 March 2019 in red; areas in grey depict little or no change between 2015 and 2019.

Ironically, Mato Grosso means ‘great woods’, but, as these coloured rectangular shapes portray, much of the tropical forest has been cut down and given over to farming. While this image only shows a small area, Mato Grosso is one of Brazil’s top cattle-producing and crop-producing states, with the main crops including corn, soya and wheat.

However, although the state has one of the highest historical rates of deforestation in Amazonian Brazil, deforestation is slowing and Mato Grosso is now said to be a global leader in climate-change solutions.

As an advanced radar mission, Copernicus Sentinel-1 can image the surface of Earth through cloud and rain and regardless of whether it is day or night. This makes it ideal for monitoring areas that tend to be covered by cloud such as rainforests.

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

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2015-19), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Arrival of the upper composite of the Soyuz launcher that will lift ESA’s Cheops mission into space at the launch pad ahead of its integration on the 3-stage section of the launcher, which is already positioned in the final launch position. This photo was taken on 12 December. Launch is scheduled for 18 December from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The upper composite, enveloped by the fairing, comprises the Fregat and all passengers – the Italian space agency’s Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation satellite, Cheops, and three CubeSats: ESA’s OPS-SAT and the French space agency’s CNES's EYE-SAT and ANGELS satellites. The fairing sticker includes, among others, the ESA and Cheops mission logos and the winning design of the Cheops fairing sticker competition, on the left, created by Denis Vrenko.

More about Cheops

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG/S Martin

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

Appearing within the boundless darkness of space, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s snapshot of NGC 34 looks more like an otherworldly, bioluminescent creature from the deep oceans than a galaxy. Lying in the constellation Cetus (The Sea Monster), the galaxy’s outer region appears almost translucent, pinpricked with stars and strange wispy tendrils.

The main cause for this galaxy’s odd appearance lies in its past. If we were able to reverse time by a few million years, we would see two beautiful spiral galaxies on a direct collision course. When these galaxies collided into one another, their intricate patterns and spiral arms were permanently disturbed. This image shows the galaxy's bright centre, a result of this merging event that has created a burst of new star formation and lit up the surrounding gas. As the galaxies continue to intertwine and become one, NGC 34’s shape will become more like that of an peculiar galaxy, devoid of any distinct shape.

In the vastness of space, collisions between galaxies are quite rare events, but they can be numerous in mega-clusters containing hundreds or even thousands of galaxies.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Adamo et al.; CC BY 4.0

This Friday 17 August, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst will be directing this humanoid robot Rollin’ Justin – based in the DLR German Aerospace Center establishment in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany – from aboard the International Space Station, flying at 28 800 km/h and 400 km above Earth.

This latest two-hour test of astronaut-robot cooperation will be webcast from 11:30 CEST (09:30 Station Time, GMT) on Friday. Join us here.

This is the latest experiment in the multi-space-agency METERON (Multi-Purpose End-to-End Robotic Operations Network) project, investigating how astronauts in orbit might oversee robots on alien planets, allowing humans to explore unknown environments without the hazard and expense of landing.

ESA’s Thomas Krueger from the Agency’s Human Robot Interaction Lab explains: “DLR’s Rollin’ Justin possesses a high level of autonomy. For Alexander it will be more like supervising Justin than performing direct remote control.

“He will use his table on ISS to visually identify which items the robot needs to attend to among a set of solar panels on a simulated Martian surface. The operating principle is similar to a point-and-click adventure game, but with exponentially higher stakes of space robotics.”

Principal Investigator for the experiment is Neal Lii of DLR: “Rather than commanding every joint and every movement of the robot, which demands a high mental workload from the human, we rely on the robot’s intelligence to carry out small task packages as commanded by the ISS crew. What we’re looking for with these SUPVIS Justin experiments is demonstrate robots as genuine co-workers, where astronauts give abstract commands that the robots can compute locally then carry out. Our model is supervised autonomy, with astronauts able to manage a team of robots to achieve a given goal.

“This will be our third SUPVIS-Justin orbital experiment. The first was carried out with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli in August last year. Paolo got so excited about it that he actually recruited fellow crewmembers Randy Bresnik and Jack Fischer to try it out as well. NASA astronaut Scott Tingle participated in the second session in March 2018, providing us with some great feedback.

“We want to see how we can make the interaction as easy and intuitive as possible, while building up the complexity of the tasks with each successive ISS-ground experiment. Starting with simpler switching on/off tasks, we have advanced to asset retrieval, installation, and dexterous repairs for this session. These represent some of the most dexterous telerobotic tasks to be commanded from space to date.”

This project is led by DLR’s Robotics and Mechatronics Center together with ESA’s Human Robot Interaction Lab, with partners including DLR's German Space Operations Center, ESA's European Astronaut Centre, the Danish Aerospace Company, Airbus and NASA.

Credits: DLR

The third Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite, Sentinel-1C, has launched aboard a Vega-C rocket, flight VV25, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 5 December 2024 at 22:20 CET (18:20 local time).

Sentinel-1C extends the legacy of its predecessors, delivering high-resolution radar imagery to monitor Earth’s changing environment, supporting a diverse range of applications and advance scientific research. Additionally, Sentinel-1C introduces new capabilities for detecting and monitoring maritime traffic.

The launch also marks Vega-C’s ‘return to flight’, a key step in restoring Europe’s independent access to space. Vega-C is the evolution of the Vega family of rockets and delivers increased performance, greater payload volume and improved competitiveness.

Credits: ESA–M. Pédoussaut

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This colour-coded topographic image of the Jovis Tholus shield volcano and surrounding features was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express. It is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right. North is up.

The ground resolution is approximately 17 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 242°E/19°N.

Read more

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

Fifth-grade students from Emerson Elementary School in Maywood, Illinois, place cardboard boxes over their heads to shield their eyes from the sun, 1963