“Articles on Space Exploration, Quizzes, Puzzles, Humor” and dozens of Factoids like the following:

“Just how heavy is this sphere called earth? Well, in round figures, it totals 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons! Huge as it is, the earth rushes rapidly across the heavens. Each day, it rotates on its axis – making the complete spin in just four minutes less than 24 hours. It is also moving at the terrific speed of 18.5 miles per second in its long voyage around the sun. This trip – which takes place once a year – covers 600 million miles. . .”

[Note: Then there's the journey around the Milky Way. Our sun and solar system orbit the Milky Way at the dizzying speed of 143 miles per second, completing an orbit in 230 million years.]

Webb’s infrared image of the galaxy cluster El Gordo (“the Fat One”) reveals hundreds of galaxies, some never before seen at this level of detail. El Gordo acts as a gravitational lens, distorting and magnifying the light from distant background galaxies. Two of the most prominent features in the image include the Thin One, highlighted in box A, and the Fishhook, a red swoosh highlighted in box B. Both are lensed background galaxies. The insets at right show zoomed-in views of both objects.

[Image description: The left two-thirds of the frame shows a field of small galaxies on a black background. Near the center of the image, a long, thin line is outlined with a white box and labeled A. At upper right, a red swoosh nearly encircling two galaxies is outlined with a white box and labeled B. The right third of the frame shows zoomed in views of the two regions in the boxes. At top in box A, a thin mottled line extends from upper left to lower right with a handful of background objects. At bottom in box B, a red swoosh wraps around from upper left to lower right, nearly encircling two small galaxies located at one o’clock and seven o’clock.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria), B. Frye (University of Arizona), P. Kamieneski (Arizona State University), T. Carleton (Arizona State University), and R. Windhorst (University of Arizona), A. Pagan (STScI), J. Summers (Arizona State University), J. D’Silva (University of Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), A. Robotham (University of Western Australia), and R. Windhorst (University of Arizona)

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

The next evolution and upgrade of the solid rocket motor that propels both Vega-C and Ariane 6 launchers off the launch pad was tested at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 24 April 2025 on the solid-propellant booster test stand (BEAP) operated by the French Space Agency (CNES).

Firing for over two minutes the P160C completed the full hot-fire test expending all its solid-propellant as it will on a launch.

After ignition P160C delivered a maximum thrust of about 4700 kN, as expected for liftoff and the first phase of flight. According to initial recorded data, the performance met expectations. A full analysis of these test results and inspection of all components will confirm the design and provide the main justification elements for the rocket motor qualification for flight.

P160C is the larger version of the P120C rocket motor that is used as a booster for Ariane 6 and as a first stage motor for Vega-C. P160C holds 167 tonnes of solid propellant, 14 more than P120C and is a meter taller.

The P160C will allow Ariane 6 and Vega-C to launch heavier payloads and to different orbits and destinations, and it is also set to be used on the next generation in the Vega rocket family called Vega-E. The rocket motor is one of the most powerful one-piece motors in production in the world, the shell is wound in one go with a carbon-fibre composite.

The “P” in its name stands for “Powder”, as the 3.4-m cylinder houses solid propellant. The number 160 designates the 160 tonnes of propellant inside, and the C stands for “Common” as the motor is used on the two launchers.

P160C is developed by Europropulsion under contract from ArianeGroup and Avio who are developing the Ariane 6 launcher systems and Vega launcher systems for ESA. The recent test was on qualification model 3 (QM3), continuing the naming from the three models of P120C testing: a development model (DM); a first qualification model (QM1) configured for Vega-C; and a second qualification model (QM2) configured for Ariane 6.

France’s space agency CNES conducted the static fire test on the solid rocket motor test stand at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Video du CSG-S. Martin

This velocity map, also called a ‘tachogram', shows the line-of-sight speed and direction of movement of material at the Sun's visible surface. Blue regions are moving towards the spacecraft and red regions are moving away. It was measured by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) onboard the Solar Orbiter spacecraft on 22 March 2023.

While the map clearly shows the Sun's rotation about its axis, it also shows how material is flung out around sunspots. These sunspots are caused by magnetic fields breaking through the visible surface (photosphere) of the Sun.

The major flow pattern in sunspots is called the Evershed flow, seen in the ring around the centre of the sunspots and is always directed radially outwards from spot centre. There are both red and blue patches in the Solar Orbiter image because of the spacecraft's viewing angle. Depending on the location of the spot with respect to the spacecraft, material is flowing either away from the line of sight of the PHI instrument, or towards it.

Assembled from multiple high-resolution images taken by the PHI instrument, the diameter of the Sun's disc is spanned by around 8000 pixels. It is one image of a set of four, representing the first high-resolution full-disc views of the Sun from PHI and an image of the Sun's corona taken by Solar Orbiter's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI).

Read the full story here

Credits: ESA & ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/PHI Team

; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Image processing by PHI Team members at MPS

Post-flight news conference at ESA's European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. From left to right: ESA Director for Human and Robotic Exploration David Parker, ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, Walther Pelzer, Director General of the German Space Agency at DLR.

Credits: ESA

Here the ground has collapsed, opening up to reveal a hollow tube. Lava tubes form when the upper surface of a lava flow cools quicker than the middle of the flow, producing an insulating crust that keeps the inner lava hotter and fluid. The outside crystallizes and hardens into a shell, making a tube for hotter lava to pass through.

The main focus of the third session of Pangaea is volcanism. Lessons on the first day emphasized types of lavas and volcanoes found across Earth, Mars and the Moon.

ESA’s Pangaea training course prepares astronauts and space engineers to identify planetary geological features for future missions to the Moon, Mars and asteroids.

Leading European planetary geologists share their insights into the geology of the Solar System.

Through Pangaea, Europe is developing operational concepts for surface missions where astronauts and robots work together, among themselves and with scientists and engineers on Earth, using the best field geology and planetary observation techniques.

More about Pangaea

Stay tuned on the blog

Credits: ESA–A. Romeo

A gigantic cold front in the Perseus galaxy cluster has been observed by a trio of X-ray telescopes.

The ancient cold front can be seen at the left of the image, drifting away from the inner, younger front closer to the centre. Galactic cold fronts are nothing like the cold fronts we experience on Earth – instead they are caused by galaxy clusters colliding into one another. The gravitational pull of a larger cluster tugs a smaller cluster closer, resulting in gas in the core of the cluster being sloshed around like liquid in a glass. This creates a cold front in a spiral pattern moving outwards from the core and these sloshing cold fronts can provide a probe of the intercluster medium.

Cold fronts are the oldest coherent structures in cool core clusters and this one has been moving away from the centre of the cluster for over five billion years – longer than our Solar System has been in existence. The long curving structure spans around two million light years and is travelling at around 50 kilometres per second.

The image combines data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray observatory, ESA's XMM-Newton and the German Aerospace Centre-led ROSAT satellite. Chandra also took a separate close-up of the upper left of the cold front, revealing some unexpected details.

The Perseus galaxy cluster contains thousands of galaxies and a supermassive black hole at the centre. The black hole is responsible for creating a harsh environment of sound waves and turbulence that should erode a cold front over time, smoothing out the previously sharp edges and creating gradual changes in density and temperature. Instead, the high-resolution Chandra image showed a surprisingly sharp edge on the cold front, and a temperature map revealed that the upper left of the cold front is split in two.

The sharpness of the cold front suggests it has been preserved by strong magnetic fields wrapped around it, essentially acting as a shield against the harsh environment. This magnetic "draping" prevents the cold front from diffusing and is what has allowed it to survive so well for over five billion years as it drifts away from the centre of the cluster.

More about this object

Explore XMM-Newton data

Credits: NASA/CXC/GSFC/S. Walker, ESA/XMM, ROSAT

Cerberus Fossae can be seen in 3D when viewed using red–green or red–blue glasses.

The anaglyph was derived from data acquired by the nadir channel and the stereo channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express on 27 January 2018 during orbit 17813. The image is centred at about 159°E/10°N.

More information

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

This oblique perspective view looks across a part of Mars nicknamed Inca City (formally named Angustus Labyrinthus). The reason for this is no mystery, with the linear network of ridges being reminiscent of Inca ruins. Traces of features known as ‘spiders’ can be seen; these small, dark features form as carbon dioxide gas warms up in sunlight and breaks through slabs of overlying ice.

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.

Read more

[Image description: This rectangular image shows part of the martian surface as if the viewer is looking down and across the landscape, with the irregular, mottled ground appearing in swirled tones of brown and tan.]

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

ESA’s Mars Express has used radar signals bounced through underground layers of ice to identify a pond of water buried below the surface.

This image shows an example radar profile for one of 29 orbits over the 200 x 200 km study region in the south polar region of Mars. The bright horizontal feature at the top corresponds to the icy surface of Mars. Layers of the south polar layered deposits – layers of ice and dust – are seen to a depth of about 1.5 km. Below is a base layer that in some areas is even much brighter than the surface reflections, while in other places is rather diffuse. The brightest reflections from the base layer – close to the centre of this image – are centred around 193°E/81°S in all intersecting orbits, outlining a well-defined, 20 km wide subsurface anomaly that is interpreted as a pond of liquid water.

More information

Credits: ESA/NASA/JPL/ASI/Univ. Rome; R. Orosei et al 2018

An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have made new measurements of Uranus' interior rotation rate with a novel technique, achieving a level of accuracy 1000 times greater than previous estimates. By analysing more than a decade of Hubble observations of Uranus' aurorae, researchers have refined the planet’s rotation period and established a crucial new reference point for future planetary research.

Determining a planet’s interior rotation rate is challenging, particularly for a world like Uranus, where direct measurements are not possible. A team led by Laurent Lamy (of LIRA, Observatoire de Paris-PSL and LAM, Aix-Marseille Univ., France), developed an innovative method to track the rotational motion of Uranus’ aurorae: spectacular light displays generated in the upper atmosphere by the influx of energetic particles near the planet’s magnetic poles. This technique revealed that Uranus completes a full rotation in 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 52 seconds — 28 seconds longer than the estimate obtained by NASA’s Voyager 2 during its 1986 flyby.

“Our measurement not only provides an essential reference for the planetary science community but also resolves a long-standing issue: previous coordinate systems based on outdated rotation periods quickly became inaccurate, making it impossible to track Uranus’ magnetic poles over time,” explains Lamy. “With this new longitude system, we can now compare auroral observations spanning nearly 40 years and even plan for the upcoming Uranus mission.”

This breakthrough was made possible thanks to Hubble’s long-term monitoring of Uranus. Over more than a decade, Hubble has regularly observed its ultraviolet auroral emissions, enabling researchers to track the position of the magnetic poles with magnetic field models.

“The continuous observations from Hubble were crucial,” says Lamy. “Without this wealth of data, it would have been impossible to detect the periodic signal with the level of accuracy we achieved.”

Unlike the aurorae of Earth, Jupiter, or Saturn, Uranus’ aurorae behave in a unique and unpredictable manner. This is due to the planet’s highly tilted magnetic field, which is significantly offset from its rotational axis. The findings not only help astronomers understand Uranus’ magnetosphere but also provide vital information for future missions.

The Planetary Science Decadal Survey in the US prioritized the Uranus Orbiter and Probe concept for future exploration.

These findings set the stage for further studies that will deepen our understanding of one of the most mysterious planets in the Solar System. With its ability to monitor celestial bodies over decades, the Hubble Space Telescope continues to be an indispensable tool for planetary science, paving the way for the next era of exploration at Uranus.

Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA, L. Lamy, L. Sromovsky; CC BY 4.0

This new Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an astounding number of galaxies. The objects in this frame span an incredible range of distances, from stars within our own Milky Way, marked by diffraction spikes, to galaxies billions of light-years away.

The star of this image is a group of galaxies, the largest concentration of which can be found just below the centre of this image. These galaxies glow with white-gold light. We see this galaxy group as it appeared when the Universe was 6.5 billion years old, a little less than half the Universe’s current age.

More than half of the galaxies in our Universe belong to galaxy groups like the one pictured here. Studying galaxy groups is critical for understanding how individual galaxies link up to form galaxy clusters, the largest gravitationally bound structures in the Universe. Belonging to a galaxy group can also alter the course of a galaxy’s evolution through mergers and gravitational interactions.

The galaxy group pictured here is the most massive group in what’s called the COSMOS-Web field. COSMOS stands for Cosmic Evolution Survey. This survey has enlisted several telescopes, including Webb, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory to gaze deeply at a single patch of sky.

COSMOS-Web aims to understand how massive structures like galaxy clusters came to be. Webb’s infrared capabilities and sensitive instruments have pushed the search for galaxy groups farther back into cosmic history, revealing galaxy groups as far back as when the Universe was only 1.9 billion years old — just 14% of its current age.

This image combines infrared data from Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) instrument with further infrared observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The X-ray data, shown in purple, highlights the presence of hot gas concentrated within the X-ray galaxy group. These X-ray data come from ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory, with contributions from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

This image presents a visual feast of galaxies. Take a moment to zoom in and examine the galactic buffet: you’ll see galaxies with delicate spiral arms or warped disks, galaxies with smooth, featureless faces, and even galaxies that are interacting or merging and have taken on an array of strange shapes.

The range of colours is also fascinating, representing both galaxies with different ages of stars — younger stars appear bluer, and older stars appear redder — as well as galaxies at different distances. The more distant a galaxy, the redder it appears.

COSMOS-Web is a 255-hour Webb Treasury programme that maps 0.54 square degrees (a little more than two-and-a-half times the area covered by three full moons) of the COSMOS field using four NIRCam filters. Treasury programmes have the potential to answer multiple important questions about our Universe.

COSMOS-Web has three key goals: to identify galaxies during the epoch of reionization, when the first stars and galaxies reionized the Universe’s hydrogen gas; to probe the formation of the Universe’s most massive galaxies; and to understand how the relationship between the mass of a galaxy’s stars and the mass of its extended galactic halo evolves over the course of cosmic history.

[Image Description: An area of deep space with thousands of galaxies in various shapes and sizes on a black background. A few gold-coloured galaxies are bunched closely together in the centre. A large, translucent purple cloud lies over the galaxies, thickest across the centre where the gold galaxies sit, and fainter up to the right. This shows where X-rays are emitted by hot gas in the group of galaxies.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco, and the COSMOS-Web team; CC BY 4.0

Euclid’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) is a completely new development in Europe, and it is responsible for ensuring the mission points with precision, performing all the ‘slews’ (rotations) that a six-year survey mission requires.

The FGS is an onboard instrument equipped with optical sensors that image the sky from the sides of the ‘field of view’ of Euclid’s VISible instrument (VIS). The sensor uses guide stars to navigate and feeds this data into the spacecraft's Attitude and Orbit Control System to orient and maintain the telescope's precise pointing.

Before launch, the Sensor was rigorously tested, but nothing compares to the true sky under real space conditions. Cosmic rays – high energy radiation originating from the Universe and from solar flares from our Sun – sometimes caused ‘artefacts’ or false signals to appear in Euclid's observations. These false signals intermittently outnumbered real stars and Euclid's Sensor failed to resolve star patterns that it needed to navigate. This led to some interesting test results!

The most ‘loopy’ show an extreme case of Euclid failing to lock into place while observing a star field, resulting in an image of swirling star trails and ‘lassos’ as the spacecraft tried to home in on its target. Clearly, to reveal hard-to-see, subtle patterns in distant galaxies and star clusters, this won’t do. Teams got to work to come up with a fix.

The software patch was tested first on Earth with an electric model of Euclid and a simulator, then for ten days in orbit. The signs were positive, as more and more stars revealed themselves.

“Our industrial partners – Thales Alenia Space and Leonardo – went back to the drawing board and revised the way the Fine Guidance Sensor identifies stars. After a major effort and in record time, we were provided with new on-board software to be installed on the spacecraft,” explains Micha Schmidt, Euclid Spacecraft Operations Manager.

“We carefully tested the software update step by step under real flight conditions, with realistic input from the Science Operations Centre for observation targets, and finally the go-ahead was given to re-start the Performance Verification phase.”

Giuseppe Racca, Euclid Project Manager adds; “The performance verification phase that was interrupted in August has now fully restarted and all the observations are carried out correctly. This phase will last until late November, but we are confident that the mission performance will prove to be outstanding and the regular scientific survey observations can start thereafter.”

Credits: ESA / Euclid Consortium / TAS-I, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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 the European 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 - S.Corvaja

ESA's newly selected astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 arrived at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, on 3 April 2023 to begin their 12-month basic training.

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

The astronaut candidates will be trained to the highest level of standards in preparation for future space missions. During basic training, this includes learning all about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalk and survival training.

This image shows the candidates an Australian astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg, joining the group under agreement with Australian Space Agency, on their first day at the European Astronaut Centre, ready to embark on their journey to become certified ESA astronauts.

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

This is the launcher that will transport BepiColombo to orbit. The upper part with the spacecraft and the fairing will be integrated in the ‘final assembly building’.

The image captures the transfer of the Ariane 5 launcher from the ‘launcher integration building’ to the ‘final assembly building’ at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou last week.

BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It is the first European mission to Mercury, the smallest and least explored planet in the inner Solar System, and the first to send two spacecraft to make complementary measurements of the planet’s dynamic environment at the same time.

Launch is currently scheduled for 01:45 GMT on 20 October. Check for updates and follow the launch live

Credits: ESA-H. Ritter

This new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features a rare cosmic phenomenon called an Einstein ring. What at first appears to be a single, strangely shaped galaxy is actually two galaxies that are separated by a large distance. The closer foreground galaxy sits at the center of the image, while the more distant background galaxy appears to be wrapped around the closer galaxy, forming a ring.

Einstein rings occur when light from a very distant object is bent (or ‘lensed’) about a massive intermediate (or ‘lensing’) object. This is possible because spacetime, the fabric of the Universe itself, is bent by mass, and therefore light travelling through space and time is bent as well. This effect is much too subtle to be observed on a local level, but it sometimes becomes clearly observable when dealing with curvatures of light on enormous, astronomical scales. Such as when the light from one galaxy is bent around another galaxy or galaxy cluster.

When the lensed object and the lensing object are perfectly aligned, the result is the distinctive Einstein ring shape. This appears as a full circle (as seen here) or a partial circle of light around the lensing object, depending on the precision of the alignment. Objects like these are the ideal laboratory in which to research galaxies too faint and distant to otherwise see.

The lensing galaxy at the center of this Einstein ring is an elliptical galaxy, as can be seen from the galaxy’s bright core and smooth, featureless body. This galaxy belongs to a galaxy cluster named SMACSJ0028.2-7537. The lensed galaxy wrapped around the elliptical galaxy is a spiral galaxy. Even though its image has been warped as its light travelled around the galaxy in its path, individual star clusters and gas structures are clearly visible.

The Webb data used in this image were taken as part of the Strong Lensing and Cluster Evolution (SLICE) survey (programme 5594), which is led by Guillaume Mahler at University of Liège in Belgium, and consists of a team of international astronomers. This survey aims to trace 8 billion years of galaxy cluster evolution by targeting 182 galaxy clusters with Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera instrument. This image also incorporates data from two of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

[Image Description: In the centre is an elliptical galaxy, seen as an oval-shaped glow around a small bright core. Around this is wrapped a broad band of light, appearing like a spiral galaxy stretched and warped into a ring, with bright blue lines drawn through it where the spiral arms have been stretched into circles. A few distant objects are visible around the ring on a black background.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler; CC BY 4.0

Acknowledgements: M. A. McDonald

When the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton pointed its telescope at two unidentified sources of light in the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud, scientists were able to confirm what seemed an unlikely discovery. They found two supernova remnants in the far reaches of our neighbouring galaxy.

The two objects that XMM-Newton looked at are shown as the two circles in the lower left of this visible-light image of the Large Magellanic Cloud: J0624-6948 (orange, higher in the image) and J0614-7251 (blue, lower in the image). The yellow crosses represent supernova remnants that had been found before.

It is surprising that these two sources of light turned out to be supernova remnants, far away from all other echoes of stellar explosions that we knew of before. Scientists believe, that for the shock of a supernova to leave such an imprint on its surroundings, the dying star must be in an environment that is dense enough with charged particles (ionised gas). This is not usually the type of gas we find so far in the outer reaches of a galaxy.

This is one of the new things we can learn from XMM-Newton’s discovery: The environment around the Large Magellanic Cloud is made up of more electrically charged gas than we would expect. The reason for this likely lies in how the galaxy is interacting with the Milky Way and the Small Magellanic Cloud. In this way, these two supernova remnants are helping us to better understand the dynamics of our home galaxy’s neighbourhood.

XMM-Newton observed the two remnants in three different types of X-ray light. This resulted in the three colours (yellow, purple and blue) in the images that appear when clicking on the two circles. They give an indication of the chemical elements that are most common in different parts of the remnants.

The yellow colour that is for example dominant in the centre of J0614-7251 tells us that this part of the supernova remnant is made up mostly of iron. This clue allowed scientists to classify this remnant for the very first time as the result of a Type-Ia supernova. This was possible because the new image by XMM-Newton shows enough detail to distinguish the inner circle and outer ring of the remnant clearly enough.

Find the scientific paper about this discovery here.

[Image Description: A vast sea of speckles of stars against a faded black background. In the centre of the image, the stars cluster to form a bright and dense green cottoncandy-colored haze, that is the Large Magellanic Cloud. Scattered across the middle of the image are about 50 small yellow crosses, some of them are so close to one another that they almost overlap. In the lower left quarter of the image, two circles were drawn that lay wide apart: an orange circle towards the horizontal middle of the image, and a blue one to the lower right of it.]

Credits: Eckhard Slawik, ESA/XMM-Newton/M. Sasaki et al (2025)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

F. Zangrandi

ESA’s Hera mission lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA, on 7 October at 10:52 local time (16:52 CEST, 14:52 UTC).

Hera is ESA’s first planetary defence mission. It will fly to a unique target among the 1.3 million asteroids in our Solar System – the only body to have had its orbit shifted by human action – to solve lingering unknowns associated with its deflection.

Hera will carry out the first detailed survey of a ‘binary’ – or double-body – asteroid, 65803 Didymos, which is orbited by a smaller body, Dimorphos. Hera’s main focus will be Dimorphos, whose orbit around the main body was previously altered by NASA’s kinetic-impacting DART spacecraft.

By sharpening scientific understanding of this ‘kinetic impact’ technique of asteroid deflection, Hera should turn the experiment into a well-understood and repeatable technique for protecting Earth from an asteroid on a collision course.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Closing the fairing for the first flight of Ariane 6 at the encapsulation hall in Europe's Spaceport, French Guiana, 6 June 2024.

This fairing for Ariane 6 will ensure the cargo is kept at a nice ambient temperature and humidity while also protecting it from the elements. It also provides a sleek aerodynamic shape to help Ariane 6 overcome the atmosphere as it thunders upwards to space. It is 5.4 m wide and 14 m tall and adapted to carry the widest array of space missions.

The fairing consists of two huge half-shells, made in one piece from carbon-glass fibre composite which is ‘cured’ in an industrial oven, reducing cost and speeding up production. Fewer parts allow for horizontal as well as vertical assembly of the closed fairing and the launch vehicle, which is particularly important for Ariane 6.

Ariane 6 is Europe’s new heavy lift launch vehicle replacing its extremely successful predecessor, Ariane 5. Modular and agile, Ariane 6 has a reignitable upper stage allowing it to launch multiple missions on different orbits on a single flight.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup/Optique Vidéo du CSG - S.Martin

On the first day of the 15th annual European Space Weather Week, this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope fittingly shows a striking occurrence of celestial weather in the outer reaches of the Solar System: an aurora on Uranus.

Auroras, also known as polar lights, are a relatively familiar type of space weather to Earth-based stargazers, but have also been spied on many other planets in the Solar System.

Views of the Earth’s Northern and Southern Lights show glowing sheets and rippling waves of bright light painting the sky in striking shades of green and even red, blue, and purple; these breath-taking scenes are created as streams of energetic charged particles hit the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere at altitudes of up to a few hundreds of kilometres, and interact with resident atoms and molecules of mostly oxygen and nitrogen. These emit photons at specific visible wavelengths or colours – green and red for oxygen, blue and purple for nitrogen – and fill the sky with an eerie auroral glow.

Hubble has observed auroras on Uranus on various occasions: in 2011, when the telescope became the first to image the phenomenon from the vicinity of Earth, then again in 2012 and 2014, taking extra data beyond visible light.

By pointing Hubble’s ultraviolet eye on Uranus twice during the same month, from 1 to 5 and 22 to 24 November 2014, scientists were able to determine that the planet’s glimmering auroras rotate along with the planet. The observations also helped to locate Uranus’ magnetic poles, and allowed scientists to track two so-called interplanetary shocks that propagated through the Solar System. These shocks were triggered by two powerful bursts of material flung out by the Sun via the solar wind, an ongoing flow of charged particles constantly emanating from our star, and caused the most intense auroras ever seen on Uranus.

This image, originally published in 2017, shows the auroras as wispy patches of white against the planet’s azure blue disc, and combines optical and ultraviolet observations from Hubble with archive data from NASA’s Voyager 2 probe. Voyager 2 was the first and only craft to visit the outermost planets in the Solar System; it flew past Uranus in January 1986, and past Neptune in August 1989. These icy planets have not been visited since. NASA and ESA have been studying a possible joint mission that would target the two ice giant planets in order to explore their intriguing role in our planetary system.

European Space Weather Week runs from 5 to 9 November 2018, and brings together engineers, scientists, specialists, and professionals from across the continent in order to exchange news, ideas, and strategies on space weather and protecting Earth’s cosmic environment.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Lamy / Observatoire de Paris

ESA's deep space tracking station in Malargüe, Argentina, receives signals from a distant spacecraft on a cold winter day in the southern hemisphere.

Credits: ESA / Filippo Concaro

Portrait of ESA astronaut candidate: Pablo Álvarez Fernández

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

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

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

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

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

ESA’s Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), the centre-bottom box in this image, is seen here after its installation in SpaceX Dragon’s open cargo carrier ahead of next week’s launch. On 2 April, a Falcon 9 rocket will deliver this instrument to the International Space Station to begin its mission of chasing down elusive electrical discharges in the atmosphere.

For years, their existence has been debated: elusive electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere were reported by pilots, but these ‘transient luminous events’, also known as red sprites, blue jets, and elves, are difficult to study because they occur above thunderstorms.

Satellites have probed them and observations have even been made from mountain tops but their viewing angle is not ideal for gathering data on large scales.

Then, in 2015, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen managed to record many kilometre-wide blue flashes around 18 km altitude, including a pulsating blue jet reaching 40 km from the International Space Station. A video recorded by Andreas as he flew over the Bay of Bengal at 28 800 km/h shows the electrical phenomena clearly – a first of its kind.

The Space Station’s low orbit proved again to be the vantage point from which a large part of Earth along the equator could be observed and these sprites and jets could be captured.

Researchers want to investigate the relationship between terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, lightning and high-altitude electric discharges across all seasons by tracking and collecting data continuously for at least two years.

Aside from being a little-understood phenomenon and part of our world, these powerful events can reach high above the stratosphere and have implications for how our atmosphere protects us from space radiation.

ASIM is an international project funded by ESA in close collaboration with NASA and is led by a team of scientists from the National Space Institute of the Danish Technical University (DTU Space).

Credits: © 2018 Space Exploration Technologies Corp. All rights reserved

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: USGS/ESA

On 30 March 2025 the European commercial rocket Spectrum, developed and operated by Isar Aerospace, took flight from Andøya Spaceport in Norway and flew for 30 seconds, clearing the launch pad and proving the launch vehicle can achieve one of the hardest parts of space transportation: liftoff.

Isar Aerospace’s two-stage launch vehicle Spectrum is 28 m tall, 2 m in diameter and, with its ten engines, it is targeting to launch payloads of up to 1000 kg to low Earth orbit.

The flight allows Isar Aerospace engineers to analyse all the data they need to tweak their Spectrum launcher for a next flight.

“Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success”, said Isar Aerospace CEO Daniel Metzler, “We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our Flight Termination System.”

“A test-flight is exactly that: a test to gather data, learn and improve. Everything Isar Aerospace achieved today is remarkable and they will have lots of data to analyse. I applaud the teams for getting this far and I am confident that we will see the next Spectrum on the launch pad ready for test-flight 2 liftoff soon,” said ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher.”

Isar Aerospace is a German-based company, building their Spectrum launch vehicle in state-of-the-art production facilities relying on in-house manufacturing.

Initially supported by ESA’s Business Incubation Centre, the company is supported by as part of the Boost! programme that helps commercial initiatives offering transportation services to space, in space, and returning from space.

Credits: Isar Aerospace/Wingmen Media–S. Fischer

To create a 3D map of the Universe, Euclid will observe the light from galaxies out to 10 billion light-years. Most galaxies in the early Universe don’t look like a neat spiral but are irregular and small. They are the building blocks for bigger galaxies like our own.

This first irregular dwarf galaxy that Euclid observed is called NGC 6822 and is located close by, just 1.6 million light-years from Earth. It is a member of the same galaxy cluster as the Milky Way (called the Local Group), and was discovered in 1884. In 1925 Edwin Hubble was the first to identify NGC 6822 as a ‘remote stellar system’ well beyond the Milky Way.

NGC 6822 has been observed many times since, most recently by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. But Euclid is the first to capture the entire galaxy and its surroundings in high resolution in about one hour, which would not be possible with telescopes on the ground (the atmosphere prevents this sharpness) or with Webb (which makes very detailed images of small parts of the sky).

One interesting aspect of this galaxy is that its stars contain low amounts of elements that are not hydrogen and helium. These heavier, ‘metal’ elements are produced by stars over their lifetimes and are therefore not very common in the early Universe (before the first generation of stars had been born, lived and died).

“By studying low-metallicity galaxies like NGC 6822 in our own galactic neighbourhood, we can learn how galaxies evolved in the early Universe,” explains Euclid Consortium scientist Leslie Hunt of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy, on behalf of a broader team working on showcasing galaxies imaged by Euclid.

In addition to studying the star-formation history of this galaxy, which can now be done thanks to the colour information from Euclid’s near-infrared instrument and its wide field of view, scientists have already spotted many globular star clusters in this image that reveal clues as to how the galaxy was assembled.

Globular clusters are collections of hundreds of thousands of stars held together by gravity. They are some of the oldest objects in the Universe, and most of their stars were all formed out of the same cloud. That’s why they hold the ‘fossil records’ of the first star-formation episodes of their host galaxies. See also Euclid’s first image of globular cluster NGC 6397.

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

The cutout from the full view of NGC 6822 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 NGC 6822 at the highest definition can be explored on ESASky.

[Image description]

This square astronomical image is speckled with numerous stars visible across the black expanse of space. Most stars are visible only as pinpoints. More stars are crowding the centre of the image, visible as an irregular round shape. This is an irregular galaxy. The centre of the galaxy appears whiter and the edges yellower. Several pink bubbles are visible spread throughout the galaxy. The stars across the entire image range in colour from blue to white to yellow/red, across a black background of space. Blue stars are younger and red stars are older. A few of the stars are a bit larger than the rest, with six diffraction spikes.

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

This image of the stellar jet in Sh2-284, captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

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 to the direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year, and arcsec (It takes 1.1 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the scale bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers.

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

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[Image description: Image titled “James Webb Space Telescope; Stellar Jet; SH2-284,” with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key. Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The east arrow points toward 10 o’clock. The north arrow points in the 2 o’clock direction. At the bottom left is a scale bar labeled 1.1 light-years, 15 arcsec. The length of the scale bar is about one sixth of the total image. Below the image is a color key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter. From left to right: F162M and 182M are blue, F200W and F356W are green, and F405N and F470N are red.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Y. Cheng (NAOJ), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike the menagerie of weird and wonderful spiral galaxies with ragged or disrupted spiral arms, grand-design spiral galaxies boast prominent, well-developed spiral arms like the ones showcased in this image. This galactic portrait was captured by Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam).

In this image, the dark red features trace the filamentary warm dust, while colours of red, orange, and yellow show the sign spots of ionised gas by the recently formed star clusters. Stellar feedback has a dramatic effect on the medium of the galaxy and create complex network of bright knots as well as cavernous black bubbles.

M51 — also known as NGC 5194 — lies about 27 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici, and is trapped in a tumultuous relationship with its near neighbour, the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195. The interaction between these two galaxies has made these galactic neighbours one of the better-studied galaxy pairs in the night sky. The gravitational influence of M51’s smaller companion is thought to be partially responsible for the stately nature of the galaxy’s prominent and distinct spiral arms. If you would like to learn more about this squabbling pair of galactic neighbours, you can explore earlier observations of M51 by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope here.

This Webb observation of M51 is one of a series of observations collectively titled Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers, or FEAST. The FEAST observations were designed to shed light on the interplay between stellar feedback and star formation in environments outside of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Stellar feedback is the term used to describe the outpouring of energy from stars into the environments which form them, and is a crucial process in determining the rates at which stars form. Understanding stellar feedback is vital to building accurate universal models of star formation.

The aim of the FEAST observations is to discover and study stellar nurseries in galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. Before Webb became operative, other observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimetre Array in the Chilean desert and Hubble have given us a glimpse of star formation either at the onset (tracing the dense gas and dust clouds where stars will form) or after the stars have destroyed with their energy their natal gas and dust clouds. Webb is opening a new window into the early stages of star formation and stellar light, as well as the energy reprocessing of gas and dust. Scientists are seeing star clusters emerging from their natal cloud in galaxies beyond our local group for the first time. They will also be able to measure how long it takes for these stars to pollute with newly formed metals and to clean out the gas (these time scales are different from galaxy to galaxy). By studying these processes, we will better understand how the star formation cycle and metal enrichment are regulated within galaxies as well as what are the time scales for planets and brown dwarfs to form. Once dust and gas is removed from the newly formed stars, there is no material left to form planets.

[Image Description: A large spiral galaxy takes up the entirety of the image. The core is mostly bright white, but there are also swirling, detailed structures that resemble water circling a drain. There is white and pale blue light that emanates from stars and dust at the core’s centre, but it is tightly limited to the core. The rings feature colours of deep red and orange, which are surrounded by cloudier regions of white and grey, with regions of black surrounding the distinct narrow spiral arms.]

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

This Picture of the Week prominently features two galaxies: NGC 3558 in the lower left, and LEDA 83465 in the upper right. Both galaxies lie roughly 450 million light years from Earth. The two galaxies are separated from one another by a distance of roughly 150 000 light years, which might sound vast, until we consider that our nearest galactic neighbour — the Andromeda galaxy — is a whopping 2.5 million light years distant from the Milky Way galaxy. In galactic terms, the two galaxies pictured here are practically on top of one another.

This is because they belong to a crowded and chaotic galaxy cluster known as Abell 1185, which is packed with galaxies that are interacting with one another via gravity. These galactic interactions have sometimes led to dramatic results, such as galaxies being torn apart completely. This fate has not befallen NGC 3558, which currently retains its integrity as both an elliptical galaxy and a low-ionisation nuclear emission-line region, or LINER. In fact, it probably attained its present form by devouring smaller galaxies in the cluster — galaxies much like LEDA 83465.

LINERs are a particular type of galactic nucleus or core, and are distinguished by the chemical fingerprints written into the light that they emit. As their name suggests, LINERs emit light which suggests that many of the atoms and molecules within these galactic cores have either been weakly ionised or not ionised at all. Ionisation is the process by which atoms or molecules lose or gain electrons. In galaxies, it is driven by a variety of processes — from shockwaves travelling through galaxies, to radiation from massive stars or from hot gas in accretion discs. In the case of LINERs, this means that many of the atoms and molecules within the galaxies have lost either a single electron, or have retained all their electrons. The mechanism that drives this weak ionisation in LINERs such as NGC 3558 is still debated amongst astronomers.

[Image Description: Two galaxies are prominent among many much smaller background galaxies in the darkness of space. The larger galaxy is an elliptical galaxy, radiating light in a perfectly even sphere from a bright centre. The smaller galaxy is a barred spiral, with arms that are wispy like fog connected to a bar crossing the galaxy’s shining core. The shape of the arms makes the smaller galaxy notably squarish.]

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

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Nairobi, one of the fastest growing cities in East Africa.

The population of Nairobi has increased significantly in the last 30 years, with rural residents flocking to the city in search of employment. The city, visible in the centre of the image, now has a population of over three million, with the vast majority spread over 200 informal settlements.

Kibera, which can be seen as a light-coloured patch at the south-western edge of the city, is considered one of the largest urban slums in Nairobi. Most residents live in small mud shacks with poor sanitation, a lack of electricity and limited access to clean water.

While migration provides economic benefits to the city, it also creates environmental challenges. Owing to its urbanisation, the city has spread into green spaces such as the nearby parks and forests. In this image, the densely populated area is contrasted with the flat plains of Nairobi National Park, directly south of the city. The 117 sq km of wide-open grass plains is coloured in light-brown. The park is home to lions, leopards, cheetahs and has a black rhino sanctuary.

The dark patches in the image are forests. The Ngong Forest, to the west of the city, includes exotic and indigenous trees, and hosts a variety of wild animals including wild pigs, porcupines, and dik-diks.

To the north of the city, the dark Karura Forest is visible. The 1000 hectare urban forest features a 15-m waterfall, and hosts a variety of animals including bush pigs, bushbucks, suni and harvey’s duiker, as well as some 200 bird species.

Although Africa is responsible for less than 5% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, the majority of the continent is directly impacted by climate change. Rapid population growth and urbanisation also exposes residents to climate risks.

On 14 March 2019, the first regional edition of the One Planet Summit took place at the UN Compound, which is in the north of the city. The One Planet Summit, part of the UN Environment Assembly, focuses on protecting biodiversity, promoting renewable energies and fostering resilience and adaptation to climate change.

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

This image, which was captured on 3 February 2019, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

As delegates gather in Nairobi for the UN Environment Assembly, ESA is saddened by the news of the Ethiopian Airlines accident. Lives lost included those working for organisations also dedicated to achieving a better world for all and who were travelling to the assembly.

Our thoughts are with the families, colleagues and friends of those affected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The constellation of Cassiopeia, named after a vain queen in Greek mythology, forms the easily recognisable "W" shape in the night sky. The central point of the W is marked by a dramatic star named Gamma Cassiopeiae.

The remarkable Gamma Cassiopeiae is a blue-white subgiant variable star that is surrounded by a gaseous disc. This star is 19 times more massive and 65 000 times brighter than our Sun. It also rotates at the incredible speed of 1.6 million kilometres per hour – more than 200 times faster than our parent star. This frenzied rotation gives it a squashed appearance. The fast rotation causes eruptions of mass from the star into a surrounding disk. This mass loss is related to the observed brightness variations.

The radiation of Gamma Cassiopeiae is so powerful that it even affects IC 63, sometimes nicknamed the Ghost Nebula, that lies several light years away from the star. IC 63 is visible in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The colours in the eerie nebula showcase how the nebula is affected by the powerful radiation from the distant star. The hydrogen within IC 63 is being bombarded with ultraviolet radiation from Gamma Cassiopeiae, causing its electrons to gain energy which they later release as hydrogen-alpha radiation – visible in red in this image.

This hydrogen-alpha radiation makes IC 63 an emission nebula, but we also see blue light in this image. This is light from Gamma Cassiopeiae that has been reflected by dust particles in the nebula, meaning that IC 63 is also a reflection nebula.

This colourful and ghostly nebula is slowly dissipating under the influence of ultraviolet radiation from Gamma Cassiopeiae. However, IC 63 is not the only object under the influence of the mighty star. It is part of a much larger nebulous region surrounding Gamma Cassiopeiae that measures approximately two degrees on the sky – roughly four times as wide as the full Moon.

This region is best seen from the Northern Hemisphere during autumn and winter. Though it is high in the sky and visible all year round from Europe, it is very dim, so observing it requires a fairly large telescope and dark skies.

From above Earth's atmosphere, Hubble gives us a view that we cannot hope to see with our eyes. This photo is possibly the most detailed image that has ever been taken of IC 63, and it beautifully showcases Hubble's capabilities.

Read more: The ghost of Cassiopeia [HEIC1818]

Credits: ESA/Hubble, NASA, CC BY 4.0

At 11:12 GMT (13:12 CEST), 6 June 2018, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst was launched into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch went as planned as the 50-m tall Soyuz rocket propelled the astronauts to their cruising speed of around 28 800 km/h. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft accelerated 50 km/h on average.

The spacecraft is an improved model from the last time Alexander was launched into space in 2014 with many technological upgrades to make the spacecraft lighter and more modern. For example, halogen lights have been replaced with LEDs, and newer and larger solar panels increase power generation.

Over the next two days, while circling Earth 34 times, the trio will catch up with the International Space Station where they will spend the next six months. The journey is relatively smooth and quiet after the rigours of launch. With no Internet or satellite phones, the crew relies on radio to communicate at set intervals with ground control.

The German astronaut is a returning visitor to the International Space Station, the first of ESA’s 2009 class of astronauts to be sent into space for a second time. During the second part of his mission Alexander will take over as commander of the International Space Station, only the second time an ESA astronaut will take on this role so far.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The Flight Control and Software Support Teams at ESA's Space Operations Centre in Germany are ensuring that the vital elements are ready for a simulation campaign ahead of the launch of BepiColombo, ESA’s first mission to Mercury in October 2018.

The Flight Control Team rehearsed the post-launch deployment of the Medium Gain Antenna, switching on and checking out the MTM Electric Propulsion System and configuring the spacecraft for cruise mode.

Engineers also checked the Mission Control System, spacecraft simulator, flight control procedures and Operations Control Centre facilities.

The full-scale simulations start on 28 May 2018 and will involve the complete Mission Control Team, including Flight Dynamics colleagues, Project and Industry Support teams and experts from the Estrack network of ground stations.

Credits: ESA / P. Shlyaev

Take a final look at the interior of the first European Service Module that will power NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Technicians at the Airbus facility in Bremen, Germany installed the final radiators and sealed off the module that will provide power and propulsion to Orion.

No more checking under the hood. With integration complete, the module is ready for its final extensive testing. Engineers will put the module through its paces with functional tests that include checking the newly installed radiators and the propulsion system with its intricate pipelines that deliver fuel and oxidiser to the spacecraft’s 33 engines.

The European Service Module (ESM) is ESA’s contribution to NASA’s Orion that will take astronauts to the Moon and even farther out into space. European expertise and knowhow comes together in this module: it provides power and propulsion, oxygen and water, and temperature control from launch through mission duration to just before reentry.

The module will soon be shipped to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, where it will be mated with NASA’s Crew Module Adaptor and Crew Module, the first time the complete spacecraft will be on display. And then even more tests begin.

The spacecraft will be subjected to intense acoustic vibrations in the world’s largest vacuum chamber at NASA’s Plum Brook facility to ensure it withstands the rigor of launch on the world’s most powerful rocket, NASA’s Space Launch Systems.

The first of Orion’s exploratory missions is an unmanned lunar orbit to validate its capabilities in space.

But there is no resting on laurels for the service module’s technicians. They are already hard at work on the second European Service Module that will be the workhorse carting a crew around the Moon for the second exploratory mission.

In addition to returning humans to the moon, Orion will be instrumental to building the Gateway, a staging post to be located in lunar orbit that will allow humans to go deeper into space.

ESA has already commissioned studies to develop modules for the Gateway. One will look into habitation and research modules while another will create a design concept for an infrastructure element that will accommodate refuelling, telecommunications and an airlock.

Looking beyond, ESA is already working on the technologies needed to accomplish the first round-trip mission to Mars and bring precious samples back to laboratories on Earth, one of the most ambitious exploration challenges so far planned.

Europe is also committed to supporting the International Space Station, our outpost in low Earth orbit, expanding its research potential and benefits for Earth by opening it up for business. With commercial services such as ICE Cubes and the soon-to-launch Bartolomeo external platform, ESA is offering quicker and more affordable access to microgravity research.

Read more about Europe’s vision for space exploration here.

Credits: ESA–A. Conigli

Humans in space have a lot to contend with, and for those in low-Earth orbit, space debris is a real concern.

The International Space Station orbits Earth at an altitude of just over 400 km. In the two decades since its launch, 28 'collision avoidance manoeuvres' have been performed in order to dodge space debris, with three taking place in 2020 alone.

If a potential collision appears imminent, and there is no time to move the Station, they can take emergency shelter. To date, five 'shelter-in-place' manoeuvres have taken place, using the docked Soyuz spacecraft.

Find out more about the risk space debris poses to astronauts, including the "clanking" sounds they hear while in orbit, in the joint ESA-UNOOSA podcast that narrates this infographic.

Credits: ESA / UNOOSA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The BepiColombo Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) has returned its first image from space. The view looks along one of the extended solar arrays, which was deployed earlier this morning and confirmed by telemetry. The structure in the bottom left corner is one of the sun sensors on the MTM, with the multi-layered insulation clearly visible.

The transfer module is equipped with three monitoring cameras, which provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The other two cameras will be activated tomorrow and are expected to capture images of the deployed medium- and high-gain antennas onboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO).

The monitoring cameras will be used on various occasions during the cruise phase, notably during the flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury. While the MPO is equipped with a high-resolution scientific camera, this can only be operated after separating from the MTM upon arrival at Mercury in late 2025 because, like several of the 11 instrument suites, it is located on the side of the spacecraft fixed to the MTM during cruise.

BepiColombo launched at 01:45 GMT on 20 October on an Ariane 5. BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA. It is the first European mission to Mercury, the smallest and least explored planet in the inner Solar System, and the first to send two spacecraft to make complementary measurements of the planet and its dynamic environment at the same time.

More about the monitoring cameras.

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

Rollout to the launch pad of the Soyuz rocket with the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft inside, 4 June 2018. The spacecraft will launch ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 6 June.

The 50-m tall Soyuz rocket will propell the astronauts to their cruising speed of around 28 800 km/h. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft accelerated 50 km/h on average.

The rocket is rolled to the launch pad on a train, the astronauts are not allowed to see this part of the launch preparation – it is considered bad luck.

This will be Alexander’s second spaceflight, called Horizons. He will also be the second ESA astronaut to take over command of the International Space Station. The Horizons science programme is packed with European research: over 50 experiments will deliver benefits to people on Earth as well as prepare for future space exploration.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The Quantum satellite is being placed in its transport container at Aibus Toulouse before being shipped to Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guyana on 24 June 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 - M. Pedoussaut

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured the plumes of smoke from the bushfires in Australia. The recent blazes triggered a ‘hazardous’ air quality warning for Sydney – the highest level on Australia’s Air Quality Index.

In this image, captured on 21 November 2019 at 00:02 GMT (11:02 local time), smoke from the Gospers Mountain bushfires, northwest of Sydney, can be seen drifting southwards. Residents with respiratory conditions were advised by authorities to stay indoors, as over 50 people have been treated owing to complications from the smoke.

According to the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, as of 21:00 local time, there were over 60 bush and grass fires burning in New South Wales, of which over 20 still need to be contained. In Victoria, another 60 blazes are burning – although the exact number is unknown as new fires have been sparked by recent lightning.

Hundreds of bushfires have been burning this month in Australia, with the greatest damage seen in New South Wales and Queensland.

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

ESA astronauts Matthias Maurer and Thomas Pesquet train for their upcoming missions to the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA.

A refresher for Thomas and a first for Matthias, the pair are pictured here during emergency vehicle familiarisation training in the International Space Station mockup.

Due to the current situation with COVID-19, all personnel are required to adhere to special safety precautions while training. These include wearing a mask – as seen in the image.

Thomas has been assigned to the second operational flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, launching in spring 2021 from Cape Canaveral, USA, to the International Space Station. He will be the first European to fly on a Crew Dragon alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.

Thomas’ second mission will be called Alpha. This is after Alpha Centauri, the closest stellar system to Earth, following the French tradition to name space missions after stars or constellations. Watch Thomas’ explanation of the name here.

Meanwhile, Matthias is training for his first Space Station mission. Details of that mission are yet to be established, but for now Matthias is training as the backup for Thomas. As the next two ESA astronauts in line for flights, the pair are working to ensure they fully trained and ready.

Matthias will continue his training in Houston over the next weeks and months and is sharing his experience with everyone. Watch Matthias during spacewalk training here.

Wondering how training differs after a trip to space? The guys discuss in the first of a series of Astro Chats.

Credits: NASA–Robert Markowit

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. Several labels indicate the location of our Sun (6 o'clock), various arms and the galaxy bar. The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy present at the top of the image is also labelled.]

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

This image shows shows a region of Mars’ surface named Nilosyrtis Mensae in 3D when viewed using red-green or red-blue glasses. This anaglyph was derived from data obtained by the nadir and stereo channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express during spacecraft orbit 19908. It covers a part of the martian surface centred at about 69°E/31°N. North is to the right.

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

At the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 56 astronauts NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor, Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev and ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst pose in their Sokol suits in front of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft that will launch them into space. They will be launched 6 June for a six-month mission on the International Space Station.

Alexander's mission is called Horizons to evoke exploring our Universe, looking far beyond our planet and broadening our knowledge. His first mission was called Blue Dot. Alexander will take over command of the International Space Station for the second half of his mission. This is only the second time that a European astronaut will take up this leading position on the space outpost – the first was ESA astronaut Frank De Winne in 2009. Alexander Gerst is the 11th German citizen to fly into space.

The science programme is packed with European research: more than 50 experiments will deliver benefits to people back on Earth and prepare for future space exploration.

Credits: NASA–V. Zelentsov

Use red-blue stereo ‘3D’ glasses to best enjoy this view of circular depressions in the southern hemisphere of Mars, exposing layered outcrops in the northern rim of the large Hellas basin

The geology of the Hellas basin is complex with ancient terrains showing evidences of erosion and sedimentary processes, which might be linked to past water activity. Both the shapes of the features revealed by stereo imaging and the mineralogical composition of the finely layered outcrops are key for understanding their formation processes. CaSSIS colour-composite images like these, combined with data from other instruments, help map variations in composition of the surface material.

The image was created from a stereo pairs taken by the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter on 22 December 2018. The image is aligned from left to right along the ground-track of the spacecraft, and is centred at 29.2ºS/66.8ºE.

Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The International Space Station is the platform to study a variety of fields without gravity getting in the way. A new experiment is furthering the Station’s capabilities for investigating exobiology, or the study of life in space.

It is rough out in space for most organisms. Thanks to a number of externally-mounted Expose facilities outside the Station, researchers know just how rough it is by analysing organic samples exposed to solar and cosmic radiation over time.

A number of bacteria, seeds, lichens and algae have been repeatedly frozen, thawed, vacuum-dried and exposed to radiation for months. The samples endured temperature swings from –27oC to +46oC, crossing the freezing point 569 times as they orbited Earth during multiple six-month missions.

Researchers have already found life that can survive spaceflight. Both lichen and small organisms called tardigrades or ‘water bears’ spent months attached outside the International Space Station and returned to Earth alive and well.

Now ESA is looking to take exobiology research to the next level with the Exobiology facility that will be installed on the upcoming Bartolomeo platform outside the European Columbus module on the Space Station.

One of the facility’s main instruments is an ultraviolet-visible spectrometer, for which the SpectroDemo experiment, imaged here during an interface test, is a precursor.

The technology demonstration is set to run for 75 days in the ICE Cube facility, located in Columbus. During this time, researchers will assess critical features of the spectrometer and fibre-optic switch as well as how they work in orbit to help refine the final product.

While humans cannot survive in space without a spacesuit, European research has shown that some life forms can. Their survival supports the idea of ‘panspermia’ – life spreading from one planet to another, or even between star systems. It seems possible that organisms could colonise planets by hitching rides on asteroids.

ESA is probing this intriguing theory via this demonstration and upcoming missions. The findings of this ongoing line of research reveal the limits of life but also teach us how to protect life on Earth.

Credits: OHB

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 the European 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 - S.Corvaja