This image shows a densely packed field of stars, laid on top of a background of dust, gas, and light from more distant celestial objects. The stars take up so much of the field of view in this image that it is a little tricky to discern that you are in fact looking at most of a galaxy, known as ESO 245-5. This galaxy is a relatively close neighbour of the Milky Way, lying at the fairly modest distance of 15 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Phoenix.

Another reason that it is perhaps a little tricky to spot that ESO 245-5 is a galaxy is its apparent lack of structure. We frequently enjoy Hubble’s spectacular images of spiral galaxies, which are so interesting to look at in part because of their seemingly extraordinarily ordered arms of stars, gas and dust. ESO 245-5, in contrast, is classified as an IB(s)m type galaxy under the system of galaxy classification known as the De Vaucouleurs system. The IB(s)m designation specifically means that the galaxy is irregular (I), barred (B), has a slight spiral structure ((s)), and is of the Magellanic type (m).

Irregular in this context is quite intuitive: the galaxy does not appear to have a regular, ordered structure. In fact, essentially the entire view here is covered by the stars of this galaxy. The second term means that the galaxy has a barred shape at its centre: this is the dense stretch of stars that crosses through the centre of this image. The third term says that there are hints of a spiral structure, but nothing clear or definitive (hence the ‘s’ is bracketed). Finally, the last term indicates ESO 245-5’s similarity to the Magellanic clouds, the two dwarf galaxies that are close neighbours of the Milky Way.

[Image Description: An irregular galaxy: a cloud of tiny, point-like stars on a dark background. The cloud is densest along a broad, curved band across the centre of the image, coloured a faint blue with glowing purplish patches, and the stars grow more dense out to the edges but don’t fully vanish. A few distant background galaxies appear among the stars as glowing spots.]

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

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 last steps to the launchpad.

Credits: ESA

Space Science image of the week is this strangely meandering channel, carved on the Moon, is one of the most famous features on our nearest celestial neighbour. It shot to fame in July 1971 when the two astronauts of Apollo 15 drove their lunar rover to its very edge.

Known as Hadley Rille, the feature is named after the 18th century British mathematician and inventor John Hadley. In 1721, Hadley presented a telescope that used a non-spherical mirror to the Royal Society in London. Shaped as a parabola, the mirror avoided the aberration caused by a spherical mirror, and set the shape for all telescope mirrors to come.

Hadley Rille is thought to have been carved by an ancient lava flow, dating back just over 3 billion years to soon after the Moon formed. It stretches more than 120 km, up to 1500 m wide and more than 300 m deep in some places.

From their close-up position, the Apollo astronauts photographed what looked like strata in the walls of the rille. This suggests that there were many volcanic eruptions, each building a new layer. Then, a channel of lava cut through these deposits. When it drained away, it left the sinuous rille we see today. However, planetary scientists are not entirely sure of the details of the process.

This image was taken by ESA’s SMART-1, which explored the Moon from 2004 to 2006. Its miniaturised camera demonstrated that smaller equipment could still provide first-class science.

This image was taken from an altitude of about 2000 km. It spans about 100 km and shows the region around Hadley Rille centred at about 25°N / 3°E.

SMART-1 was ESA’s first mission to the Moon. It tested new engine technologies, including a solar electric propulsion system that will carry ESA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury in 2018.

At the end of its mission, SMART-1 was flown closer and closer to the lunar surface until it was intentionally crashed on 3 September 2006. During its mission, it had completed more than 2000 orbits of the Moon.

Credit: ESA/Space-X, Space Exploration Institute

This ESA/Webb Picture of the Month shows eight stunning examples of gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing, which was first predicted by Einstein, occurs because massive objects like galaxies and clusters of galaxies dramatically warp the fabric of spacetime. When a massive foreground object lines up just so with a background galaxy, the light from the background galaxy bends as it navigates the warped spacetime on its way to our telescopes.

Depending on how perfect the alignment is, the light from the background galaxy can be bent into an arc, a circle (a phenomenon called an ‘Einstein ring’) or even split into multiple images.

Arcs and circles are prevalent in these gravitationally lensed galaxies, which were identified in data from COSMOS-Web, a 255-hour Treasury programme (#1727). COSMOS-Web aims to understand the formation of the most massive galaxies in the Universe, identify galaxies that were present when the first stars and galaxies reionised the Universe’s hydrogen gas, and study the relationship between the mass of a galaxy’s stars and the mass of its galactic halo across cosmic time.

Using these data, researchers carried out the COSMOS-Web Lens Survey, or COWLS, to search for gravitational lenses. The researchers inspected more than 42 000 galaxies by eye and picked out more than 400 promising lensing candidates. This Picture of the Month feature presents a collage of eight of the most spectacular lenses identified by the research team.

This collection of gravitational lenses spans an incredible range of cosmic history. The foreground galaxies give us a glimpse of galactic life when the Universe was 2.7 to 8.9 billion years old. The background galaxies, whose shapes appear visibly distorted, stretch back even further, with one source nicknamed ‘the COSMOS-Web Ring’ (top row, left of centre) letting us peek all the way back to when the Universe was barely more than a billion years old. Several rarities appear in this collection, including an unusual case in which the galaxy acting as the gravitational lens is a flattened disc galaxy rather than an elliptical galaxy (bottom row, second from left).

These images demonstrate Webb’s ability to uncover and reveal never-before-seen details in gravitationally lensed galaxies. Some of the lensed galaxies were previously discovered with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and are now seen by Webb in an entirely new light. Others, including those that are especially red due to either dust or distance, were first spotted by Webb. These discoveries open a unique window into the early days of the Universe and enable the study of exquisite details within distant galaxies like individual star clusters and supernovae.

Individual images of the lenses are also available. From left-to-right then top-to-bottom: COSJ100013+023424, COSJ100024+015334, COSJ100018+022138, COSJ100024+021749, COSJ095914+021219, COSJ100025+015245, COSJ095921+020638, and COSJ095593+023319.

[Image Description: A collage of eight Webb images of gravitational lensing are shown. Each of the images show various distorted galaxies in the centre of each frame, including arcs and circular shapes.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco; CC BY 4.0

This micro-pulsed plasma thruster has been designed for propulsion of miniature CubeSats; its first firing is seen here. The thruster works by pulsing a lightning-like electric arc between two electrodes. This vaporizes the thruster propellant into charged plasma, which is then accelerated in the electromagnetic field set up between the electrodes.

Developed for ESA by Mars Space Ltd and Clyde Space of the UK with Southampton University, this 2 Watt, 42 Newton-second impulse plasma thruster has been qualified for space, with more than a million firing pulses demonstrated during testing.

It has been designed for a range of uses, including drag compensation in low orbits, orbit maintenance, formation flying and small orbit transfers. The thruster could also serve as a CubeSat deorbiting device, gradually reducing orbital altitude until atmospheric re-entry is achieved.

About the size of a DVD reader, the thruster weighs just 280 grams including its propellant load and drive electronics.

Credits: ESA/Mars Space

Mission Alpha poster made by French artist Romain Hugault.

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station for a second mission called Alpha, after the star Alpha Centauri, located in the same system as Proxima.

Thomas is taking a new ride to space and will be the first European to leave Earth on the SpaceX Crew Dragon launching from Florida, USA. The crew of four includes NASA astronauts Megan MacArthurand Shane Kimbrough, who was with Thomas on the International Space Station during his Proxima mission, as well as Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

Credits: Romain Hugault

Rockets launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, are tracked by antennas across the globe, including three from ESA’s Estrack network.

ESA’s 15-metre antenna in Kourou mainly tracks satellites, but is also used to receive engineering data during selected rocket launches.

The 4.5 and 35 metre antennas in New Norcia, Australia, track rockets delivering their spacecraft into polar, low-Earth, geostationary, lunar and interplanetary orbits, as well as unusual missions such as the Galileo constellation of navigation satellites.

The 5.5-metre antenna on Santa Maria island in the Azores archipelago, Portugal, was originally built to track launches of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), but now tracks Galileo launches.

Credits: ESA

This composite image shows the location of the globular star cluster Terzan 12 as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Top: A view of a section of our Milky Way in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Dense clouds of dust are etched across a whitish background of stars. The object at upper right is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.

Bottom left: Photo of a small portion of the Milky Way which is only one-degree across – twice the angular diameter of the full moon. The globular cluster is in the image centre.

Bottom Right: A new Hubble Space Telescope image of the dense cluster Terzan 12. Intervening dust scatters starlight to create multiple reddish hues. The brightest red stars in the photo are bloated, ageing giants, many times larger than our Sun. They lie between Earth and the cluster. Only a few may actually be members of the cluster. The very brightest hot, blue stars are also along the line of sight and not inside the cluster, which only contains ageing stars. The cluster is about 15,000 light-years from Earth.

[Image description: At the top of this mosaic image is a diagonal section of our Milky Way as seen in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. A smaller portion of the Milky Way is at lower left. It is filled with stars and also a mottled pattern of black clouds of dust. The embedded globular star cluster Terzan 12 is in the middle of the image. At image right is a Hubble Space Telescope photo of the dense star-filled globular cluster. Intervening dust scatters starlight to create multiple reddish hues.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, Stéphane Guisard, ESO, Digitized Sky Survey, ESA/Hubble, Roger Cohen (Rutgers University), Joseph DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0

After its arrival in the final assembly building, on 1 April ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) was slowly lifted from the air cushion platform on which it sat during its transfer to the building. Following this process, it was lifted over 50 metres into the air, and then carefully lowered onto the top of the Ariane 5 rocket that will carry it into space.

This whole operation was performed under strict safety and cleanliness regulations to keep Juice in prime condition for launch on 13 April. The operators wore bright yellow suits; these are used whenever hazardous operations are carried out, for example when a spacecraft is moved.

Juice is being prepared to launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. After an eight-year journey to Jupiter, the mission will make detailed observations of the gas giant and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of 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.

Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit

Credits: 2023 ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE / Optique vidéo du CSG - JM GUILLON

The two halves of the Rockot fairing are almost closed, sealing the Copernicus Sentinel-3B satellite from view.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Webb’s mid-infrared view of interacting galaxies Arp 142 seems to sing in primary colours. The background of space is like a yawning darkness speckled with bright, multi-coloured beads.

This image was taken by MIRI, the telescope’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument, which astronomers use to study cooler and older objects, dust, and extremely distant galaxies.

Here, the Egg appears as an exceptionally small teal oval with gauzy layers. Mid-infrared light predominantly shows the oldest stars in the elliptical galaxy, which has lost or used up most of its gas and dust. This is why the view is so different from the combined image, which includes near-infrared light.

At right, the Penguin’s shape is relatively unchanged. The MIRI image shows all the gas and dust that has been distorted and stretched, as well as the smoke-like material, in blue, that includes carbon-containing molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Next, look for the edge-on galaxy catalogued PGC 1237172 at the top right — a dim, hazy line. Find it by looking for the bright blue star with small diffraction spikes positioned over the top of its left edge. This galaxy nearly disappears in mid-infrared light because its stars are very young and the galaxy isn’t overflowing with dust.

Now, scan the full image left to right to spot distant galaxies in the background. The red objects are encased in thick layers of dust. Some are spiral galaxies and others are more distant galaxies that can only be detected as dots or smudges. Green galaxies are laden with dust and are farther away. Bluer galaxies are closer. Zoom in carefully to see if a blue dot has minuscule diffraction spikes — those are stars, not galaxies.

[Image description: Two interacting galaxies known as Arp 142 in a horizontal image taken in mid-infrared light. At left is NGC 2937, which looks like a tiny teal oval and is nicknamed the Egg. At right is NGC 2936, nicknamed the Penguin, which is significantly larger and looks like a bird with a fanned tail.]

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

What are we looking at when we study this image? A very distant galaxy that lies 19.5 billion light-years from Earth? Or a much closer luminous red galaxy that is a (relatively) small 2.7 billion light-years away? Or a third galaxy that appears to be fairly close to the second? The answer, perhaps confusingly, is that we are looking at all three. More precisely, we are looking at light emitted from all of those galaxies, even though the most distant galaxy lies directly behind the first as seen from Earth. In fact, it is that very alignment that makes the particular visuals in this image possible.

The central bright dot in this image is one of the closer galaxies, known by the lengthy — but informative — name of SDSS J020941.27+001558.4 (galaxy names in this format provide precise information about their location in the sky). The other bright dot above it — that appears to be intersecting a curving crescent of light — is SDSS J020941.23+001600.7, the second closer galaxy. And finally, that curving crescent of light itself is the ‘lensed’ light from the very distant galaxy. This is known as HerS J020941.1+001557, and it is also an interesting example of a phenomenon known as an Einstein 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 spacetime is as well. This is much too subtle to be observed on a local level, but sometimes becomes clearly observable when dealing with curvatures of light on enormous, astronomical scales, for example, when the light emitted from a galaxy is bent around another galaxy or galaxy cluster. When the lensed object and the lensing object line up just so, the result is the distinctive Einstein ring shape, which appears as a full or partial circle of light around the lensing object, depending on how precise the alignment is. This partial Einstein ring is of particular interest as it was identified thanks to a citizen science project — SPACE WARPS — meaning that members of the public enabled the discovery of this object!

[Image Description: A field full of distant galaxies on a dark background. Most of the galaxies are very small, but there are a few larger galaxies and some stars where detail can be made out. In the very centre there is an elliptical galaxy with a brightly glowing core and a broad disc. A reddish, warped ring of light, thicker at one side, surrounds its core. A small galaxy intersects the ring as a bright dot.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Nayyeri, L. Marchetti, J. Lowenthal; CC BY 4.0

This image features a 4 km-wide impact crater that formed on the rim of an older 15 km-wide crater on Mars. The linear ridge to the top of the image is the rim of the older crater, which itself intersects the rim of an even larger, 40 km-wide crater.

To the left of the image, so-called ‘brain coral terrain’ is visible – so-named because of its likeness in appearance to the ridges on the surface of the human brain. It appears to sit on the floor of the largest crater, although this deposit may be related to the lineated fill that lines the floor of the 15-km crater to the right of the image. Both types of terrain are associated with ice-rich material found near the boundary between Mars’ northern plains and its southern highlands.

Information held in images like these – best viewed with red-blue ‘3D’ glasses to give the impression of depth – help scientists make a detailed study of the order in which the many interacting layers were formed, thus piecing together the history of complex regions.

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 7 February 2019. It is centred at 32.9 ºN/13.7ºE.

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

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

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[Image description: Eight images of the giant planet Jupiter spanning approximately 90 days between December 2023 and March 2024. The planet appears striped, with brown and white horizontal bands of clouds. These stripes are called belts (sinking air) and bands (rising air). The polar regions appear more mottled.]

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

There is both a science and a tradition to spaceflight.

All space farers journeying aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft perform a series of traditions following in the footsteps of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.

Starting from their arrival at Baikonur about two weeks before launch, Soyuz astronauts rehearse their launch, inspect their spacecraft, and complete a series of traditions in honour of Gagarin.

Today ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and fellow Expedition 56/57 cosmonaut Sergei Prokopev and NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor completed their tree-planting ceremony.

Behind the hotel buildings, leading to banks of the Syr Darya River, there is an avenue of trees. A tree is planted here by each person who has flown from the Baikonur cosmodrome into space.

Crews walk in this avenue, now expanded into a park, and plant their own trees.

As Alexander has already flown before in 2014, he did not plant a new tree. The backup crew observed but did not plant their own trees. They will do so when it is their turn to fly.

Afterwards, the crews paused to take this photo next to a model Soyuz rocket located at the end of Cosmonauts Alley.

The actual Soyuz launcher, with the Soyuz spacecraft inside, is rolled to the launchpad on a special railway carriage exactly 48 hours before launch, at 7:00 local time in Kazakhstan.

The primary crew will not see the roll-out of the Soyuz rocket on the launchpad, as this is considered bad luck.

With just a little over a week to go before the 6 June launch, Alexander and his colleagues will participate in more traditions such visiting the Cosmodrome museum, watching the film White Sun of the Desert, and more traditions on the actual launch date such as a blessing by a Russian orthodox priest.

Follow Alexander during his Horizons mission via social media and the blog here.

Credits: Roscosmos

The team overseeing ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence pose with the spacecraft behind them in its ESTEC Test Centre cleanroom in the Netherlands.

They are joined in this photo by representatives from Tyvak International in Italy and GomSpace in Luxembourg – makers of the Milani and Juventas CubeSats respectively, which will join Hera on its journey into deep space – as well as Cheryl Reed of the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in the US – seen in the centre – who served as programme manager of NASA’s predecessor planetary defence mission DART (Double Asteroid Redirect Test).

Also represented is ISISpace in the Netherlands, manufacturer of the Deep Space Deployers that will store the miniature CubeSats during their journey to Didymos and deploy them upon arrival.

Hera and DART were conceived together and implemented as the international Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) international collaboration. Both missions are supported by a common community of planetary scientists.

On 26 September 2022 the van-sized DART spacecraft impacted the Dimorphos asteroid at around 6.1 km/s. This first test of the ‘kinetic impact’ method of planetary defence succeeded in modifying the orbit of the target asteroid around the larger Didymos body.

This October Hera will commence a two-year odyssey to the Didymos binary asteroid system to perform a close-up asteroid survey, gathering crucial missing information to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique.

Credits: ESA

This half-scale model of ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and the full-scale model of the ExoMars rover below it will be on show during ESA’s Sunday 6 October Open Day at its ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Launched in 2016, the Trace Gas Orbiter is today in Mars orbit, seeking out anomalous methane gas in the scant martian atmosphere. The ExoMars rover, named Rosalind Franklin, is due to be launched next year.

The theme of this year’s ESA Open Day is ‘ESA to the Moon’, but ESTEC’s Erasmus Centre will also feature an exhibit called Destination: Mars, highlighting current and future missions to the Red Planet, including plans for an international Mars Sample Return mission.

Credits: ESA–G. Porter

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

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

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

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

Credits: ESA–P. Sebirot

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures the US state of Colorado blanketed in snow.

The image was acquired on 11 November 2024, after Colorado was hit by several days of record snowfall at the beginning of the month.

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

This image was taken by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) of a region parallel to the massive protostar known as IRAS23385.

IRAS 2A and IRAS23385 (not visible in this image) were targets for a recent research effort by an international team of astronomers that used Webb to discover that the key ingredients for making potentially habitable worlds are present in early-stage protostars, where planets have not yet formed.

With MIRI’s unprecedented spectral resolution and sensitivity, the JOYS+ (James Webb Observations of Young ProtoStars) programme individually identified organic molecules that have been confirmed to be present in interstellar ices. This includes the robust detection of acetaldehyde, ethanol, methyl formate, and likely acetic acid, in the solid phase.

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[Image description: A region of a molecular cloud. The cloud is dense and bright close to the top of the image, like rolling clouds, and grows darker and more wispy towards the bottom and in the top corner. One bright star, and several dimmer stars, are visible as light spots among the clouds. The image is a single exposure which has been assigned an orange colour for visibility.]

Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, W. Rocha et al. (Leiden University)

The Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite captured this image over Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 2 September, just ahead of the Sentinel-2C launch.

Europe's Spaceport is situated in the northeast of South America in French Guiana, an overseas department of France. The spaceport lies northwest of Kourou, a coastal town on the estuary of the Kourou River, both visible near the centre of the image. After running for 144 km, the river flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The brownish hue of its muddy waters is most likely the result of sediment gathered from the nearby forest.

White, sandy beaches stretch along the ocean coast north of Kourou, while the riverbank and the interior regions are mostly covered by mangroves and dense tropical rainforest.

The spaceport is home to the ESA-developed Ariane and Vega rocket families, whose launch pads can be spotted in the top left corner of the image.

Thanks to its geographical position near the equator, the spaceport is ideally placed as launchers benefit from increased velocity owing to the ‘slingshot’ effect, created by the speed of Earth’s rotation.

From here, the third Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite, Sentinel-2C, launched on 5 September aboard the final Vega rocket.

The Sentinel-2 mission is based on a constellation of two identical satellites flying in the same orbit but 180° apart: currently Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B. With Sentinel-2C now in orbit, it will soon replace its predecessor, Sentinel-2A, prolonging the life of the mission and ensuring a continuous supply of data for Copernicus, the Earth observation component of the EU Space Programme.

Sentinel-2 data are currently being used for a broad range of applications, including agriculture, water quality monitoring, methane emissions detection and natural disaster management, including wildfires, volcanic eruptions and floods.

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

This collage features the supernovae observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in the unbarred spiral galaxy roughly 51 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices.

You can see an old image of NGC 4414 that features Hubble data from 1995 and 1999 here, which was captured as one of the telescope’s primary missions to determine the distance to galaxies. This was achieved as part of an ongoing research effort to study Cepheid variable stars. Cepheids are a special type of variable star with very stable and predictable brightness variations. The period of these variations depends on physical properties of the stars such as their mass and true brightness. This means that astronomers, just by looking at the variability of their light, can find out about the Cepheids' physical nature, which then can be used very effectively to determine their distance. For this reason cosmologists call Cepheids 'standard candles'.

Astronomers have used Hubble to observe Cepheids, like those that reside in NGC 4414, with extraordinary results. The Cepheids have then been used as stepping-stones to make distance measurements for supernovae, which have, in turn, given a measure for the scale of the Universe. Today we know the age of the Universe to a much higher precision than before Hubble: around 13.7 billion years.

[Image description: Four panels are shown. In the top left is a large spiral galaxy is seen tilted diagonally. Each subsequent panel shows a closeup of the galaxy in 1999, 2021, and 2023 to highlight the galaxy's supernovae.]

The full view of NGC 4414 can be seen here.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Graur, S. W. Jha, A. Filippenko; CC BY 4.0

A Falcon 9 Crew Dragon is prepared for the launch of Crew-2 on launch pad 39A on 19 April 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. Called ‘Alpha’the mission will see a European astronaut launch on a US spacecraft for the first time in over a decade. Thomas is flying alongside NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide on the Crew Dragon. Thomas will be the first ESA astronaut to fly on a vehicle other than the US Space Shuttle or Russian Soyuz.

The Crew-2 launch is scheduled for 22 April at 06:11 EDT/12:11 CEST.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows the Acheron Fossae region of Mars. This region shows many signs of past activity, from trough-like ditches and steep cliffs to smooth plains and tall domes formed by volcanism.

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

This image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 28 October 2024 (orbit 26287). It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 17 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 36°N/230°E.

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ALT-text: The Acheron Fossae region of Mars, as viewed by ESA’s Mars Express

Image description: The image shows a patch of Mars that is broadly tan in colour and covered in geological features. These are labelled by six numerical markers to give additional context. Most prominently, a system of deep grooves begins in the right half of the image and radiates outwards, extending out of frame. A smoother, irregularly shaped patch of ground can be seen in the middle third of the image, while further ridges and ditches – more gentle than those to the right – are again visible in the left third, along with a few scattered circular impact craters.

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

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, arriving at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 9 February 2023 from Airbus Toulouse.

Juice is humanity’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.

Juice launches on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou in April 2023. It has an eight year cruise with flybys of Earth and Venus to slingshot it to Jupiter. It will make 35 flybys of the three large moons while orbiting Jupiter, before changing orbits to Ganymede.

Juice is a mission under ESA leadership with contributions from NASA, JAXA and the Israeli Space Agency. It is the first Large-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme.

Credits: ESA

Observations of our neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, made using ESA’s Flyeye telescope.

Andromeda appears so large in Earth’s sky that in angular size it is six times the diameter of the full Moon and it can be seen with the unaided eye in dark skies.

For a dedicated astronomical telescope such as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, viewing the whole Andromeda galaxy requires stitching together hundreds of individual observations. This Hubble image of Andromeda, for example, took over 10 years and 600 snapshots to make.

Flyeye, on the other hand, is a survey telescope designed to see as much of the sky at once as possible, and to rapidly scan for new near-Earth objects. This image of Andromeda takes up just one sixteenth of the telescope’s full field of view.

The image was acquired during the telescope’s ‘first light’ campaign by combining 16 exposures, each of 30 seconds.

Credits: ESA

The crew of Soyuz MS-13 give a final wave as they climb the steps to the MS-13 spacecraft that will transport them to the International Space Station from Baiknonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov will be launched on Saturday 20 July. This date coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and marks the start of Luca’s second space mission known as ‘Beyond’.

While in orbit, Luca will support over 50 European experiments and more than 200 international experiments. He is also expected to perform a number of spacewalks to repair the cooling systems of dark matter hunter, AMS-02.

More information about Luca’s Beyond mission is available on the blog. This will be updated throughout his mission, with updates also shared on Twitter via @esaspaceflight.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows a slice of Mars imaged to mark a milestone for ESA’s Mars Express: its 25 000th orbit around the Red Planet. The stunning view shows volcanoes, valleys, craters, clouds, and even a flying visit from Mars's largest moon, Phobos.

Be sure to zoom in to explore the landscape in detail!

This image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 19 October 2023 during orbit 25 000. It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. The ground resolution is <450 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 2°N/248°E.

Read more

[Image description: This image shows a large, tan-coloured slice of Mars, with the curvature of the planet visible at the top and bottom of the frame. Cutting diagonally right to left across the centre of the planet like a belt are three darker raised patches (volcanoes). Many other features are visible across the frame, including scarred terrain, clouds, and the moon Phobos, which can be seen as a dark, irregular blob to the lower left.]

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

Resembling static noise on an old TV, light scatters through a gel in space. But unlike the random pattern on analogue screens late at night, every white and black speckle in this image has meaning in fundamental physics. The blurry background is helping scientists understand the behaviour of microscopic particles when they are free from gravity.

The Colloidal Solids experiment is looking at the dynamics of gels, protein crystals and glasses on the International Space Station. On Earth, heated particles would quickly clump together and then sink to the bottom. This phenomenon can spoil a gel or cream, which are often made with stabilisers to prolong their shelf life.

In space, the agglomeration dance goes on without sedimentation. Studying the process in orbit could lead to longer-lasting products on Earth.

Colloids are liquids with suspended microscopic particles. Milk, paint and aerosols are colloids, for example.

On Earth, gravity dominates how these particles behave, causing them to attract each other and form clusters. In microgravity, however, subtle differences in how particles attract one another become visible, revealing changes in their structure that gravity would normally hide. Even glasses and proteins aggregate in unique ways under microgravity conditions.

NASA astronaut Mike Fincke set up the experiment in ESA’s Microgravity Science Glovebox, a hard-working facility on the International Space Station that provides an enclosed area for manipulating and observing the samples. The glovebox is controlled from Earth by ESA’s User, Support and Operation Centre (E-USOC) in Spain.

These particles in this image are incredibly tiny, measuring about 100 nanometres, or about one thousand times smaller than a human hair.

Mike inserted the sample with the gel mixture. Teams on the ground stirred the sample and heated it up to 35 degrees Celsius. At a higher temperature, the sample began to form a gel.

Images of this detail are impossible to get on the ground, where the gel structure quickly forms a deposit due to gravity. Scientists use them to observe the origin and evolving structure of gels and determine the strength of the forces between particles in liquids.

Understanding the behaviour of gels has great potential in creating stable products made to last, such as medicine, paint, ink and cleaning solutions.

Besides the industrial benefits behind colloidal suspensions in many markets, there is a genuine scientific interest in better understanding the relation between particle shape, symmetry and structure. Scientists are gaining new understanding of fundamental processes and applications.

The Colloidal Solids experiment is an ESA payload developed by Redwire Space in collaboration with the Politecnico of Milano, the Université de Montpellier and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Credits: ESA/NASA

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]

Ariane 5 VA 260 with Juice, start of rollout on Tuesday 11 April.

Juice is being prepared to launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 13 April 2023.

Juice – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. This ambitious mission will characterise Ganymede, Callisto and Europa 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.

Following launch, Juice will embark on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, arriving in July 2031 with the aid of momentum and direction gained from four gravity-assist fly-bys of the Earth-Moon system, Venus and, twice, Earth.

Flight VA260 will be the final Ariane 5 flight to carry an ESA mission to space.

Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

This mesh-based model of Europe’s future Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I) satellite has helped select the optimal location of the radio frequency antennas used to send it commands and downlink mission telemetry.

The model gives engineers insights into the resulting radio frequency characteristics of the satellite itself. The colours indicate the induced electromagnetic response of adjacent surfaces when these antennas are active.

The red spot in the corner of the satellite body indicates the location of one of these S-band microwave antennas used for ‘telemetry, tracking and telecommand’, with another out of view on the satellite’s opposite side. The other colours show the resulting current across MTG-I, from orange on antenna-facing surfaces down to yellow, then green and finally the minimum intensity in blue.

This helps antenna engineers to calculate the ‘link budget’ or overall coverage and efficiency of these antennas in different positions, across both stowed and deployed configurations.

This model was prepared for MTG-I by ESA’s Antenna Computational Facilities (ACF), part of the Agency’s Antenna Test Facilities, based at its ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands. Equipped with state-of-the-art software, the ACF solve complex electromagnetic problems across the entire radio spectrum in cooperation with European universities and industry.

Meteosat Third Generation, planned to enter service from 2021 onwards, will comprise four imaging and two sounding satellites. The latter, in a first for Europe, will carry an Infrared Sounder and Ultraviolet Visible Near-infrared Spectrometer, being provided by ESA to serve as the Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission.

Credits: ESA

As part of its testing campaign to prepare for launch, ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft underwent a special set of tests in a very unique location, the magnetic field simulation facility near the IABG premises in Ottobrunn, Germany.

Once in space, Solar Orbiter will perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and its corona, measure the solar wind close to the Sun, and provide high-resolution images of its uncharted polar regions. These data will help us understand how our parent star creates and controls the giant bubble of plasma that surrounds the whole Solar System and influences the planets within it.

Space missions that involve measuring magnetic fields in space with exquisite accuracy – such as Solar Orbiter, which will measure the magnetic field of the solar wind, or missions studying Earth’s magnetic bubble, like ESA’s Cluster and Swarm – require dedicated testing to fully characterise their magnetic properties.

The magnetic field simulation facility shown in this image is located just outside the IABG premises, in a nearby forest, to avoid interference with human-generated magnetic fields. In addition to that, the facility consists completely of non-magnetic materials like wood, and contains twelve 15-m coils – nearly as large as the building – to create a homogeneous magnetic environment that compensates Earth’s own magnetic field, simulating outer space conditions.

The tests were performed in June, meeting the mission requirements within the limits of the testing facility. After launch, further measurements during the commissioning phase will complement the results of these tests to fully characterise the magnetic properties of the spacecraft.

The spacecraft is currently undergoing final testing ahead of its launch, scheduled in February 2020 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA. Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led mission with strong NASA participation. The prime contractor is Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, UK.

Read more about the Solar Orbiter testing campaign

Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja

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

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

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

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

Credits: ESA - S.Corvaja

On Saturday 11 December, the James Webb Space Telescope was placed on top of the Ariane 5 rocket that will launch it to space from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

After its arrival in the final assembly building, Webb was lifted slowly about 40 m high and then carefully manoeuvred on top of Ariane 5, after which technicians bolted Webb’s launch vehicle adapter down to the rocket.

This whole process was performed under strict safety and cleanliness regulations, as it was one of the most delicate operations during the entire launch campaign for Webb.

A ‘shower curtain’ about 12 m high and 8 m in diameter was installed in between two platforms, to create a closed-off space around Webb to avoid any contamination.

The next step is to encapsulate Webb inside Ariane 5’s specially adapted fairing.

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

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

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

Credits: ESA-Manuel Pedoussaut

This is one of a series of images taken by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 8 January 2025 as the spacecraft sped by for its sixth and final gravity assist manoeuvre at the planet. After flying over the planet's north pole, the spacecraft had clear views of Mercury's sunlit northern hemisphere.

Monitoring camera 1 (M-CAM 1) took this photo at 07:12 CET, when the spacecraft was about 1427 km from the planet’s surface. The spacecraft’s closest approach of 295 km took place on the planet's night side at 06:59 CET.

The image shows that large regions of Mercury's heavily cratered surface are smoothed over by lava from volcanic eruptions.

This smoothing over is visible inside the 290 km-wide crater at the right of the image, called Mendelssohn. While its outer rim is still visible, it has been largely filled by the same smooth material that makes up the surrounding plains. Smaller, more recent impact craters dot the otherwise smooth crater.

The vast plains surrounding Mendelssohn, called Borealis Planitia, were formed by the widespread eruption of runny lava some 3.7 billion years ago. The volume of lava making up Borealis Planitia is similar in scale to mass extinction-level volcanic events recorded in Earth’s history, notably the mass extinction event at the end of the Permian period 252 million years ago. Borealis Planitia is bordered by older and hence more heavily cratered terrain.

An old M-CAM favourite, the 1500 km-diameter Caloris basin, appears in the lower left portion of the globe. This is Mercury's largest well-preserved impact structure, and one of the largest in the Solar System. The impact that created it left scars on Mercury's surface up to thousands of kilometres away.

Deep troughs point outwards from the basin's edge, possibly formed by high-speed debris from the Caloris impact scouring the surface. Some of them host relatively bright lava, which looks similar to both the lava on the floor of the Caloris basin and the lava of Borealis Planitia further to the north.

But which way did the lava flow: into the basin, or outwards? We don’t yet know, and this is one of Mercury’s many mysteries that BepiColombo hopes to solve. The foreground of the image shows BepiColombo's solar array (centre right), and a part of the Mercury Transfer Module (lower left).

[Technical details: This image of Mercury's surface was taken by M-CAM 1 onboard the Mercury Transfer Module (part of the BepiColombo spacecraft), using an exposure time of 4 milliseconss. Taken from a distance of around 1427 km, the surface resolution in this photograph is around 1500 m/pixel. The image has been lightly processed to largely remove instrumental effects due to camera readout without a shutter. The image's brightness and contrast have also been adjusted.]

[Image description: Planet Mercury in the background with its grey, cratered, pockmarked surface. In the foreground are some spacecraft parts.]

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

ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) of the ESA–JAXA BepiColombo mission leaves Europe in an Antonov cargo plane for Kourou, French Guiana.

Credits: ESA–M.Cowan

A colourful microscopic view of a single piece of space-quality Inconel super alloy processed using two different 3D printing techniques; this is a close-up of the boundary layer between them.

The left side was produced using ‘direct energy deposition’ based on laser melting of metal powder feedstock, while the right side was made through ‘powder bed fusion’, involving the deposition then melting of metal powder.

This micrograph of the resulting hybrid part is based on a technique called electron backscatter diffraction. An electron beam was reflected off the crystalline metallic surfaces to reveal subtle details of their composition. The patches reveal different grains and the various colours depict the differing orientations of these grains.

The part was produced as part of an ESA General Support Technology Programme project with the Balmar company and the Institute of Metals and Technology in Slovenia, an Associate Member State of ESA.

ESA is working with research institutes and companies across Europe on its Advanced Manufacturing initiative, harnessing 3D printing and other emerging manufacturing techniques to change the way space missions are made.

Credits: Balmar/Institute of Metals and Technology, Slovenia

This graphic summarises significant measurement attempts of methane at Mars. Reports of methane have been made by Earth-based telescopes, ESA’s Mars Express from orbit around Mars, and NASA’s Curiosity located on the surface at Gale Crater; they have also reported measurement attempts with no or very little methane detected. More recently, the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter reported an absence of methane, and provided a very low upper limit.

In order to reconcile the range of results, which show variations in both time and location, scientists have to understand better the different processes acting to create and destroy methane.

Credits: ESA

The Vega-C Interstage 1/2 has now been transferred to and integrated at the Vega Launch Zone (Zone de Lancement Vega) ZLV at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 22 April 2022.

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

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

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

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

After it's arrival at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of launch, the James Webb Space Telescope is unboxed inside a dedicated spacecraft preparation facility where it will be examined to ensure that it is undamaged from its voyage and in good working order.

Read more

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

The Ariane 6 launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana now hosts the first example of ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket. This Ariane 6 combined tests model will be used to validate the entire launch system during its ground phase in readiness for the inaugural launch of Ariane 6.

The combined tests include filling tanks, and draining them in case of launch abort, count-down automated sequence, and cryogenic arms disconnection and retraction at a simulated liftoff.

These tests will be carried out under ESA’s authority by an integrated team from ESA, ArianeGroup and French space agency CNES.

The Ariane 6 combined tests model is highly representative of the flight model. It consists of the core stage and the upper stage, which make up the central core, as well as three pylons shaped like the rocket’s solid boosters and a fully representative but inert mockup of the fourth booster.

The Ariane 6 combined tests model central core was precisely mated in the purpose-built launcher assembly building, where this task is carried out horizontally. Automated guidance vehicles then brought the assembled core to the launch and, working with the crane at the mobile gantry, raised it to its vertical position.

Ariane 6 is a modular launch vehicle using either two or four P120C strap-on boosters, depending on mission requirements. The P120C engine does double duty, also serving as the first stage of ESA’s new Vega-C rocket.

The reignitable Vinci engine which powers the upper stage allows Ariane 6 to deliver multiple payloads to different orbits on a single launch. After payload separation a final engine burn deorbits the upper stage so that it does not become a debris threat in space. 

Ariane 6 development is project-managed and funded by ESA, which also acts as launch system architect. ArianeGroup is design authority and industrial prime contractor for the launcher system and CNES is prime contractor for the Ariane 6 launch base at Europe’s Spaceport. Arianespace is the launch service provider of Ariane 6. 

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fairing of the US Atlas V 411 rocket with ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft inside at the Astrotech payload processing facility near Kennedy Space Center in Florida during launch preparations on 21 January 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

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

Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6 powered Europe into space taking with it a varied selection of experiments, satellites, payload deployers and reentry demonstrations that represent thousands across Europe, from students to industry and experienced space actors.

This inaugural flight, designated VA262, is a demonstration flight to show the capabilities and prowess of Ariane 6 in escaping Earth's gravity and operating in space. Nevertheless, it had several passengers on board.

Ariane 6 was built by prime contractor and design authority ArianeGroup. In addition to the rocket, the liftoff demonstrated the functioning of the launch pad and operations on ground at Europe's Spaceport. The new custom-built dedicated launch zone was built by France's space agency CNES and allows for a faster turnover of Ariane launches.

Ariane 6 is Europe’s newest heavy-lift rocket, designed to provide great power and flexibility at a lower cost than its predecessors. The launcher’s configuration – with an upgraded main stage, a choice of either two or four powerful boosters and a new restartable upper stage – will provide Europe with greater efficiency and possibility as it can launch multiple missions into different orbits on a single flight, while its upper stage will deorbit itself at the end of mission.

ESA’s main roles in the Ariane 6 programme is as contracting authority – managing the budget from Member States participating in the Ariane 6 development programme; and as launch system architect – ensuring that the rocket and launch pad infrastructure work together.

Ariane 6 is the latest in Europe's Ariane rocket series, taking over from Ariane 5 featuring a modular and versatile design that can launch missions from low-Earth orbit and farther out to deep space.

Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut

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

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

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

Read more about the Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission.

Credits: ESA/J Mai

An important part of studying celestial objects is understanding and removing the background noise.

The image presented here was created to demonstrate the power of software tools used to analyse observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton of large objects like galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and supernova remnants.

The tool models and subtracts the background noise, which is very difficult for large, fuzzy objects like these, and to create exposure-corrected images. It also merges and smooths the observations taken of an individual object by XMM-Newton’s three X-ray cameras of the European Photon Imaging Camera instrument, and to allow the mosaicking of multiple observations.

It certainly does not look like it, but the star-like feature on the right corresponds to spiral galaxy M81. Similarly, the feature on the left arises from the Holmberg IX dwarf galaxy.

By examining images like these, along with complementary images taken at other wavelengths, scientists can get a quick look at the structure of the object and the spectral variations across the field. The structure of the bright patterns contains information about the origin of the emission, such as whether it comes from a ‘halo’ around the galaxy, or is confined to the disc and arms.

For example, this particular image shows that there is a bright point source at the centre of M81, resulting from the galaxy’s active core. There is also a decrease of brightness away from the central source, with fainter extended emission around it. Another galaxy might display brighter emission along its spiral arms.

Bright emission is also apparent from the X-ray source in the dwarf galaxy.

The ‘rays’ extending from the point sources are artefacts, seen whenever there is a very bright point source in the field of view. But even artefacts can be beautiful…

The XMM-Newton Extended Source Analysis Software package (XMM-ESAS) was developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre XMM-Newton Guest Observer Facility (GOF) in cooperation with the XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre and the Background Working Group.

Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton

This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured in September 2023, features the crescent-shaped Venetian lagoon and the islands that make up the Italian floating city of Venice.

Snaking through the central districts is the Grand Canal, with the Santa Lucia train station at its northern end and the Saint Mark Basin at its southern end. The U-shaped Port of Venice is visible west of the city. The small square island to the north is San Michele. Once a prison island, it became a cemetery when Napoleon’s occupying forces declared burial on the main islands unsanitary. North of San Michele lies the island of Murano, the manufacturing centre for the renowned Venetian glass.

Zooming in, we can see the traffic of taxis and water buses, or ‘vaporetti’, navigating the canals and connecting the various islands in the lagoon.

The lagoon is surrounded by an agricultural landscape dominated by fields. Agriculture is one of the main industries in this area because of the fertile soils, with cereals, including rice, and a variety of vegetables most commonly grown.

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

Martian moon Deimos shines much brighter than the red planet beneath it in this Thermal Infrared Imager image acquired during the Hera mission’s 12 March 2025 gravity-assist flyby of Mars. In visible light the opposite is true: the Deimos is much less reflective than the martian surface.

Hera’s TIRI – supplied to the mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA – sees in mid-infrared spectral bands to chart surface temperature. Because Deimos lacks an atmosphere, the side of the moon being illuminated by the Sun is considerably warmer than the planet beneath it.

To the bottom right of the martian disc, in blue, is the Hellas basin, among the largest known impact craters in the Solar System with a diameter of 2300 km and a depth of more than 7 km – relatively cool at such a high southern latitude during this time of the Martian year.

By revealing surface temperature in this way, TIRI imaging serves to reveal physical properties such as roughness, particle size distribution and porosity.

Credits: ESA/JAXA