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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.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG - P.Piron
Following a successful test campaign in Europe, the structural thermal model of the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (Smile)’s payload module will soon be delivered to China to complete the qualification of the satellite.
Smile is a joint mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and will aim to build a more complete understanding of the Sun-Earth connection by measuring the solar wind and its dynamic interaction with the magnetosphere.
The payload module recently completed thermal testing and a deployment test of the magnetometer instrument boom at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands. The module then returned to Airbus in Spain for mechanical testing, completing the environmental test campaign phase that lasted three months.
Integration onto the Chinese platform is expected to begin in early April. Once the complete satellite is finished, it will undergo a comprehensive five month long qualification test campaign including thermal, mechanical, electromagnetic compatibility testing, and magnetic, deployment and functional tests at system level.
Credits: Airbus
During November 2025, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) used five of its science instruments to observe 3I/ATLAS. The instruments collected information about how the comet is behaving and what it is made of.
In addition, Juice snapped the comet with its onboard Navigation Camera (NavCam), designed not as a high-resolution science camera, but to help Juice navigate Jupiter’s icy moons following arrival in 2031.
Though the data from the science instruments won’t arrive on Earth until February 2026, our Juice team couldn’t wait that long. They decided to try downloading just a quarter of a single NavCam image to see what was in store for them. The very clearly visible comet, surrounded by signs of activity, surprised them.
Not only do we clearly see the glowing halo of gas surrounding the comet known as its coma, we also see a hint of two tails. The comet’s ‘plasma tail’ – made up of electrically charged gas, stretches out towards the top of the frame. We may also be able to see a fainter ‘dust tail’ – made up of tiny solid particles – stretching to the lower left of the frame. More on the structure of a comet.
The image was taken on 2 November 2025, during Juice’s first slot for observing 3I/ATLAS. It was two days before Juice’s closest approach to the comet, which occurred on 4 November at a distance of about 66 million km.
We expect to receive the data from the five scientific instruments switched on during the observations – JANUS, MAJIS, UVS, SWI and PEP – on 18 and 20 February 2026. The delay is because Juice is currently using its main high-gain antenna as a heat shield to protect it from the Sun, leaving its smaller medium-gain antenna to send data back to Earth at a much lower rate.
Though Juice was further from 3I/ATLAS than our Mars orbiters were back in October, it observed 3I/ATLAS just after the comet’s closest approach to the Sun, meaning that it was in a more active state. We expect to see clearer signs of this activity in the data from the science instruments. This includes not only images from JANUS – Juice’s high-resolution optical camera – but also spectrometry data from MAJIS and UVS, composition data from SWI, and particle data from PEP.
Go here for the latest updates and FAQs related to comet 3I/ATLAS.
Click here to view an annotated version of the image.
[Image description: Grainy space image, with white dots on a dark background. At the centre of the image is a larger, bright white blob with a faint white line stretching towards the top of the frame.]
Credits: ESA/Juice/NavCam; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA’s Aeolus satellite ready for liftoff on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Using revolutionary laser technology, Aeolus will measure winds around the globe and play a key role in our quest to better understand the workings of our atmosphere. Importantly, this novel mission will also improve weather forecasting.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Explore the Russian Soyuz FG rocket, the most reliable means of transporting crew to and from the International Space Station.
Credits: ESA
A nine-panel collage showing Hubble images of Jupiter taken under the OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) program from 2015-2024, with approximately true color. OPAL tracks the Great Red Spot (GRS) and other notable changes in Jupiter’s banded cloud structure of zones and belts over time.
Credits:NASA, ESA, A. Simon (NASA-GSFC), M. H. Wong (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0
The James Webb Space Telescope arrived safely at Pariacabo harbour in French Guiana on 12 October 2021 ahead of its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport.
Few space science missions have been as eagerly anticipated as the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). As the next great space science observatory following Hubble, Webb is designed to resolve unanswered questions about the Universe and see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe. Webb will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space.
Webb arrived from California on board the MN Colibri which sailed the Panama Canal to French Guiana on a 16-day voyage. The shallow Kourou river was specially dredged to ensure a clear passage and the vessel followed high tide to safely reach port.
Though the telescope weighs only six tonnes, it is more than 10.5 m high and almost 4.5 m wide when folded. It was shipped in its folded position in a 30 m long container which, with auxiliary equipment, weighs more than 70 tonnes. This is such an exceptional mission that a heavy-load tractor unit was brought on board MN Colibri to carefully transport Webb to the Spaceport.
Webb was taken to a dedicated spacecraft preparation facility. Here it will be unpacked and examined to ensure that it is undamaged from its voyage and in good working order.
As part of an international collaboration agreement, ESA is providing the telescope’s launch service using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace.
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG - JM Guillon
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The Moon is believed to be around 4.5 billion years old, born from a giant collision of a Mars-sized object with the young Earth early in the Solar System’s 4.6 billion year history.
Image description: Moon with a birthday cake on top showing 4.5 billion years.
Credits: ESA
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. Flying over Mercury's north pole gave the spacecraft's monitoring camera 1 (M-CAM 1) a unique opportunity to peer down into the shadowy polar craters.
M-CAM 1 took this long-exposure photograph of Mercury's north pole at 07:07 CET, when the spacecraft was about 787 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.
In this view, Mercury’s terminator, the boundary between day and night, divides the planet in two. Along the terminator, just to the left of the solar array, the sunlit rims of craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer can be seen, including some of their central peaks.
Because Mercury’s spin axis is almost exactly perpendicular to the planet's movement around the Sun, the rims of these craters cast permanent shadows on their floors. This makes these unlit craters some of the coldest places in the Solar System, despite Mercury being the closest planet to the Sun!
Excitingly, there is already evidence that these dark craters contain frozen water. Whether there is really water on Mercury is one of the key mysteries that BepiColombo will investigate once it's in orbit around the planet.
The left of the image shows the vast volcanic plains known as Borealis Planitia. These are Mercury’s largest expanse of ‘smooth plains' and were formed by the widespread eruption of runny lava 3.7 billion years ago.
This lava flooded existing craters, as is clearly visible in the lower left Henri and Lismer craters. The ‘wrinkles’ seen in the centre-left were formed over billions of years following the solidification of the lava, probably in response to global contraction as Mercury’s interior cooled down.
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.
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 on board the Mercury Transfer Module (part of the BepiColombo spacecraft), using an integration time of 40 milliseconds. Taken from around 787 km, the surface resolution in this photograph is around 730 m/pixel.]
[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
The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Mercury on 1 October 2021 as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre. The image was taken at 23:40:27 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 3, when the spacecraft was 1183 km from Mercury. Closest approach of 199 km took place shortly before, at 23:34:41 UTC. This image is one of the closest acquired during the flyby.
The cameras provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The high-gain antenna of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and part of the body of the spacecraft are also visible, albeit overexposed. Due to the longer exposure time, ghosting is visible in the centre of the image, as well as some electronic noise.
This dramatic picture of Mercury’s southern hemisphere shows sunrise on Astrolabe Rupes, a 250 km-long lobate scarp. Escarpments like this one are widespread across the planet and are proof of global contraction due to the extremely slow cooling of Mercury. Images showing long shadows like this one will help BepiColombo scientists investigate these features in detail to study Mercury’s tectonic history.
Click here for annotated version.
The gravity assist manoeuvre was the first at Mercury and the fourth of nine flybys overall. During its seven-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury to help steer on course for Mercury orbit in 2025. The Mercury Transfer Module carries two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. They will operate from complementary orbits to study all aspects of mysterious Mercury from its core to surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere, to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star.
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
In this image the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the smoking gun of a newborn star, the Herbig–Haro objects numbered 7 to 11 (HH 7–11). These five objects, visible in blue in the top centre of the image, lie within NGC 1333, a reflection nebula full of gas and dust found about a thousand light-years away from Earth.
Herbig-Haro objects like HH 7–11 are transient phenomena. Travelling away from the star that created them, at a speed of up to 250 000 kilometres per hour they disappear into nothingness within a few tens of thousands of years. The young star that is the source of HH 7-11 is called SVS 13 and all five objects are moving away from SVS 13 toward the upper left. The current distance between HH 7 and SVS 13 is about 20 000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Herbig–Haro objects are formed when jets of ionised gas ejected by a young star collide with nearby clouds of gas and dust at high speeds. The Herbig-Haro objects visible in this image are no exception to this and were formed when the jets from the newborn star SVS 13 collided with the surrounding clouds. These collisions created the five brilliant clumps of light within the reflection nebula.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Stapelfeldt; CC BY 4.0
This mosaic of cloud-free images from the Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite spans the entire continent of Europe, and more. The view stretches from Iceland in the northwest across to Scandinavia and Russia in the northeast, and from the northern tips of Norway and Finland to as far south as Algeria, Libya and Egypt.
While the satellite’s ocean and land colour instrument depicts the green of summer in many parts of Europe, the dryness that summer brings, particularly to the south, can also be seen in parts of Spain, Italy and Turkey, for example.
This week, aerospace fans have had their eyes firmly set on the ILA Berlin Air Show in Germany. Berlin lies in the centre of the image. Here, participants have been learning about new space technologies as well as being treated to latest results from satellite missions such as ESA’s Gaia, which has been used to chart the position, brightness and motion of more than a billion stars. With the second Sentinel-3 satellite, Sentinel-3B, lifting off from Russia this week, the focus has also been this latest Copernicus mission.
Like Gaia maps stars thousands of light-years away to understand the Universe, the Sentinel-3 mission observes our home planet to understand large-scale environmental dynamics. Based on a constellation of two identical satellites, the Sentinel-3 mission carries a suite of instruments to measure our oceans, land and ice.
Over land, this innovative mission is being used to map the way land is used, provide indices of vegetation, monitor wildfires and measure the height of rivers and lakes. Over oceans it measures the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice.
The image, which is made up of scenes captured between 1 March 2017 and 30 July 2017, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by Sinergise/ESA
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
Portrait of ESA astronaut candidate: Marco Sieber
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
The Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD) – the rover’s onboard laboratory where soil samples acquired with the drill will be processed and analysed – was the focus of recent testing activities at Thales Alenia Space, Turin, Italy. Seen here is the ALD qualification model entering the test chamber. This six-week long test period is part of the ALD qualification process, whereby the functionality of the thermal control system, cleanliness requirements, scientific instruments and sample processing mechanisms are verified. The test used Mars analogue samples and took place under simulated Mars environment conditions – a low pressure, carbon dioxide atmosphere and a range of temperatures covering extreme cases from -50ºC to +50ºC.
Credits: TAS-I
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image highlights part of the São Francisco River in eastern Brazil.
With a course of 2914 km, the São Francisco is the fourth largest river system in South America and the largest river located wholly in Brazil. It is also sometimes called the “river of national unity” because its basin extends across several Brazilian states.
Rising 730 m above sea level in the southwestern state of Minas Gerais, the river flows northerly to the state of Bahia. It then flows to the Atlantic Ocean, where it empties between the states of Alagoas and Sergipe. Several hydroelectric plants along the river’s course provide power throughout northeastern Brazil.
The image shows in light blue the course of the river in northern Bahia, where it forms the extensive Sobradinho Reservoir. A combination of sediment, decomposing plants and the presence of algae and microorganisms give the water its bright hue.
Covering an area of about 4200 sq km, Sobradinho is one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, and can hold more than 34 billion cubic metres of water, although its water level varies with seasonal changes.
This false-colour image has been processed using Sentinel-2’s near-infrared channel, which highlights vegetation in red and helps us better distinguish between areas with vegetation and areas without.
We can see where vegetation has been cleared away for logging, farming and land cultivation. Cities, roads and agricultural fields appear in different shades of brown.
A distinctive feature in this image is the area of circles at the bottom centre. These were created by a central-pivot irrigation system, where a long water pipe rotates around a well at the centre of each plot. The varying colours show different types of crop, or different stages of growth.
Copernicus Sentinel-2 is designed to monitor changing lands, including crop type and health. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution also enable close monitoring of changes in inland water bodies.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2024), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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 final steps to liftoff.
Credits: ESA
The SpaceX Crew Dragon is launched on a Falcon 9 rocket and brings four astronauts to the International Space Station. Launching from Cape Canaveral at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, the spacecraft is the third type to bring ESA astronauts to space.
This infographic shows the steps after liftoff until the Crew Dragon reaches Earth orbit.
Credits: ESA
assisted readymade & photo by Jan Theuninck, May 2011
(a Haribo Chamallows cardboard box, 4 pins and a button)
- a tribute to Professor Gê Orthof, Universidade de Brasília, Artes Visuais -
The UFO stood on a gamma-ray field before disappearing in the black hole on the background
De UFO stond op een veld van gammastralen vooraleer te verdwijnen in het zwarte gat op de achtergrond
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/devoured-star.html
Collection Davis Museum, Barcelona
davis-museum-artblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/www_25.html
Photo(postcard) exhibited in Madrid:
Homenaje a Chavela Vargas, Cueva del Bolero de Madrid, Spain, 22 de noviembre 2012
Homenaje a Chavela Vargas, Espacio Cruce, Madrid, Spain, February 1, 2013
Jan Theuninck is a Belgian artist
www.boekgrrls.nl/BgDiversen/Onderwerpen/gedichten_over_sc...
www.forumeerstewereldoorlog.be/wiki/index.php/Yperite-Jan...
www.graphiste-webdesigner.fr/blog/2013/04/la-peinture-bel... (2004)
ESA’s Ministers in charge of space activities convened at an Intermediate Ministerial Meeting (IMM21) at the CEiiA centre, Matosinhos, Portugal, on 18-19 November 2021.
Signature with Mr Kyriacos Kokkinos, the Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy of Cyprus.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This closeup perspective view of the floor of the 120 km-wide Deuteronilus Cavus depression on Mars captures an impressive array of features.
The jumbled mixture of knobs and mesas – stronger blocks of rock that have resisted erosion from wind or water and ice flowing around them – contrast the smoother glacial debris flows seen immediately within the crater walls. Some of the blocks could well be the remnants of a collapsed peak of rock that once stood in the centre of the crater.
Channels also flow into the crater and around the blocks and glacial flows. This complex collection of features is typical of the complicated transition zone between the northern highlands and southern lowlands of Mars.
The darker material is likely wind-blown volcanic ash. Spectral analysis reveals signatures of clay minerals (phyllosilicates), formed as a result of water mixing with volcanic ash, suggesting that liquid water may have ponded here for some time.
The oblique perspective view was generated from the digital terrain model, the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express from data collected 25 October 2024.
[Image description: This oblique view into the Deuteronilus Cavus on Mars captures the crater rim at the top of the image, merging into smooth debris-covered glacial flows and then to the seemingly randomly distributed blocks and dark terrain in the centre. The dark material is likely volcanic dust that may have previously interacted with a pond of water in the centre of the crater.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
A view of the baffles surrounding the lens of the structural and thermal model of Meteosat Third Generation's FCI, Flexible Combined Instrument, during testing at ESTEC in June 2018.
Credits: ESA–G. Porter, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
All images you have ever seen of the Sun were taken from near the Sun's equator, from within the ecliptic plane where all planets and nearly all spacecraft orbit the Sun. In February 2025, Solar Orbiter became the first Sun-watching spacecraft ever to tilt its orbit out of the ecliptic plane.
In June 2025, the ESA-led mission to provided humanity with the first-ever clear views of the Sun's south pole. All ten of Solar Orbiter’s scientific instruments will collect unprecedented data in the years to come.
As we've never clearly seen the poles before, Solar Orbiter may uncover unexpected structures or movements, including polar vortices (swirling gas) similar to those seen around the poles of Venus and Saturn. Additionally, more of the Sun's magnetic field at the poles opens up to space, and Solar Orbiter will be able to see how this changes throughout the solar cycle.
Solar Orbiter’s groundbreaking high-latitude observations are key to understanding the Sun’s magnetic field and why it flips roughly every 11 years, coinciding with a peak in solar activity. Current models and predictions of the 11-year solar cycle fall short of being able to predict exactly when and how powerfully the Sun will reach its most active state.
Additionally, particle and magnetic field detectors on the spacecraft will be the first to track the movement of solar material – including solar wind, bursts of charged particles called coronal mass ejections, and particles moving close to the speed of light – away from the Sun’s equator. This can inform and improve space weather forecasts, important for reducing its impact on Earth.
Finally, measurements of the Sun’s magnetic field at higher latitudes allow Solar Orbiter to map more of the Sun’s global magnetic field as it changes throughout the solar cycle. While the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument can measure local magnetic fields at the Sun’s surface, Solar Orbiter’s magnetometer (MAG) instrument measures the magnetic field near the spacecraft. The latter can reveal the large-scale structure of the Sun’s magnetic field.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument is led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Germany.
[Image description: This infographic by the European Space Agency, titled "Why Solar Orbiter is Angling Towards the Sun's Poles", illustrates the mission’s unique trajectory and scientific goals. At the centre of the image, the Sun is shown with dynamic magnetic field lines, emphasizing polar activity. To the left, the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is depicted with its orbital path marked for 2025 and 2028, showing how it gradually tilts to observe the Sun’s poles. The top right explains the solar dynamo mechanism, while the bottom right highlights the role of polar observations in understanding space weather and the Sun’s global magnetic field.]
Credits: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Acknowledgements: ATG Europe. Sun images based on data from ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI and SPICE Teams.
The Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument on the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft got its first good look at the Sun's south pole in March 2025.
Here we see SPICE's velocity map of charged carbon particles (ions) at the Sun's south pole. These ions live in the transition region, a thin layer around the Sun where the temperature rapidly increases from around 10 000 °C to hundreds of thousands of degrees. (Click here to see a comparison to SPICE's intensity map.)
Blue and red indicate how fast the carbon ions are moving towards and away from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, respectively. Darker blue and red patches are related to plasma flowing faster due to small plumes or jets.
The data shown here were recorded on 22–23 March 2025, when Solar Orbiter was facing the Sun from an angle of 17° below the solar equator. The image is composed of three observations that were subsequently stitched together.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument is led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Germany.
[Image description: This image is a velocity map of the Sun’s south pole, captured by Solar Orbiter’s SPICE instrument. The map is filled with red and blue colours, which represent motion. Red areas show material moving away from the observer, while blue areas show material moving toward the observer. The background is black, making the coloured regions stand out clearly. Curved lines and a faint grid overlay the image, indicating lines of solar latitude and longitude. A label in the bottom right corner notes that the data was taken in ultraviolet light at a temperature of 32 000 °C.]
Credits: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/SPICE Team, M. Janvier (ESA) & J. Plowman (SwRI); CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
BepiColombo, inside its Ariane 5 launcher, is transferred from the Final Assembly Building to the launch zone.
The mission is currently scheduled to launch at 01:45 GMT on 20 October.
BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Space science image of the week:
This colourful, seemingly abstract artwork is actually a map of our Galaxy, depicting all the celestial objects that were detected in the XMM-Newton slew survey between August 2001 and December 2014.
Orbiting Earth since 1999, XMM-Newton is studying high-energy phenomena in the Universe, such as black holes, neutron stars, pulsars and stellar winds. But even when moving between specific targets, the space telescope collects scientific data.
The map shows the 30 000 sources captured during 2114 of these slews. Because of overlapping slew paths, some sources have been observed up to 15 times, and 4924 sources have been observed twice or more. After correcting for overlaps between slews, 84% of the sky has been covered.
The plot is colour-coded such that sources of a lower energy are red and those with a higher energy are blue. In addition, the brighter the source, the larger it appears on the map.
The plot is in galactic coordinates such that the centre of the plot corresponds to the centre of the Milky Way. High-energy sources along the centre of the Milky Way include the famous black hole Cygnus X-1, and Vela X-1, a binary system comprising a neutron star consuming matter from a supergiant companion.
Several star-and-black hole binary systems are also captured, including objects identified as GRS 1915+105, 4U 1630-47 and V 4641 Sgr.
Two clusters of sources, one to the top left and one to the bottom right, correspond to the ecliptic poles.
Objects above and below the plane of our Galaxy are predominantly external galaxies that are emitting X-rays from their massive black holes.
Technical information about the source catalogue is available here.
Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/ R. Saxton / A.M. Read, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This map is based on data from NASA’s Viking mission. It shows the slice of Mars captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft to celebrate the mission’s 15th anniversary: the intriguing and once-active Tharsis province.
Included in this labelled view is the extensive canyon system of Valles Marineris, the web-like system of fissures comprising Noctis Labyrinthus, four volcanoes, and the northern polar cap.
This map was created by the Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing group at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Credits: NASA/Viking, FU Berlin
The Nissan Navara ‘Dark Sky’ concept vehicle features a bespoke off-road trailer allowing a high-powered telescope to be safely transported to remote ‘dark-sky’ locations.
Visit our website to learn more about the Nissan Navara 'Dark Sky'
Credits: Nissan
The Crab Nebula is a nearby example of the debris left behind when a star undergoes a violent death in a supernova explosion. However, despite decades of study, this supernova remnant continues to maintain a degree of mystery: what type of star was responsible for the creation of the Crab Nebula, and what was the nature of the explosion? The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has provided a new view of the Crab, including the highest-quality infrared data yet available to aid scientists as they explore the detailed structure and chemical composition of the remnant. These clues are helping to unravel the unusual way that the star exploded about 1000 years ago.
A team of scientists used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. With the telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the team gathered data that are helping to clarify the Crab Nebula’s history.
The Crab Nebula is the result of a core-collapse supernova that was the death of a massive star. The supernova explosion itself was seen on Earth in 1054 CE and was bright enough to view during the daytime. The much fainter remnant observed today is an expanding shell of gas and dust, and an outflowing wind powered by a pulsar, a rapidly spinning and highly magnetised neutron star.
The Crab Nebula is also highly unusual. Its atypical composition and very low explosion energy have previously led astronomers to think it was an electron-capture supernova — a rare type of explosion that arises from a star with a less-evolved core made of oxygen, neon, and magnesium, rather than a more typical iron core.
Past research efforts have calculated the total kinetic energy of the explosion based on the quantity and velocities of the present-day ejecta. Astronomers deduced that the nature of the explosion was one of relatively low energy (less than one-tenth that of a normal supernova), and the progenitor star’s mass was in the range of eight to 10 solar masses — teetering on the thin line between stars that experience a violent supernova death and those that do not.
However, inconsistencies exist between the electron-capture supernova theory and observations of the Crab, particularly the observed rapid motion of the pulsar. In recent years, astronomers have also improved their understanding of iron-core-collapse supernovae and now think that this type can also produce low-energy explosions, providing the stellar mass is adequately low.
To lower the level of uncertainty about the Crab’s progenitor star and the nature of the explosion, the science team used Webb’s spectroscopic capabilities to home in on two areas located within the Crab’s inner filaments.
Theories predict that because of the different chemical composition of the core in an electron-capture supernova, the nickel to iron (Ni/Fe) abundance ratio should be much higher than the ratio measured in our Sun (which contains these elements from previous generations of stars). Studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s measured the Ni/Fe ratio within the Crab using optical and near-infrared data and noted a high Ni/Fe abundance ratio that seemed to favour the electron-capture supernova scenario.
The Webb telescope, with its sensitive infrared capabilities, is now advancing Crab Nebula research. The team used MIRI’s spectroscopic abilities to measure the nickel and iron emission lines, resulting in a more reliable estimate of the Ni/Fe abundance ratio. They found that the ratio was still elevated compared to the Sun, but only modestly so and much lower in comparison to earlier estimates.
The revised values are consistent with electron-capture, but do not rule out an iron-core-collapse explosion from a similarly low-mass star. (Higher-energy explosions from higher-mass stars are expected to produce Ni/Fe ratios closer to solar abundances.) Further observational and theoretical work will be needed to distinguish between these two possibilities.
Besides pulling spectral data from two small regions of the Crab Nebula’s interior to measure the abundance ratio, the telescope also observed the remnant’s broader environment to understand details of the synchrotron emission and the dust distribution.
The images and data collected by MIRI enabled the team to isolate the dust emission within the Crab and map it in high resolution for the first time. By mapping the warm dust emission with Webb, and even combining it with the Herschel Space Observatory’s data on cooler dust grains, the team created a well-rounded picture of the dust distribution: the outermost filaments contain relatively warmer dust, while cooler grains are prevalent near the centre.
These findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The observations were taken as part of the Webb General Observer programme 1714.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University); CC BY 4.0
“The story of man’s greatest adventures in outer space including the Glenn, Carpenter and Schirra flights.”
ALIVE IN SPACE
"Men can live in space.
"The world knew for sure that it was possible when, on April 12, 1961, a 27-year-old Russian named Yuri Gagarin riding in a Sputnik that weighed 10,395 pounds -- a little more than the weight of six Volkswagens -- sped around the earth in 108 minutes. That is about as long as it takes to see the average motion picture and it means that Gagarin's speed was 17,000 miles an hour, 11 times the speed of an American-made jet fighter plane. At one point, Gagarin was 203 miles high -- a little less than the distance between New York City and Boston.
"Yuri Gagarin came back alive and, because he is the first man to have gone around the world above the earth's atmosphere, he is now one of the most famous men in history -- and he always will be. . ." [Opening paragraphs in the book]
(Sadly, Yuri Gagarin was killed in a jet crash on March 27, 1968.)
In its latest test of readiness for space, ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence is being operated for around three weeks in hard vacuum, while being subjected to the same temperature profiles it will experience during its journey to the Didymos binary asteroid system.
The 1.6 × 1.6 × 1.7 m spacecraft was slid inside the 4.5-m diameter, 11.8-m long Phenix thermal vacuum chamber at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands.
“You’re always a bit nervous when your baby gets moved about,” remarks Ian Carnelli, overseeing Hera for ESA. “Right now it’s being shut into a dark airless box for weeks on end, but we have confidence it will perform well.”
Hera can be seen receded into the rectangular ‘thermal tent’ within Phenix. The six copper walls of this internal box can be heated up to 100°C or cooled via piped liquid nitrogen down to –190°C, all independently from each other.
Then, after the main door of the stainless steel Phenix chamber was slid shut, the air within the chamber was pumped out during a lengthy 20 hours process down to approximately one billionth of outside atmospheric pressure. This will allow the Hera team from ESA, European Test Services operating the Test Centre and Hera manufacturer OHB to test the spacecraft’s thermal behaviour as the temperature changes around it.
Space is a place where it is possible to be hot and cold at the same time if one part of your spacecraft is in sunlight and another is in shade. And because there is no air, there is no conduction or convection to lose heat from your spacecraft. Instead thermal experts employ insulation and radiators to keep the body of a spacecraft within carefully chosen temperature limits. In general spacecraft electronics – just like their human makers – work best at room temperature.
“We already have detailed models of the spacecraft’s thermal behaviour, and this spacecraft-level thermal vacuum test lets us correlate these models with reality,” explains Hera’s Product Assurance and Safety manager, Heli Greus.
“More than 400 thermal sensors have been placed in and around Hera to give us precise knowledge of what is going on, and the test is being supervised on a 24/7 basis in case anything anomalous occurs. The spacecraft is now being put through a series of ‘cold plateaus’ and ‘hot plateaus’ representative of its mission, which will allow us to test the thermal limits of each specific unit aboard.”
Hera is Europe’s contribution to an international planetary defence experiment. Following the DART mission’s impact with the Dimorphos asteroid in 2022 – modifying its orbit and sending a plume of debris thousands of kilometres out into space – Hera will return to Dimorphos to perform a close-up survey of the crater left by DART. The mission will also measure Dimorphos’ mass and make-up, along with that of the larger Didymos asteroid that Dimorphos orbits around. Hera is due for launch in October 2024.
The ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands is the largest facility of its kind in Europe, providing a complete suite of equipment for all aspects of satellite testing under a single roof.
Credits: ESA-A. Conigli
The ESA astronaut class of 2022 was selected exactly a year ago. Most members of the astronaut reserve made their first visit as a group to the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany this week.
On November 23, 2022 ESA announced the selection of 17 individuals for the new class of European astronauts. By April 2023, five began basic training as ESA astronaut candidates, while 12 became part of the ESA astronaut reserve.
The astronaut reserve comprises individuals as potential candidates for future missions, qualified for basic training in anticipation of additional spaceflight opportunities.
For one member, Marcus Wandt from Sweden, the dream of space travel is becoming a reality. Initially part of the astronaut reserve, he was designated as an ESA project astronaut for the Muninn mission.
Marcus will travel to the International Space Station on a commercial spaceflight opportunity with Axiom Space no earlier than January 2024. He will serve as a mission specialist for Axiom Mission 3 for up to 14 days, conducting microgravity research and educational activities.
During their visit to EAC, members of the astronaut reserve had their annual medical evaluations to maintain certification for future flight opportunities. It was also a chance to meet fellow classmates, representing over eight different nationalities, and to engage with ongoing ESA activities at the European Astronaut Centre.
“The collaborative effort among nations here to propel Europe and its future astronauts into space is inspiring. Meeting everyone has been both exciting and gratifying. The virtual reality session blew me away, and there is so much more to explore,” says Amelie Schoenenwald, member of the astronaut reserve from Germany.
Carmen Possnig from Austria cherished the sense of teamwork and connection not only with fellow ESA astronaut class members but also with the entire ESA community: “Feeling at home at EAC and the insightful presentations were highlights for me,” says Carmen.
“From the initial selection stages with Arnaud and Carmen to where we are now, it has been a strong teamwork journey from the start”, adds Anthea Comellini from Italy.
The members of the reserve gained insights into various EAC departments, including the PANGAEA geology course, young researcher’s Spaceship EAC initiative, activities of ESA’s Neutral Buoyancy Facility, human physiology, and an overview of Space Station systems and operations. They also visited the nearby medical research facility :envihab and the Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC) of the German Aerospace Center DLR.
More encounters are planned for the future, fostering meaningful exchanges between potential future European astronauts and those guiding them towards the stars.
From left to right: members of the astronaut reserve Sławosz Uznański, Anthea Comellini, John McFall, Carmen Possnig, Sara García Alonso, Amelie Schoenenwald, Meganne Christian, Andrea Patassa, Aleš Svoboda, and ESA astronaut and astronaut operations team lead at EAC Alexander Gerst.
Credits: ESA
What do planets around other stars look like? Are they rocky, like our own planet Earth, or gassy, like Jupiter and Saturn? Do they have moons? Are they suitable to host life? These are some of the most fascinating questions in modern astrophysics.
Since the first discoveries of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun in the 1990s, scientists have discovered over 4000 exoplanets, revealing a variety of alien worlds much unlike any of the planets in our Solar System. While the study of exoplanets is one of the fastest growing areas in astronomy, there is still much we don’t know about planetary systems beyond our own.
On 6 October, at ESA’s Open Day in the Netherlands, children visiting the agency’s largest establishment with their families had a chance to unleash their fantasy and creativity, sharing with ESA scientists how they imagine some of these planets might look like. The result of this public engagement activity, led by ESA research fellow Alice Zocchi, is the ‘Exoplanet Zoo’ – a collection of more than 200 drawings, a fraction of them shown in this picture.
The artwork portrays a wide variety of stars and planets, some inspired by the looks of Earth, Mars and other Solar System worlds, along with many curious, original views. One day, observations from future facilities on ground and in space could perhaps report that some of these visionary drawings do have an actual counterpart somewhere in the Universe.
To investigate exoplanets, ESA is preparing to launch its first mission dedicated to this subject: Cheops, the CHaracterising ExOplanet Satellite. Due to lift off in mid-December, Cheops will perform detailed observations of bright stars known to host planets, particularly in the Earth-to-Neptune size range, enabling a first step towards characterising the nature of these distant, exotic worlds.
Cheops will also help provide targets for other missions, including the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, which will be used to search for the signatures of water and methane, important elements in our quest for signs of habitability. On a longer timeframe, ESA is planning two more missions dedicated to the study of exoplanets – Plato, the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars mission, and Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission – keeping European science at the forefront of exoplanet research.
Credits: ESA – SJM Photography
ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took this image of Hurriacane Florence on 12 September 2018, 400 km high from the International Space Station. He commented:
"Ever stared down the gaping eye of a category 4 hurricane? It's chilling, even from space."
Alexander is on his second six-month Space Station mission. Follow him and the Horizons mission on social media on his website and on his blog.
Credits: ESA/NASA–A. Gerst
This image shows the relative heights and depths of a region in the southern hemisphere of Mars showing Neukum Crater within Noachis Terra. As indicated in the key at top right, whites, browns and reds represent the highest terrain, while blue/purple is the lowest (values are marked on the scale).
The colour-coded topographic view is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived.
The region was imaged by Mars Express on 31 December 2005, 24 May 2007 and 27 May 2007, corresponding to orbits 2529, 4346 and 4357, respectively. The scene covers the region 26–31°E / 42–47°S. North is to the right.
Read the associated news article here.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
There are few things better than the smell of freshly baked bread from the oven, this is because molecules in the bread disperse in the heat to reach your nose. In a similar way, the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin will ‘bake’ and ‘sniff’ martian samples in miniature ovens, imaged above, as part of its investigation of the extra-terrestrial world.
Set to land on Mars in 2021, Rosalind Franklin will scout areas of interest and drill up to 2 m below the surface and report back its findings to scientists on Earth.
Nothing short of a miniature laboratory on wheels, the dirt that Rosalind Franklin collects will pass through different steps in an intricate process allowing for many types of analysis to get the best possible overview of the composition of Mars so far.
The Mars Organic Molecule Analyser, “MOMA”, will heat samples to unlock the organic molecules from the Martian dust and transform them into the gas phase. The gas produced will then flow past a receptor that ‘sniffs’ the molecules to learn more about the sample, thanks to its gas chromatograph.
Baked to up to 800°C in the pyrolysis ovens, the investigations are a one-shot affair. The samples are arranged around the circumference of a rotating carrousel, so that each tube can be placed under the sample funnel and positioned in the tapping station where the samples are ‘cooked’ and ‘sniffed’.
The thumb-sized gold-coloured tubes are hollow to hold the samples. At the tapping station a sphere pushes down on the oven rim to ensure an airtight seal during heating. The double golden pins are the connectors that send electricity running into the ovens.
The silver-coloured rod is a calibration target for a second component of MOMA dubbed ‘LDMS’ that uses laser heating (desorption) and mass spectrometry to analyse the samples. The rod is used to create a standard value for the laser on the Red Planet to ensure that LDMS is working correctly. Together MOMA’s gas chromatographer and LDMS will target biomarkers to answer questions related to the potential origin, evolution and distribution of life on Mars.
Choosing when and where to take a Martian sample, and choosing which instrument to analyse the sample with, will be a discussion of interplanetary proportions for scientists, but that discussion will need to reach conclusions quickly: the ExoMars rover has 31 tubes to fill and analyse and is designed to work for 218 “sols” or Martian days.
MOMA is built by a scientific consortium led by the Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung in Göttingen, Germany, with the gas chromatograph built by LISA (Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques) in Paris, France, and the LDMS by NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, USA. These miniature ovens are part of the rover on-board laboratory “ultra clean zone” that was designed by Thales Alenia Space in Italy, and mounted on a carrousel developed by OHB in Munich, Germany.
Credits: Thales Alenia Space
This striking view of layered sediments on Mars was captured by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter’s Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System, CaSSIS, on 2 October 2018. The image, which covers an area 25 x 7 km wide, focuses on a layered mound in Juventae Chasma, just north of the iconic Valles Marineris.
The features in the chasmata around Valles Marineris have been well studied by Mars orbiters, including ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The CRISM instrument on MRO detected a significant amount of sulphates at the base of the mound shown in this image – a composition that points to the presence of water in the distant past.
The new image from CaSSIS reveals the beautiful sedimentary layers in high resolution, allowing scientists to explore the correlation between colour as seen by the camera, and composition as determined by previous measurements to better understand how these minerals were deposited in the area. Patterns in the layering can also serve as a record of climate, further constraining the type of environment in which this feature formed, and shedding light on the history of this stunning landscape.
The ExoMars programme is a joint endeavour between ESA and Roscosmos. More about ExoMars.
Credits: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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 Aurora, seen here dancing above Svalbard in Norway, is the most beautiful result of space weather on Earth.
The lights, most commonly found at polar regions, are totally benign, but they signify something serious happening at Earth.
Space weather describes the ever-changing conditions in space, caused by intense radiation and colossal amounts of energetic material that the Sun blasts in every direction.
When solar storms reach Earth, they intefere with our planet's magnetic field, creating geomagnetic storms with the potential to disrupt and even destroy infrastructure in space and on the ground.
This week, space weather is under the lime light as experts from across Europe meet at the European Space Weather Week in Liege, Belgium.
Credits: ESA
SpaceX Crew-2 Walkout and dry dress rehearsal with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet on 18 April 2021 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan MacArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.
The Crew-2 launch is scheduled for 22 April at 06:11 EDT/12:11 CEST.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This is J0624-6948, a supernova remnant observed by XMM-Newton.
Read more about this discovery here!
[Image description: This image shows dark purple and bright yellow spots against a pitch-black background, that appear like neon lights outside a window in a city at night. In the centre of the image, the spots cluster to loosely form a ring, which is mostly purple.]
Credits: Eckhard Slawik, ESA/XMM-Newton/M. Sasaki et al (2025)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
F. Zangrandi
ESA Astronaut Alexander Gerst in the Columbus Module of the International Space Station, performing the Grasp Experiment. The focus of this experiment is on how a brain combines the perception of its body with visual information to coordinate hand movement. Researchers suspect that, on Earth, the brain uses gravity as a reference. When reaching for an object, the brain will calculate how far your hand is by using visual clues as well as how shoulder muscles counteract the downward force of gravity to keep your arm straight. The sensation of floating for months on end is something our brains never had to deal with until last century and seeing how they adapt offers interesting clues to their workings. The research will help us to identify the workings of the vestibular system that keeps our balance, and how it connects to the other sensory organs. In other words, Grasp is researching the physiology behind eye–hand coordination as well as shedding light on how to treat patients showing a loss of vestibular function on Earth. For astronauts, the research will be useful during spacewalks, where coordination in weightlessness with few visual clues is of utmost importance.
Alexander posted the picture on social media, commenting: "European friendship & cooperation at work: we managed to save the French GRASP experiment by deploying my German flag on the floor of the Columbus module, blocking reflections that disturbed the infrared sensors."
Alexander Gerst is currently on his second mission to the International Space Station for Expeditions 56 and 57. The mission is part of ESA’s vision to use Earth-orbiting spacecraft as a place to live and work for the benefit of European society while using the experience to prepare for future voyages of exploration further into the Solar System.
Credits: ESA/NASA
Artist’s impression of the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover. This image shows a front view of the rover with the drill in a vertical position.
Credits: ESA/Mlabspace
ESA's star-surveying Gaia mission has released a treasure trove of new data as part of its ‘focused product release’. One of the new papers characterises the dynamics of 10 000 pulsating and binary red giant stars in by far the largest such database available to date. These stars were part of a catalogue of two million variable star candidates released in Gaia DR3, and are key when calculating cosmic distances, confirming stellar characteristics, and clarifying how stars evolve throughout the cosmos. The new release provides a better understanding of how these fascinating stars change over time.
Each symbol on this skymap indicates the position of one of the sources from the catalogue. Each is colour-coded according to the star’s variability type as seen by Gaia. Red symbols are long-period variables (LPVs) whose variability is driven by the star pulsating. Green dots show so-called ‘long secondary period’ stars (LSPs), whose cause of variability is still debated but believed to be linked to a cloud of dust orbiting the star. Blue symbols are ellipsoidal variables: red giants that are part of a binary system with a dense compact object, and whose shape is distorted into an egg-like shape due to this companion’s strong gravitational pull. Each source changes in luminosity roughly periodically and has a varying line-of-sight velocity as measured by Gaia. This means that the stellar surface is either cyclically approaching or receding from us as the star pulsates, or that the star itself is approaching/receding as it moves throughout its orbit. The darker the tone and larger the size of each symbol, the more that star’s velocity changes throughout its cycle.
Alt-text: This image shows the plane of the Milky Way cutting horizontally across the frame, with many colourful dots overlaid – each representing a star. The dots are either red, green or blue, with the colour representing the star’s type and motion (the larger and darker the dot, the more the star’s velocity is changing throughout its cycle).
Acknowledgements: Michele Trabucchi, Nami Mowlavi and Thomas Lebzelter
Credits: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) nadir and colour channel data taken during revolution 10602 on 27 April 2012 by ESA’s Mars Express have been combined to form a natural-colour view of the Ladon Valles region. Centred at around 18°S and 329°E, this image has a ground resolution of about 20 m per pixel. The image shows the interconnected craters Sigli and Shambe, believed to have formed when a large meteorite fragmented in to two pieces just before impact. Extensive fracturing can be seen within the craters. Above the craters (west), creek-like flow channels can be seen leading in to the wider impact basin region to the right (north).
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime produced by the acceleration of very massive objects, such as black holes coming together and merging.
Different objects in space produce gravitational waves of different timescales, ranging from milliseconds to billions of years.
Some of these waves can only be observed from space.
This is the goal of ESA’s future mission LISA, which will be the first space-based gravitational wave observatory.
LISA will study gravitational waves that are produced by merging stellar mass black holes, supermassive black holes and white dwarfs. It will also pick up the waves produced by compact objects, like neutron stars or small black holes, that fall into a supermassive black hole.
Credits: ESA
This spiral galaxy was observed as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) programme, a large project that includes observations from several space- and ground-based telescopes of many galaxies to help researchers study all phases of the star formation cycle, from the formation of stars within dusty gas clouds to the energy released in the process that creates the intricate structures revealed by Webb’s new images.
NGC 628 is 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.
Learn more about what can be seen in this vast collection of Webb images here.
[Image description: Webb’s image of NGC 628 shows a densely populated face-on spiral galaxy anchored by a central region that has a light blue haze. Spine-like f spiral orange arms extend to the edges and rotate counterclockwise.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee (STScI), T. Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Closeup perspective view of a branched channel cutting through the southern edge of Deuteronilus Cavus.
The channel may have originally formed from the overland flow of water or as subsurface ice melted or water drained away, collapsing the weakened surface above. The grooved surface texture seen along the floor of the wider parts of the channel also suggests previously present ice, where boulders frozen into the base of a glacier were dragged along, gouging out the troughs visible today.
The oblique perspective view was generated from the digital terrain model, the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express from data collected 25 October 2024.
[Image description: The wall of the Deuteronilus Cavus depression curves from the bottom left to the middle-right edge of this image, providing a closeup view of the inner crater wall and floor in the foreground, and the outlying terrain in the background. A channel with several branches breaches the crater wall in the centre of the image. Its floor appears smooth with some linear grooves gouged out by debris dragged downhill by glaciers.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Major elements of the Ariane 5 rocket to launch the James Webb Space Telescope arrived safely in Kourou, French Guiana from Europe on 3 September 2021.
The rocket’s fairing, upper stage and core stage have been unloaded from the MN Toucan vessel at Pariacabo harbour and transported by special convoy to Europe’s Spaceport about 3 km away from the wharf.
Webb will be stowed folded inside the fairing built by RUAG Space in Emmen, Switzerland. This ogive-shaped fairing at the top of Ariane 5 is 5.4 m in diameter and over 17 m high. Made of carbon fibre-polymer composite, this structure will protect Webb from the thermal, acoustic, and aerodynamic stresses at liftoff on the ascent to space.
Ariane 5’s upper stage is built by ArianeGroup in Bremen, Germany. It gives Ariane 5 the flexibility to deploy scientific payloads to a highly precise second Lagrangian injection orbit. Its HM7B engine burns 14.7 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant to deliver 6.6 t of thrust. It provides attitude control during the ascent and the separation of Webb. The Vehicle Equipment Bay, ‘the brain’, autonomously controls the whole vehicle and transmits all key flight parameters to the ground station network.
The cryogenic core stage, built by ArianeGroup in France, is 5.4 m diameter and 30.5 m long and unfuelled weighs more than 14 tonnes. At liftoff, its Vulcain 2 engine burns 175 t of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants to provide 140 t of thrust. It also provides roll control during the main propulsion phase.
At Europe’s Spaceport these Ariane 5 parts will be checked and prepared for assembly and integration before the mating of Webb on its top.
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.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace
This image of the gas-giant exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab was taken with the coronagraph on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). A star symbol marks the location of the host star Epsilon Indi A, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph, resulting in the dark circle marked with a dashed white line. Epsilon Indi Ab is one of the coldest exoplanets ever directly imaged. Light at 10.6 microns was assigned the colour blue, while light at 15.5 microns was assigned the colour orange.
[Image description: This image shows the exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab. Blue scale-like features are visible in the background, with the host star’s light being blocked by a black circle in the centre of the image (indicated by a dashed-line and white star visual overlaid on the image). The exoplanet is visible on the left as a bright orange circle.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, E. Matthews (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy); CC BY 4.0