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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
Two Galileo navigation satellites inside the protective ‘nose cone’ of Ariane 6 (known as the fairing) hoisted to the top of the Ariane 6 rocket that will take them to space, on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, 11 December 2025.
The fairing plays a crucial role as it shields the satellites from the elements and maintains a stable temperature and humidity. It also provides the aerodynamic shape Ariane 6 needs to pierce through Earth’s atmosphere as it thunders toward space.
The fairing separates during launch, allowing the satellites to begin their journey to medium Earth orbit, 23 222 km above Earth, ready to deliver precise navigation services to billions of users worldwide.
Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut
ESA’s 35-metre antenna in Australia has now been powered by the Sun for over a year, cutting costs and reducing carbon emissions by 330 tonnes - equivalent to 1.9 million km driven by car.
The solar plant at the New Norcia station in Western Australia started its first full month catching solar rays in August 2017. One year later, it had produced 470 Megawatt-hours of power – enough to supply 120 four-person homes for a year, fuelling 34% of the total electricity consumption of the station.
In order for the tracking station to be powered 100% by renewable energy, more panels would be required. Other sources of energy could also be used such as kite power, hydrogen or geothermal energy.
“I am really happy with these results – they reach beyond our initial expectations when we began the solar-power upgrade and I would be thrilled to see the same development spread to our other ground stations,” explains Marc Roubert, ESA's ground stations maintenance engineer.
With this success, ESA engineers will investigate possible similar upgrades for other stations.
Ultimately, Marc says, it would be a real achievement to get all ESA ground stations in the Estrack network completely off the mains power grid. This way, they can continue to track and communicate with satellites orbiting Earth and in deep space, while reducing the carbon footprint of the Agency’s giant 'eyes on the skies'.
Credits: ESA/D. O'Donnell, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The name of European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer’s first mission to the International Space Station, Cosmic Kiss, is a declaration of love for space. It communicates the special connection the Station provides between Earth’s inhabitants and the cosmos. It also conveys the value of partnership in exploring farther to the Moon and Mars, alongside the need to respect, protect and preserve the nature of our home planet as we seek a sustainable future on Earth.
The Cosmic Kiss patch takes inspiration from the Nebra sky disc (“Himmelsscheibe von Nebra”) – the oldest known realistic illustration of the night sky – as well as the Pioneer plaques and Voyager Golden Records that were sent into the unknown carrying messages from Earth.
These artefacts show a fascination with space that spans the ages. Since the beginning of time, humans have looked skyward for knowledge about the origins of life, the Universe and our place in the cosmos. The Cosmic Kiss mission builds on the curiosity of all those who came before us, as exploration advances our understanding of Earth, our Solar System and life itself.
Like the Nebra sky disc, the patch features several cosmic elements including Earth, the Moon and the Pleiades star cluster. It also depicts Mars, one of ESA’s three key destinations for exploration over the next 10 years, as a small red dot beckoning in the distance.
Earth is shown borderless and backlit, with only a delicate line of atmosphere visible. This phenomenon is often described by space travellers, who marvel at the wonder of all human life and events taking place in one thin and precious layer.
The most prominent feature is a simplified, almost heart-like International Space Station. This is connected through a human heartbeat that stretches from Earth to the Moon. This heartbeat symbolises the human presence and passion that propels exploration forward and connects us to the Universe, as well as the vital life science experiments the Space Station enables.
As a unique oasis in space, the International Space Station is a hub of science, research and operations like no other. The continuous human presence that it supports beyond our Earth leads to greater knowledge, technological advances and a better understanding of fundamental and applied sciences. The Space Station is a lifeline for Earth’s future and paves the way for our next steps into space as we go forward to the Moon and Mars. It is the Cosmic Kiss that unites us and brings light to the unknown.
The Cosmic Kiss mission patch features black, red, gold and white. Each colour has been selected for its significance:
● Black – represents the Universe and its mysteries that we seek to understand.
● Red – stands for love and passion. It represents our human presence today and the martian soils that await us as we explore farther into the Solar System.
● Gold – is the colour of the stars that share their warmth and light to enable life.
● White – is the heartbeat that flashes in the atmosphere. It stands for technology and scientific progress, bringing light into the dark.
Credits: ESA
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
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Image description: Astronaut on the Moon connects with Earth by radio, a laser beams from a lunar experiment to the Earth.
It takes on average 1.27 seconds for a radio signal to travel from Moon to Earth. To talk to somebody on the Moon you would have to wait at least 2.54 seconds for a reply.
Lasers are now used to communicate with spacecraft and measure the distance to the Moon using reflectors left on the lunar surface.
The European Space Agency has a partnership to develop commercial lunar communications for spacecraft and astronauts.
#ForwardToTheMoon
Credits: ESA
Installation of connections and harness for the radio frequency link system that will allow communication with the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft while in the thermal chamber, and to test the communications system during thermal-vacuum test. The spacecraft will spend several weeks inside the Large Space Simulator at ESTEC under vacuum, experiencing a range of extreme temperatures to prepare for its journey in space.
Juice will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. The mission will investigate the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants and the Jupiter system as an archetype for the numerous giant exoplanets now known to orbit other stars.
Credits: ESA / SJM Photography
Two titanium plaques etched with thousands of miniaturised drawings made by children have been fixed to the CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite, Cheops. Each plaque measures nearly 18 cm across and 24 cm high.
The plaques, prepared by a team at the Bern University of Applied Sciences in Burgdorf, Switzerland, were unveiled in a dedicated ceremony at RUAG on 27 August 2018.
Credits: G. Bucher – Bern University of Applied Sciences
ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano was launched to the International Space Station from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 20 July 2019 alongside NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov.
The trio travelled to the Station in a Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft and will spend more than six months living and working in orbit.
Beyond is Luca’s second space mission – his first was Volare in 2013. During the second part of this mission, known as Expedition 61, Luca will become the third European and first Italian commander of the International Space Station.
The most recent European commander was ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst during his Horizons mission in 2018. The first was ESA astronaut Frank De Winne during his OasISS mission in 2009.
During Beyond, Luca will support over 50 European experiments and more than 200 International experiments in microgravity. A number of these experiments, such as Grip and Grasp, are continuations from previous missions.
New experiments include BioRock, an experiment looking at the potential of microbes in extracting minerals from rocks on other planets, and NutrISS, which looks at the best strategies for monitoring and controlling changes in energy balance, metabolism and body composition during spaceflight.
Follow Luca's mission Beyond mission here and visit the blog for regular updates.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
In the blockhouse at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, the countdown proceeds for the firing of the first rocket of Project Vanguard carrying an artificial satellite. By the end of the International Geophysical Year in 1958, “the United States expects to fire at least half a dozen satellite-carrying rockets of the Vanguard type.” [Summarizing and Quoting from the text]
On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. On January 31, 1958, a US Army Jupiter-C rocket launched Explorer I, the first American satellite into Earth orbit.
Two Galileo satellites being placed inside the protective ‘nose cone’ of Ariane 6 (known as the fairing) at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
The fairing plays a crucial role as it shields the satellites from the elements and maintains a stable temperature and humidity. It also provides the aerodynamic shape Ariane 6 needs to pierce through Earth’s atmosphere as it thunders toward space.
The fairing separates during launch, allowing the satellites to begin their journey to medium Earth orbit, 23 222 km above Earth, ready to deliver precise navigation services to billions of users worldwide.
Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut
ESA’s Young Professionals Satellite, YPSat, has been fully integrated for the first time, in preparation for its ‘electromagnetic compatibility’ testing seen here. This checks that all the systems aboard the compact payload can operate together without interfering either with each other or the launcher carrying it.
YPSat is a project run in its entirety by ESA Young Professionals to give them direct early experience in designing, building and testing hardware for space. YPSat’s goal is to capture all the key phases of Ariane 6's inaugural flight.
The project’s latest testing took place at ESA’s EMC Laboratory, part of a suite of technical labs focused on every aspect of the space environment at the Agency’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands.
“It’s amazing to see the hard work of the team finally come together in its flight configuration for the mandatory tests before the integration on Ariane 6,” comments Julien Krompholtz, YPSat’s current project manager. He will be replaced in the new year – knowledge transfer being a central part of the project as entry-level participants move on.
Julien adds: “I’m very proud to be part of such a fun project and amazing team. Beyond the excitement of seeing YPSat fully assembled, there's the awesome feeling as every part gets tested and smoothly comes to life.”
The payload still needs to undergo cleaning before flight, so will be dissembled again before final assembly – and its screws fully ‘torqued’ – before it is scheduled to be handed over to launch provider Arianespace next spring.
Follow the YPSat team's latest updates on their LinkedIn account.
Credits: ESA-J. Krompholtz
This selection of images of external galaxies illustrates three encounter scenarios between our Milky Way and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. In the top left panel, a wide-field DSS image showing galaxies M81 and M82 serves as an example of the Milky Way and Andromeda passing each other at large distances. The top right panel shows NGC 6786, a pair of interacting galaxies displaying the telltale signs of tidal disturbances after a close encounter. The bottom panel shows NGC 520, a cosmic train wreck as two galaxies are actively merging together.
[Image description: A three-panel image, two at the top and one stretched across the bottom. At top left, two spiral galaxies are widely separated against the black background of space. At top right, two face-on spiral galaxies are close together. Their spiral arms appear stretched toward each other. At bottom, two spiral galaxies have collided, resulting in a broad X-shaped patch of milky white. Mottled clouds of dark brown dust are superimposed.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, Till Sawala (University of Helsinki), DSS, J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0
The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured its first glimpse of Venus on 14 October 2020 as the spacecraft approached the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre a day later.
The image was taken at 07:25 UTC within 600 000 km of Venus. The image was taken by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 3. The cameras provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution.
Venus appears towards the left, close to the spacecraft structure. The high-gain antenna of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter is also visible a the top of the view.
The manoeuvre, the first at Venus and the second of nine flybys overall, helped steer the spacecraft on course for Mercury. 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 brake against the gravitational pull of the Sun in order to enter orbit around Mercury. BepiColombo, which comprises ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is scheduled to reach its target orbit around the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System in 2025.
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Carmen Possnig was selected as a member of the ESA Astronaut Reserve in November 2022. She began her Astronaut Reserve training at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) near Cologne, Germany, on 13 January 2025. The programme covers selected modules of ESA’s one-year basic training typically completed by career astronauts, equipping members of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve with the skills needed to support Europe’s future space exploration and scientific research. Training includes technical and operational skills, biology and radiation lessons, training in human behaviour and performance, winter survival exercises and initial spacewalk training familiarisation.
Credits: ESA - A. Conigli
The Cheops satellite being fuelled with hydrazine at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 23 November. A highly specialised team of fuellers is at work, protected by special suites. Fuelling is controlled via a dedicated set-up which allows to control accurately the quantity of propellant loaded in the satellite tank.
Scheduled for launch on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket on 17 December, Cheops is ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. It will observe bright stars that are already known to host planets, measuring minuscule brightness changes due to the planet’s transit across the star’s disc.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG/P Baudon
For the first time, astronomers have identified a still-forming galaxy that weighs about the same as our Milky Way if we could wind back the clock to see our galaxy as it developed. The newly identified galaxy, the Firefly Sparkle, is in the process of assembling and forming stars, and existed about 600 million years after the Big Bang.
The image of the galaxy is stretched and warped by a natural effect known as gravitational lensing, which allowed researchers to glean far more information about its contents. (In some areas of Webb’s image, the galaxy is magnified over 40 times.)
While it took shape, the galaxy gleamed with star clusters in a range of infrared colours, which are scientifically meaningful. They indicate that the stars formed at different periods, not all at once.
Since the galaxy image is stretched into a long line in Webb’s observations, researchers were able to identify 10 distinct star clusters and study them individually, along with the cocoon of diffuse light from the additional, unresolved stars surrounding them. That’s not always possible for distant galaxies that aren’t lensed. Instead, in many cases researchers can only draw conclusions that apply to an entire galaxy. “Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched and we are not able to see the ‘building blocks’ separately. With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick,” explains astronomer Lamiya Mowla, assistant professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
There are two companion galaxies 'hovering' close by, which may ultimately affect how this galaxy forms and builds mass over billions of years. Firefly Sparkle is only about 6500 light-years away from its first companion, and 42 000 light-years from its second companion. Let’s compare these figures to objects that are closer to home: the Sun is about 26 000 light-years from the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way measures about 100 000 light-years across. Not only are Firefly Sparkle’s companions very close, the researchers also suspect that they are orbiting one another.
[Image description: Horizontal split down the middle. At left, thousands of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this galaxy cluster. A box at bottom right is enlarged on the right half. A central oval identifies the Firefly Sparkle galaxy, a line with 10 dots in various colours.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, C. Willott (NRC-Canada), L. Mowla (Wellesley College), K. Iyer (Columbia); CC BY 4.0
ESA astronauts Alexander Gerst and Andreas Mogensen training for spacewalks at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA.
The training helps astronauts familiarise with the tools and large equipment used during Extra Vehicular Activities, or spacewalks.
Alexander will be launched on 6 June with US astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. Soyuz MS-09 will be the 138th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. The mission is called Horizons to evoke exploring our Universe, looking far beyond our planet and broadening our knowledge. His first mission was called Blue Dot.
Alexander will take over command of the International Space Station for the second half of his mission. This is only the second time that a European astronaut will take up this leading position on the space outpost – the first was ESA astronaut Frank De Winne in 2009. Alexander Gerst is the 11th German citizen to fly into space.
The science programme is packed with European research: more than 50 experiments will deliver benefits to people back on Earth and prepare for future space exploration.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The Vega-C Payload Assembly Composite (PAC) with LARES-2 has been rolled out to the Vega Launch Zone (ZLV) and hoisted onto the Vega-C launch Vehicle on 7 July 2022 at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guiana.
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-Manuel Pedoussaut
ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst is training together with NASA Astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor at the the Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA. The training took place on 6 March 2018 in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. The astronauts dealt with various emergency scenarios, including a fire in a laptop in the crew quarters, a fire in a lab module and a several communication issues. The goal is to prepare the crew for possible emergencies.
Alexander will be launched on 6 June with US astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. Soyuz MS-09 will be the 138th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft.
The mission is called Horizons to evoke exploring our Universe, looking far beyond our planet and broadening our knowledge. His first mission was called Blue Dot. Alexander will take over command of the International Space Station for the second half of his mission. This is only the second time that a European astronaut will take up this leading position on the space outpost – the first was ESA astronaut Frank De Winne in 2009. Alexander Gerst is the 11th German citizen to fly into space.
The science programme is packed with European research: more than 50 experiments will deliver benefits to people back on Earth and prepare for future space exploration.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Rollout of Galileo L14 Ariane 6 A62 flight VA266 at the Ariane 6 launch complex (ELA-4) at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on 16 December 2025.
Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut
The inaugural flight Vega-C launcher integration process began with the P120 solid rocket stage being delivered to the Vega Launch Zone (Zone de Lancement Vega) ZLV at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guiana on 15 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.
Vega-C will also accommodate the flight-proven Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS) dispenser, which further reduces cost-to-orbit by enabling rideshare missions, with or without a large, primary payload.
Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut
On 4 October 2025, the European Space Agency has expanded its capability to communicate with scientific, exploration and space safety missions across our Solar System with the inauguration of a new 35-m diameter deep space antenna in New Norcia, Western Australia – the fourth for Estrack, ESA’s satellite tracking network.
The inauguration ceremony was led by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher alongside Enrico Palermo, Head of the Australian Space Agency, and Rolf Densing, ESA Director of Operations, together with Stephen Dawson, the Western Australia Minister for Regional Development, Ports, Science and Innovation, Medical Research and the Kimberley, with Sabine Winton, Western Australia Minister for Education, Early Childhood, Preventative Health and the Wheatbelt, in attendance.
When the new deep space antenna enters service in 2026, it will support ESA’s current flagship missions flown as part of the Agency's scientific, exploration and space safety fleets, including Juice, Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo, Mars Express and Hera, and will be a critical enabler for upcoming missions including Plato, Envision, Ariel, Ramses and Vigil.
Learn more about our new antenna.
Credits: ESA
The 11th annual ESA Open Day at ESA’s technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, took place on the weekend of 1 and 2 October 2022. On 1 October, visitors with disabilities had the opportunity to follow the tour at their own pace. On both days visitors were able to meet astronauts, space scientists and engineers and learn all about the work carried out at Europe’s largest space establishment.
Credits: G. Porter
Since the beginning of the space age, with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, we have launched thousands of rockets carrying more than ten thousand satellites into space.
The last few years have seen a dramatic increase in these numbers, and over the last few decades there has been a change in the type of mission flown, with private companies (yellow) launching smaller satellites than those launched by non-commercial agencies (blue).
This graph, created in a joint project between ESA and the UN, also shows the number of unregistered objects (red) has increased in recent years. It should be noted that these are objects not yet registered with the UN, and registration rates are expected to increase.
In episode 4 of the ESA-UNOOSA space debris series, Ian Freeman and Francesca Letizia discuss what these changes mean for the future of spaceflight and the creation of space debris.
Credits: ESA / UNOOSA
The fairing of the Ariane 5 launcher is lowered over the BepiColombo spacecraft stack.
Credits: ESA-Manuel Pedoussaut
This oblique perspective view shows a slice of Mars imaged to mark a milestone for ESA’s Mars Express: its 25 000th orbit around the Red Planet.
It was generated from a digital terrain model and the nadir (downward-pointing) and colour channels of Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera. The vertical scale is exaggerated by a factor of approximately three, making the volcanoes look three times higher than they are in real life.
Three of Mars’s famously colossal volcanoes are shown here: from left to right, Arsia, Pavonis and Ascraeus Mons. The mound of Mars’s largest volcano, Olympus Mons, can be spied further away at the top of the frame, while the fractured terrain of Noctis Labyrinthus, Mars’s ‘labyrinth of night’, can be seen in the foreground.
[Image description: This image shows a tan-coloured portion of Mars, with the curvature of the planet visible to the top left the frame. Four of Mars’s volcanoes can be seen in relief against the dark background, shown as darker mounds stretching away from the viewer.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The smooth topped, rounded flows seen extending from the base of the crater wall are ‘debris aprons’: remnants of rock-covered glaciers that likely formed when the martian climate allowed ice to accumulate at the mid-latitudes of Mars. Over time, the debris-covered glaciers slowly crept downslope to form the gently sloping bulges seen today.
The erosive action of ice and water has resulted in the considerable widening of the crater of up to twice its original size.
A particularly dramatic example is seen at the right edge of this image, where a wide channel has been gouged out. It is reminiscent of the U-shaped valleys carved by glaciers on Earth. Here, it may have started out in a V-shape due to flowing water – or water draining out from beneath and causing collapse – and later widened during a period of glaciation.
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: A sweeping view along the crater rim of Deuteronilus Cavus, which transects the image from bottom right to centre-top, focuses on the smooth debris flows that have slid towards the centre of the crater. At the right, a large chunk of the crater wall is missing, forming a U-shaped valley with a grooved floor. Towards the centre of the crater – the far top left of the image – a patch of dark volcanic dust covers the surface. Jumbled blocks are seen in the centre, contrasting the smoother flows around the inner walls.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA joined the Space Pavilion at ILA 2022 to present the newest programmes, missions and technologies at the heart of Europe’s space effort. The Pavilion also highlights upcoming commercial opportunities in the space sector for German, European and global industry focussing on sustainability and climate change, digitalization, innovation, research and space safety.
Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot
Rollout to the launch pad of the Soyuz rocket with the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft inside, 4 June 2018. The spacecraft will launch ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 6 June.
The 50-m tall Soyuz rocket will propell the astronauts to their cruising speed of around 28 800 km/h. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft accelerated 50 km/h on average.
The rocket is rolled to the launch pad on a train, the astronauts are not allowed to see this part of the launch preparation – it is considered bad luck.
This will be Alexander’s second spaceflight, called Horizons. He will also be the second ESA astronaut to take over command of the International Space Station. The Horizons science programme is packed with European research: over 50 experiments will deliver benefits to people on Earth as well as prepare for future space exploration.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The robotic hand designed to collect samples on other worlds is getting its mechanical fingers assembled.
This picture shows the mechanism that allows ESA’s Sample Transfer Arm to pick up tubes filled with precious regolith – the dust, soil and rock on the martian surface – for analysis back on Earth.
The “hand” of the robotic arm, or end effector, uses two tools to seize its treasure: fingers to grip sample tubes tightly but with care, and a plunger to insert them into a container destined for Earth. In this image, a technician holds the black gripping jaws together during assembly.
A clever mechanism allows the robot to switch between tools, despite both being driven by a single motor – an efficient design that reduces mass and volume, critical factors for any space mission.
European engineers at Added Value Solutions (AVS) from Spain assembled the end effector for testing and keep building expertise for future missions. This engineering model confirms that the mechanism works as intended.
Initially designed for Mars Sample Return to transfer samples to a rocket for the journey home, the technology behind this robotic helping hand also has high potential for applications on the Moon and in low Earth orbit.
Watch the prototype in action in the article “Grip on Mars”.
Credits: AVS
This image shows Terra Cimmeria, a region found in the southern highlands of Mars, in 3D when viewed using red-green or red-blue glasses.
This anaglyph was derived from data obtained by the nadir and stereo channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express during spacecraft orbit 18904. It covers a part of the martian surface centred at about 171° East and 40° South. North is to the right.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Space might seem an empty, vast expanse, but satellites in Earth's orbit face the constant risk of collision - with other satellites, dead or alive, or with fragments of debris.
It is now routine for operators of spacecraft in busy highways to divert their mission out of harms way. In fact at ESA, each mission flown performs on average two 'collision avoidance manoeuvres' per year.
These manoeuvres are costly. Hours are spent on the ground monitoring the skies, calculating the risk and planning manoeuvres, not to mention the extra fuel spent and missed science and data collected while instruments are turned off.
Find out more in the joint ESA-UN podcast that narrates this space debris infographic series, with Benjamin Bastida Virgili and Hazuki Mori.
Credits: ESA / UNOOSA
This perspective view shows Greeley Crater, a degraded impact crater located in the Southern Highlands of Mars.
This oblique perspective was generated using data from the Mars Express high-resolution camera stereo channels. This scene is part of a region imaged over 16 Mars Express orbits (0430, 1910, 1932, 2412, 2467, 2478, 4306, 4317, 4328, 6556, 8613, 8620, 8708, 12835, 14719, 16778), with the gathered data combined to form a detailed mosaic. The images cover a part of the martian surface ranging from 2°W to 9°E / 31.5° to 43.5°S. This view shows the crater from a southwesterly direction, looking across from the North-East.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Two floors in the rim, each nine feet high, are the inhabited areas in the space station. Above and below the inhabited areas are three-foot high compartments for storage, water tanks, air conditioning ducts, electrical cables and similar equipment.
What separates the outside from the inside of the space station “is the meteor bumper – a thin sheet of metal which stops the grains of cosmic dust that fly through space – and a skin of reinforced plastic which keeps air in. Either nylon or wire mesh is imbedded in the plastic, making it strong and light. This plastic is stretched over metal ribs which give the rim its shape and provide additional strength.” [Summarizing and Quoting from the text]
Official portrait of ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano for his second mission to the International Space Station, called Beyond.
Credits: ESA–A. Conigli
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
Ministers from ESA’s Member States, along with Associate Member Slovenia and Cooperating State Canada, gathered in Seville, Spain, 27-28 November 2019, to discuss future space activities for Europe and the budget of Europe’s space agency for the next three years.
Front row, from left to right: Mrs Mona Keijzer, State Secretary of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, Netherlands; Ms Orsolya Ildikó Ferencz, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Department of Space Activity, Hungary; Mr John Halligan, Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development, Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Ireland; M. David Clarinval, Ministre du Budget, de la Fonction publique et de la Politique scientifique, Belgium; Ms Stine Jørgensen, Deputy Director General, Ministry for Higher Education and Science, Denmark; Mr Etienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Economy and Minister of Health, Ministry of the Economy, Luxembourg; Mr Manuel Heitor, Co-Chair of the ESA Council at Ministerial Level, Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Portugal; Jan Woerner, ESA Director General; Mme Frédérique Vidal, Co-Chair of the ESA Council at Ministerial Level, Ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur de la Recherche et de l’Innovation, France; Mr Pedro Duque, Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Spain; Ms Matilda Ernkrans, Minister for Higher Education and Research, Sweden; Mr Andreas Reichhardt, Federal Minister, Transport, Innovation and Technology, Austria; Mr Riccardo Fraccaro, Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers with responsibility for Space, Italy; Mr Thomas Jarzombek, Federal Government Coordinator of German Aerospace Policy, Germany; Mrs Martina Hirayama, Secretary of State for Education and Research, State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, Switzerland.
Back row, from left to right: Mr Aleš Cantarutti, State Secretary, Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, Slovenia; Mr Viljar Lubi, Deputy Secretary General for Economic Development, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, Estonia; Mr Marek Nieduzak, Undersecretary of State, Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technology, Poland; Mr. Tomáš Èoèek, First Deputy Minister of Transport Czech Republic; Ms Elzbieta Bienkowska, DG GROW, European Commission; Mr Petri Peltonen, Under Secretary of State, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Finland; Graham Turnock, Chief Executive, UK Space Agency, United Kingdom, Mr Christian Hauglie-Hanssen, Director General, Norwegian Space Agency, Norway; Mr Antonis Tzortzakakis, Secretary General of Telecommunications and Post, Ministry of Digital Governance, Greece; Mr Marius-Ioan Piso, Romanian Space Agency, Romania; Mr Sylvain Laporte, President of the Canadian Space Agency, Canada.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in twelve times compared to the large mosaic. In the middle left, spiral galaxy NGC 2188 is visible edge-on at a distance of 25 million light-years. In the top right corner, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is now clearly noticeable, 678 million light-years away from us.
Equatorial sky coordinates RA/DEC: 06:10:01.48 / -33:49:36.85
Galactic sky coordinates GLON/GLAT: 240.54, -22.75
Area: 1.1 sq. deg.
[Image description: A sea of light points scattered evenly across a black background, with a few brighter and colourful ones standing out. As one gazes across the image from left to right, in the upper left corner, a bright orange star with six faint spikes catches the eye first. To the lower right of this, just below the halfway mark of the picture, a thin white elliptical galaxy floats into sight. Above it slightly to the right, a pair of bright golden yellow stars dance into view. Further to the right, in the last third of the image, a short line of stars and galaxies is visible. This appears as a chain, tilted at a 45-degree angle, on which hazy galaxies in different hues of yellow are strung like beads on a cosmic wristband.]
Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
On the launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, this Ariane 6 test model was put through a combined test hot-fire (CTHF) before launch – over seven-minutes ‘hot firing’ of its Vulcain 2.1 main stage. This engine, on a real flight, would work with the boosters to propel the 62-m-tall rocket off Earth and into space. For the test on 23 November 2023 the rocket stayed firmly on the ground, but its upgraded engine burnt through 150 000 kg of supercooled liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel for the duration of a real flight. Not only was the core stage being tested, but all aspects of the launch pad and operations, too, from the delicate procedure of fuelling both the main engine and the orbital stage stacked above it to testing the thermal effects of a launch on mechanical and electrical components.
Credits: ESA
Satellites carrying radar altimeters record the surface topography along the satellite’s ground track. They precisely measure a satellite’s height above water, land or ice by timing the interval between the transmission and reception of very short radar pulses. This is the only technology that can measure, systematically and globally, changes in the height of the ocean – and is therefore essential for monitoring sea-level rise. They show that sea level has been rising at an average rate of about 3 mm a year since these records began in 1993. However, recent re-analysis of these records has shown that sea-level rise is now accelerating because of global warming.
Credits: ESA
Following its voyage by ship from Germany to Texas in the U.S. and then carried by truck to California, the Copernicus Sentinel-6B satellite has arrived at a NASA facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Teams from the main mission partners, NASA and ESA and ESA’s prime contractor Airbus, will soon begin final preparations for Sentinel-6B’s launch later this year.
Sentinel-6B will follow in the footsteps of its predecessor, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, assuming the role of the reference radar altimetry mission to continue the vital record of sea-surface height measurements through at least 2030.
Sentinel-6 is one of the European Union’s family of Copernicus missions and its implementation is the result of an exceptional cooperation between the European Commission, ESA, NASA, Eumetsat, and NOAA, with support from the CNES French space agency.
Credits: U.S. Space Force Space/Chris Okula
ESA’s Integral satellite has been scouring the skies around the Earth for signs of high-energy radiation since 2002, observing particles thrown off by extreme phenomena such as black holes, neutron stars, and supernova explosions. On 10 November 2015, the probe serendipitously spotted something especially interesting – and a little closer to home: intense auroras dancing around Earth’s north pole.
This image is a single frame from a longer sequence of images, and shows the auroras forming a rough semi-circle at Earth’s northern latitudes. The auroras were first spotted around east Siberia, north of Japan, at around 11:00 GMT, and later seen lingering over a wider area on the opposite side of the planet above Canada and Greenland.
Integral was initially preparing for astronomical research when it spied this aurora; the probe was planning to observe the skies at X-ray wavelengths to measure something known as the cosmic X-ray background, a diffuse level of radiation that pervades the cosmos and is linked to high-energy events such as black holes devouring nearby material in far away galaxies. This background is subtle and tricky to detect – and in this case, the unexpectedly strong auroras illuminating the Earth drowned it out.
However, the observations were far from wasted. They may be known for their breath-taking light shows, but auroras can reveal much about the space surrounding our planet. They are created as particles from the solar wind enter the upper layers of our atmosphere and interact with matter there, triggering bursts of light and filling the sky with their characteristic glimmering, rippling sheets of colour.
Auroras are transient and difficult to predict; capturing such an intense example with Integral helped scientists to understand more about the distribution and amount of charged particles surrounding our planet, and to characterise the interaction between the Sun and our magnetosphere – the region of space over which the Earth’s magnetic field dominates. Read more about the observations, which were reported on in 2016, here.
Integral took the X-ray images using the Imager on Board the INTEGRAL Satellite (IBIS) instrument at roughly eight minute intervals. The size, orientation and position of our planet within the frame changes from image to image with Integral’s position in orbit; the spacecraft travels on a highly eccentric 64-hour orbit, coming as close as 10 000 km and as distant as 140 000 km from Earth.
Credits: ESA/Integral/ E. Churazov (IKI/MPA)/ M. Türler (ISDC/Univ. of Geneva)
Vega-C VV21 with LARES-2 ready for launch and waiting for the gantry to be retracted on 13 July 2022 at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Vega-C brings a new level of performance to ESA's launch family. With new first and second stages and an uprated fourth stage, Vega-C increases performance to about 2.3 t in a reference 700 km polar orbit, from the 1.5 t capability of its predecessor, Vega.
Vega-C features a new, more powerful first stage, P120C, based on Vega’s P80. Atop that is a new second stage, Zefiro-40, and then the same Zefiro-9 third stage as used on Vega.
The re-ignitable upper stage is also improved. AVUM+ has increased liquid propellant capacity, to deliver payloads to multiple orbits depending on mission requirements and to allow for longer operational time in space, to enable extended missions.
The P120C motor will do double service, with either two or four units acting as strap-on boosters for Ariane 6. Sharing this component streamlines industrial efficiency and improves cost-effectiveness of both launchers.
With its larger main stages and bigger fairing – which doubles the payload volume compared to Vega – Vega-C measures 34.8 m high, nearly 5 m taller than Vega.
The new launcher configuration delivers a significant improvement in launch system flexibility. Vega-C can orbit larger satellites, two main payloads or can accommodate various arrangements for rideshare missions. ESA’s upcoming Space Rider return-to-Earth vehicle will be launched to orbit on Vega-C.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Ariane 6 launches to the sky on 9 July 2024.
Europe’s newest heavy-lift rocket, it is 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.
Credits: ESA – S. Corvaja
The smaller model asteroid seen here atop a rover that slowly wheels around another larger model asteroid, a practical recreation of the kind of binary asteroid system to be visited by ESA’s proposed Hera mission.
The camera seen to the right, mounted on a 33 m track, approaches this miniature binary asteroid system to test vision-based navigation software. Employing 3D printed asteroid models, this test took place in ESA's GNC Rendezvous, Approach and Landing Simulator, or GRALS.
“ESA’s Hera mission, currently under study, would be humankind’s first mission to a binary asteroid system, targeting the Didymos pair of Near-Earth asteroids,” explains Paolo Martino, Hera system engineer.
“The plan is to map surface features of these bodies on an automated basis to pinpoint Hera’s position in space and chart its onward trajectory. And GRALS is letting us test candidate navigation algorithms in a real-world way.”
Part of the Agency's Orbital Robotics and Guidance, Navigation and Control Laboratory in its ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, GRALS is used to simulate close approach to uncooperative targets such as asteroids or drifting satellites.
b>Credits: ESA–G. Porter,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Romania’s first experiment on the International Space Station is sending drops to collide head-on at controlled speeds inside a cube. Their behaviour intrigues scientists in an environment where gravity, buoyancy, convection, and sedimentation are negligible. The Dropcoal research, short for Drop Coalescence, explores droplet formation in space and on Earth.
There is a journey of fascinating physics behind every raindrop falling to the ground on Earth. Rain is the result of the complex interaction between water and Earth’s gravity, causing drops to change their shape and merge on their way down. Scientists call it coalescence – the process of two or more droplets, bubbles or particles blending to form a single, larger entity.
Dropcoal investigates the interactions between two drops of different liquids, such as water, ethanol and methylene blue, while varying their diameters and speeds, ranging from as slow as white blood cell displacement (0.01 mm/s) to an ant’s velocity (10 mm/s). In this image, the drop on the left is coloured with methylene blue and is merging with the pure water drop coming from the right.
Monitoring how drops interact and merge in weightlessness could shed light on raindrop formation, fuel combustion and material interactions. Astronauts on long space missions could benefit from better understanding how to handle droplets when treating eye, nose and skin issues, as well as preparing injections.
Following the launch on 5 November with SpaceX’s 31st resupply mission to the Space Station, NASA astronaut Don Pettit installed the experiment in the ICE Cubes facility on ESA’s Columbus laboratory module. “This experiment looks at whether droplets merge or bounce off each other, and how fluids mix after these collisions,” explained the astronaut and chemical engineer. Watch Don Pettit talking about the experiment in this video from the International Space Station.
The experiment is already generating the first droplets in microgravity. While a high-speed camera captures images at up to 8000 frames per second, pumps and precision motors control the droplets’ movements. The software uses image recognition to command droplet generation at the right moment.
During the commissioning phase of the experiment, Romanian teams on Earth ran a series of tests to ensure all systems functioned correctly. There are at least 560 planned collisions involving two to five millimetre-sized droplets.
Dropcoal marks an important milestone for Romania, a country that became an ESA Member State in 2011. This is the first experiment developed and built by RISE, the Romanian InSpace Engineering company.
The results of the experiment will be analysed by an international science team led by experts at the National Institute for the Physics of Lasers, Plasma and Radiation in Romania, in collaboration with the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and Carnegie Mellon University in the USA.
Credits: ESA/NASA
ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet visits the Vega Launch Complex - Zone de lancement Vega (ZLV) at Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guiana on 15 June 2022.
Credits: ESA-Manuel Pedoussaut
One of the scientific goals of ESA’s Euclid mission is to chart the expansion history of the Universe. Recent cosmological observations showed that the Universe does not expand at a constant rate; rather, the Universe's expansion is accelerating. Before these observations, scientists thought that all forms of matter and energy in the Universe would only cause the expansion to slow down over time. To explain an accelerating expansion scientists had to introduce a new form of energy. One working hypothesis for this entity is the ‘cosmological constant’ suggested by Albert Einstein in 1917: a constant energy field present across the entire Universe. It is an intrinsic property of the vacuum of space, so the larger the volume of space, the more ‘vacuum energy’ (dark energy) is present and the greater its effects.
There are alternative suggestions. For example, the acceleration could be produced by a fifth fundamental force of nature that evolves with the expansion of the Universe. Contrary to the cosmological constant, this ‘quintessence’ is dynamic, time-dependent and not evenly distributed across space.
Each explanation for what dark energy is subtly alters the way the acceleration changes across cosmic time.
ESA’s Euclid observations will allow scientists to measure how the rate of expansion of the Universe has changed over time and map the last 10 billion years of cosmic history: from cosmic ‘noon’, the time when most stars were forming, until today. This 'looking back in time' will show us the variations in the cosmic acceleration with extreme precision, helping scientists pin down the nature of dark energy.
Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. The Euclid Consortium is responsible for providing the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis. ESA selected Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor for the construction of the satellite and its service module, with Airbus Defence and Space chosen to develop the payload module, including the telescope. NASA provided the detectors of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP. Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme.
Credits: ESA (acknowledgement: work performed by ATG under contract to ESA), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The BepiColombo Mercury Transfer Module, MTM, moving between facilities at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou. Together with JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter and ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter, the modules spent the first part of the launch campaign in the 'processing area' before moving to the 'fueling integration area' where the chemical propulsion fueling activities will take place.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG – P.Baudon