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Solar Orbiter is scheduled to launch on an Atlas V 411 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, at 05:15 CET on 8 February 2020 (23:15 EST on 7 February).
Gravity assist manoeuvres at Earth and Venus will enable the spacecraft to change inclination to observe the Sun from different perspectives. During the initial cruise phase, which lasts until November 2021, Solar Orbiter will perform two gravity-assist manoeuvres around Venus and one around Earth to alter the spacecraft’s trajectory, guiding it towards the innermost regions of the Solar System. At the same time, Solar Orbiter will acquire in situ data and characterise and calibrate its remote-sensing instruments. The first close solar pass will take place in 2022 at around a third of Earth’s distance from the Sun.
The spacecraft’s orbit has been chosen to be ‘in resonance’ with Venus, which means that it will return to the planet’s vicinity every few orbits and can again use the planet’s gravity to alter or tilt its orbit. Initially Solar Orbiter will be confined to the same plane as the planets, but each encounter of Venus will increase its orbital inclination. For example, after the 2025 Venus encounter it will make its first solar pass at 17º inclination, increasing to 33º during a proposed mission extension phase, bringing even more of the polar regions into direct view.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Its mission is to perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high-latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection. Data from the spacecraft’s suite of ten instruments will provide unprecedented insight into how our parent star works in terms of the 11-year solar cycle, and how we can better predict periods of stormy space weather.
Credits: ESA-S.Poletti
Satellite navigation has changed our lives, triggering a quiet revolution in our society and economy.
Credits: ESA
Copernicus Sentinel-5’s cutting-edge spectrometer is integrated into the MetOp Second Generation A-type weather satellites.
Operating in a polar orbit, Sentinel-5 delivers daily global data on atmospheric gases and aerosols. Sentinel-5 observations include key air pollutants, essential climate variables, and stratospheric ozone that protects us from ultraviolet radiation.
The instrument is seen here at the cleanroom at the Airbus facilities in Toulouse, France. Its white panels are visible under plastic sheeting at the fore of the satellite, half way up the vertical stack.
Credits: ESA - S.Corvaja
In a decade’s time, an exciting new visitor will enter the Jovian system: ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice. As its name suggests, the mission will explore Jupiter and three of its largest moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – to investigate the giant planet’s cosmic family and gas giant planets in general.
Juice is planned for launch in 2022, and its instruments are currently being perfected and calibrated so they are ready to start work once in space. This image shows one of the many elements involved in this calibration process: a miniature gold-plated metallic model of Juice used to test the spacecraft’s antennas.
Juice will carry multiple antennas to detect radio waves in the Jupiter system. These antennas will measure the characteristics of the incoming waves, including the direction in which they are moving and their degree of polarisation, and then use this information to trace the waves back to their sources. In order to do this, the antennas must work well regardless of their orientation to any incoming waves – and so scientists must figure out and correct for the antennas’ so-called ‘directional dependence’.
This shiny model was used to perform a set of tests on Juice’s Radio and Plasma Wave Instrument (RPWI) last year. It was submerged in a tank filled with water; an even electric field was then applied to the tank, and the model was moved and rotated with respect to this field. The results revealed how the antennas will receive radio waves that stream in from different directions and orientations with respect to the spacecraft, and will enable the instrument to be calibrated to be as effective as possible in its measurements of Jupiter and its moons.
Similar tests, which are technically referred to as rheometry, were conducted in the past for spacecraft including the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn (which operated at Saturn between 2004 and 2017), NASA’s Juno spacecraft (currently in orbit around Jupiter), and ESA’s Solar Orbiter (scheduled for launch in early 2020 to investigate the Sun up close).
The test performed for Juice posed a few additional hurdles – the model’s antennas were especially small and needed to be fixed accurately onto the model’s boom, which required scientists to create a special device to adjust not only the antennas, but also the boom itself.
The model was produced at a 1:40 scale, making each antenna 62.5 millimetres long from tip to tip; scaled up, the antennas will be 2.5 metres long on Juice. The main spacecraft parts modelled here include the body of the probe itself, its solar panels, and its antennas and booms. The model has an overall ‘wingspan’ of 75 centimetres across its solar panels. The photo also shows a spacecraft stand, which extends out of the bottom of the frame. The gold coating ensured that the model had excellent electric conducting properties, and reacted minimally with the surrounding water and air during the measurements.
Meanwhile, the assembly of the Juice flight model has started in September, with the delivery of the spacecraft's primary structure, followed by integration of the propulsion system.
More information: Juice begins to take shape
This model of Juice was built by the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, and the tests were performed by the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute in Graz, Austria, as part of a project financed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). The lead scientist for the calibration effort was Georg Fischer of the Space Research Institute, also using computer simulations performed by Mykhaylo Panchenko.
Credits: G. Fischer/IWF Graz
This image shows the galaxy EGSY8p7, a bright galaxy in the early Universe where light emission is seen from, among other things, excited hydrogen atoms — Lyman-α emission. The galaxy was identified in a field of young galaxies studied by Webb in the CEERS survey. In the bottom two panels, Webb’s high sensitivity picks out this distant galaxy along with its two companion galaxies, where previous observations saw only one larger galaxy in its place.
This discovery of a cluster of interacting galaxies sheds light on the mystery of why the hydrogen emission from EGSY8p7, shrouded in neutral gas formed after the Big Bang, should be visible at all. Astronomers have concluded that the intense star-forming activity within these interacting galaxies energised hydrogen emission and cleared swathes of gas from their surroundings, allowing the unexpected hydrogen emission to escape.
This graphic is assembled from multiple images captured by Webb’s NIRCam instrument as part of the CEERS survey. The close-up view of EGSY8p7 was newly processed for this image, making use of NIRCam data captured with seven different near-infrared filters.
[Image Description: A graphic with three images. The top image, labelled “CEERS survey”, shows many square images of stars and galaxies, stitched together according to their locations in the sky. One square is highlighted, and a cutout on the bottom left shows it enlarged, labelled “Webb/ NIRCam”. A tiny spot is shown zoomed-in to the right, labelled “EGSY8p7” with a scale marker of “0.5 arcsec”. Here it can be seen that the spot is three neighbouring galaxies, appearing as coloured blobs with bright, distinct cores.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, S. Finkelstein (UT Austin), M. Bagley (UT Austin), R. Larson (UT Austin), A. Pagan (STScI), C. Witten, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
The MetOp Second Generation weather satellite's structural and thermal model - a prototype version specially made for testing - being unloaded from its transport lorry at the ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands on 6 June 2019, arriving for a full-scale test campaign.
Credits: ESA/ETS
This colour-coded topographic image shows a slice of terrain in the south polar region of Mars. It features a region nicknamed Inca City (more formally named Angustus Labyrinthus), which is characterised by linear ridges reminiscent of Inca ruins, and traces of small, dark features known as ‘spiders’. These form as carbon dioxide gas warms up in sunlight and breaks through slabs of overlying ice.
This view was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 27 February 2024 and is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right.
North is to the upper right. The ground resolution is approximately 15 m/pixel and the image is centred at 300°E/79°S.
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
In July 2025, the Smile spacecraft was removed from the Large Space Simulator at ESA’s technical heart, ESTEC, where it had been undergoing thermal tests.
This manoeuvre required a lot of work and patience to install the lifting device that slowly picks up the spacecraft and moves it out of the chamber. The Large Space Simulator is Europe’s largest vacuum chamber. It is used to ensure that spacecraft are ready for the tough conditions of space – making it crucial to lift spacecraft in and out very carefully.
Read more about the final stages of the Smile test campaign
Smile (the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
[Image description: A large circular opening frames the view upward into a bright room. Suspended from a yellow overhead crane is a shiny, gold-coloured spacecraft, hanging by red straps and surrounded by cables. The perspective is from inside a dark chamber looking up at the equipment above.]
Credits: ESA-M.Roos
This image of a rugged part of Mercury’s surface was captured by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 4 September 2024 as the spacecraft sped by for its fourth of six gravity assist manoeuvres at the planet.
It was captured at 23:57 CEST by the Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 2 (M-CAM 2), just three minutes after closest approach, when the spacecraft was only about 885 km from the planet’s surface. The spacecraft’s closest approach of 165 km took place at 23:48 CEST.
The image reveals two ‘peak ring basins’, so-called due to their inner ring of peaks on an otherwise flattish floor. Vivaldi, named after the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) measures 210 km across. Stoddart, newly named because it was deemed interesting for BepiColombo scientists in the future, measures 155 km across.
Also in the image are the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s medium gain antenna (top centre) and magnetometer boom (right).
North is to the lower left.
More about BepiColombo's fourth Mercury flyby
[Image description: Planet Mercury in the background with its grey, cratered, pock-marked surface. In the foreground are some spacecraft parts.]
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The fairing of the Soyuz launcher that will lift ESA’s Cheops mission into space, along with the primary passenger, the Italian space agency’s Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation satellite, and three CubeSats: ESA’s OPS-SAT and the French space agency’s CNES's EYE-SAT and ANGELS satellites. Launch is scheduled for 18 December from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
In this photo, the upper composite of the launcher and all passengers are encapsulated in the fairing and the composite is ready for integration with the 3-stage launcher. The fairing sticker features, among others, the ESA and Cheops mission logos and the winning design of the Cheops fairing sticker competition, on the left, created by Denis Vrenko.
Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut
This colour-coded topographic image shows the Coloe Fossae region of Mars.
It was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 19 October 2024 (orbit 26257) and is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right.
North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 16 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 39°N/54°E.
[Image description: A colour-coded topographic map of a section of Mars. Large circular craters and long diagonal ridges dominate the terrain. Colours range from green and yellow for lower areas to red for higher ground, with deep blue marking the lowest regions on the right edge. The surface appears rugged and uneven, highlighting variations in elevation.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA’s mission to the Sun has been unpacked following its arrival in Florida earlier this month, ready to begin pre-launch testing and checks.
The mission is currently scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral launch complex late in the evening of 5 February U.S. time (early morning 6 February central European time) on an unprecedented mission to study our star up-close.
An Antonov cargo plane transported the spacecraft and essential ground support equipment from Munich, Germany, to Florida, landing at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Centre on 1 November. From there the satellite and equipment travelled by road to the AstroTech Space Operations facility. The first weeks were dedicated to setting up the equipment that will be needed to perform the upcoming checks and tests on the spacecraft. This will include repeated simplified tests of the spacecraft and science instruments so that the functioning of the various systems is confirmed as it was before the long flight, and checking of the propellant pressurisation system pressure before eventually fuelling the spacecraft.
This image shows Solar Orbiter shortly after leaving the shipment container (visible in the background) at the Astrotech facility.
In the new year attention will shift to mating the spacecraft with the launch adapter and encapsulating the spacecraft inside the fairing. In the final stages of preparation, the spacecraft will be mounted atop the Atlas V 411 rocket and moved to the launch pad ready for liftoff.
Once in space, and over the course of several years, the spacecraft will repeatedly use the gravity of Venus and Earth to raise its orbit above the poles of the Sun, providing new perspectives on our star, including the first images of the Sun’s polar regions. Its complementary suite of instruments means it will be able to study the plasma environment locally around the spacecraft and collect data from the Sun from afar, connecting the dots between the Sun’s activity and the space environment in the inner Solar System, which is essential to understand the effects of space weather at Earth.
Solar Orbiter is an ESA mission with strong NASA participation. The prime contractor is Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, UK. The mission will provide complementary datasets to NASA’s Parker Solar Probe that will allow more science to be distilled from the two missions than either could achieve on their own.
Credits: Airbus DS Ltd
Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) have discovered a high-speed jet stream sitting over Jupiter’s equator, above the main cloud decks.
Researchers spotted several wind shears, or areas where wind speeds change with height or distance, which enabled them to track the jet. This image highlights several of the features around Jupiter’s equatorial zone that are very clearly disturbed by the motion of the jet stream during a rotation of the planet. The right white boxes contain images taken ten hours apart of Jupiter’s equatorial zone. The coloured cut-outs show the movement of several features caused by the jet.
The discovery of this jet is providing insight into how the layers of Jupiter’s famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other, and how Webb is uniquely capable of tracking those features. Researchers are looking forward to additional observations of Jupiter with Webb to determine if the jet’s speed and altitude change over time.
[Image description: The infographic shows Webb’s image of Jupiter at the left. On the right side there are eight separate images. Two of these images are horizontal and span the entire right half of the infographic. They are zoomed-in pullouts from a section of Jupiter’s equator – outlined in a white box on the image of the planet on the left. Both of these images are white and grey with horizontal wispy clouds. There are six smaller boxes in between the two horizontal images. The first column of the boxes is outlined in orange, the second column purple and the third yellow. Each of the smaller images correspond to orange, purple, and yellow boxes placed along the horizontal images.]
Credits: wNASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hueso (University of the Basque Country), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), T. Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), L. Fletcher (University of Leicester), M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI)
The Orion spacecraft will ferry astronauts to the Moon on NASA's Artemis missions. The European Service Module is ESA’s contribution to Orion and provides electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen as well as keeping the spacecraft at the right temperature and on course. In case of a problem during launch the European Service Module can also activate to fly the astronauts to safety. This infographic shows the steps of a targeted abort.
Credits: ESA
ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano with ESA Director General Jan Wörner on the launchpad at Baikonur as he makes his way to the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft that will transport him and his crewmates to the International Space Station.
Luca, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov will be launched in their Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Saturday 20 July. This date coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and marks the start of Luca’s second space mission known as ‘Beyond’.
While in orbit, Luca will support over 50 European experiments and more than 200 international experiments. He is also expected to perform a number of spacewalks to repair the cooling systems of dark matter hunter, AMS-02.
More information about Luca’s Beyond mission is available on the blog. This will be updated throughout his mission, with updates also shared on Twitter via @esaspaceflight.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Meticulous note taking and documentation is important for geologists and astronauts a like. Here ESA's Aidan Cowley and Roscosmos astronaut Sergei Kud-Sverchkov are tagging a sample site with a QR code, and sending photos back to the science team at ground control.
Credits: ESA–A. Romeo
The hot firing model of the Ariane 6 upper stage has been installed on the P5.2 test bench at the DLR German Aerospace Center in Lampoldshausen, Germany.
After arrival from the ArianeGroup facilities in Bremen, this 5.4 m-diameter upper stage was hoisted out of its container, tilted vertical and installed on the test stand.
The upper stage will now undergo a campaign of tests to simulate all aspects of flight including stage preparation such as fuelling with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen and draining its tanks.
In tests lasting about 18 hours each, data will be gathered on non-propulsive ballistic phases, tank pressurisation to increase performance, Vinci engine reignitions, exhaust nozzle manoeuvres, ending with passivation where all remaining internal energy is removed.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
As of 1 March 2021, ESA has a new Director General: Dr Josef Aschbacher, who has taken up duty at ESA Headquarters in Paris, France.
The ESA Council appointed Dr Aschbacher in December 2020 as the next Director General of ESA, for a period of four years. He succeeds Prof. Jan Wörner, whose term of office ended in February 2021.
Dr Aschbacher was previously ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes and Head of ESRIN, ESA’s centre for Earth Observation near Rome.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Official portrait of ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer wearing NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuit ahead of his Cosmic Kiss mission to the International Space Station. This spacesuit is worn by astronauts during US spacewalks outside the International Space Station.
Credits: ESA/NASA
“A horizontal version of lunar modular living and working quarters for use in the ‘Man on the Moon’ program. Conceived by scientists and engineers of the Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Sunnyvale, California, each module is eighteen feet in diameter. Each is fully equipped and self-sufficient except for electrical power which is supplied from a remote nuclear power source. Solar flare protection chambers are provided at the base of the modules.” [From the accompanying description]
This three-paneled image shows different perspectives of the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy. A team of astronomers analyzed observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope taken over a span of 18 years to measure the dynamic motions of stars within the Draco dwarf galaxy, a system located roughly 250,000 light-years from Earth. The telescope’s extensive baseline and data archive enabled the team to build the most accurate three-dimensional map of the stars’ movements within the system. These improved measurements are helping to shed “light” on the mysterious qualities and behavior of dark matter, the Universe’s invisible “glue.”
[Image description: At left is the main image: a wide-field view of the galaxy from the Digitized Sky Survey. Many yellow, blue-white, and white stars are dispersed across the black background of space. A faint brown oval surrounds the central area of the image. Within this area are two small graphic overlays: a square and a diamond. These two small overlays correspond to the two magnified views at right, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The small square in the main image corresponds to the top right square. The small diamond in the main image corresponds to the bottom right square. The magnified view at top right shows a large white circle with four diffraction spikes in the top left. Small white specks and orange dots are scattered across the black background. A large spiral galaxy is seen face-on at top right. The magnified view at bottom right shows small white specks and orange dots scattered across the black background.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, Digitized Sky Survey, Roeland van der Marel (STScI); CC BY 4.0
The 122-tonne reflector dish for ESA's newest deep space communication antenna was lifted and place atop its tower in Australia on 19 September 2024.
Credits: ESA
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image features swirls of vivid, emerald green algal blooms in the Gulf of Finland.
The Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea. The area pictured shows the western part of the Gulf. Helsinki, Finland’s capital and most populous city, is visible in light brown on the coast in the top left corner of the image. The image also captures the Estonian coast at the bottom, with Tallin covered by cloud.
Every summer, swathes of algae bloom in the Baltic Sea. The blooms usually appear as green threads, as shown in this image, which is from 13 July 2023. Streaks, eddies and swirls, mixed by winds and currents, are clearly visible.
An algal bloom describes the rapid growth of phytoplankton – microscopic marine plants that drift on or near the sea surface. While individually microscopic, the chlorophyll they use for photosynthesis collectively tints the ocean waters, which allows them to be measured by satellites orbiting Earth.
These organisms are essential to life in the sea – they form the base of the marine food chain. Importantly, they also play a huge role in the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the production of oxygen.
However, some phytoplankton and marine algae can be harmful to marine life and to humans. They can produce toxic substances, blooms can occur too often or last too long, depleting the concentration of oxygen in the water.
High water temperatures, slow circulation and excessive nutrients released into the ocean often lead to a rapid increase in the number of algae, and consequently large blooms, which can pose a threat to the natural ecosystem and also aquaculture and tourism.
With its 13 spectral channels, Copernicus Sentinel-2’s imager can be used to detect algal blooms and measure aspects that define water quality, such as surface concentration of chlorophyll. Satellite data can be used to track the growth and spread of blooms and can help develop early warning systems to mitigate the impact on tourism and fishing industries.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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 1566 is 60 million light-years away in the constellation Dorado.
Learn more about what can be seen in this vast collection of Webb images here.
[Image description: Webb’s image of NGC 1566 shows a densely populated face-on spiral galaxy anchored by a central region that has a light blue haze surrounding it. Two prominent spiny spiral orange arms extend to the edges and rotate counterclockwise.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee (STScI), T. Williams (Oxford), R. Chandar (UToledo), D. Calzetti (UMass), PHANGS Team
A stunning perspective view across icy hills in the Australe Scopuli region near the south pole of Mars.
Alternating layers of ice and dust are clearly seen, a defining characteristic of the seasonal martian ice caps. Hundreds of tightly packed dark fan-shaped features are visible, tracing out the boundaries between the layered deposits. These features result from jets of gas laden with dust bursting through the icy surface from below, the dust settling in an orientation indicative of the direction of the prevailing wind.
The image was generated from the digital terrain model, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived, and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express.
[Image description: Perspective view across undulating terrain with exposed layers of ice and dust. Numerous dark dusty fan-shaped features follow the pattern of the layers.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This image is released as part of the Early Release Observations from ESA’s Euclid space mission. All data from these initial observations are made public on 23 May 2024– including a handful of unprecedented new views of the nearby Universe, this being one.
Here, Euclid captures NGC 6744, one of the largest spiral galaxies beyond our local patch of space. It’s a typical example of the type of galaxy currently forming most of the stars in the nearby Universe, making it a wonderful archetype to study with Euclid.
Euclid’s large field-of-view covers the entire galaxy, revealing not only spiral structure on larger scales but also capturing exquisite detail on small spatial scales, and at a combination of wavelengths. This detail includes feather-like lanes of dust emerging as ‘spurs’ from the spiral arms, which Euclid is able to image with incredible clarity. Euclid’s observations will allow scientists to not only count individual stars within NGC 6744 but also trace the wider distribution of stars and dust in the galaxy, as well as mapping the dust associated with the gas that fuels new star formation. Forming stars is the main way by which galaxies grow and evolve, so these investigations are central to understanding galaxy evolution – and why our Universe looks the way it does today.
Euclid scientists are using this dataset to understand how dust and gas are linked to star formation; map how different stellar populations are distributed throughout galaxies and where stars are currently forming; and unravel the physics behind the structure of spiral galaxies, something that’s still not fully understood after decades of study. Spiral structure is important in galaxies, as spiral arms move and compress gas to foster star formation (most of which occurs along these arms). However, the exact role of spirals in coordinating ongoing star formation remains unclear. As the aforementioned ‘spurs’ along NGC 6744’s arms are only able to form in a strong enough spiral, these features therefore provide important clues as to why galaxies look and behave as they do.
The dataset will also allow scientists to identify clusters of old stars (globular clusters) and hunt for new dwarf galaxies around NGC 6744. In fact, Euclid has already found a new dwarf ‘satellite galaxy’ of NGC 6744 – a surprise given that this galaxy has been intensively studied in the past.
NGC 6744 lies 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Pavo.
Read more about the new data released as part of Euclid’s Early Release Observations, including a stunning set of five never-before-seen images: here
Explore this image at the highest resolution in ESASky
[Technical details: The data in this image were taken in just about one hour of observation. This colour image was obtained by combining VIS data and NISP photometry in Y and H bands; its size is 8200 x 8200 pixels. VIS and NISP enable observing astronomical sources in four different wavelength ranges. Aesthetics choices led to the selection of three out of these four bands to be cast onto the traditional Red-Green-Blue colour channels used to represent images on our digital screens (RGB). The blue, green, red channels capture the Universe seen by Euclid around the wavelength 0.7, 1.1, and 1.7 micron respectively. This gives Euclid a distinctive colour palette: hot stars have a white-blue hue, excited hydrogen gas appears in the blue channel, and regions rich in dust and molecular gas have a clear red hue. Distant redshifted background galaxies appear very red. In the image, the stars have six prominent spikes due to how light interacts with the optical system of the telescope in the process of diffraction. Another signature of Euclid special optics is the presence of a few, very faint and small round regions of a fuzzy blue colour. These are normal artefacts of complex optical systems, so-called ‘optical ghost’; easily identifiable during data analysis, they do not cause any problem for the science goals.]
[Image description: A spiral galaxy against a dark background speckled with bright dots. The clockwise spiral has many arms, not fully distinguishable from one another, extending out from a bright central spot. There is a thin cloudy structure right above the galaxy, in the outskirts of its furthest reaching arm. In the bottom left of the image two bright dots are surrounded by a halo of light.]
CREDIT
ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi
LICENCE
CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The third Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite, Sentinel-2C, has launched aboard the final Vega rocket, flight VV24, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 5 September at 03:50 CEST (4 September 22:50 local time).
Sentinel-2C will provide high-resolution data that is essential to Copernicus – the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme. Developed, built and operated by ESA, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission provides high-resolution optical imagery for a wide range of applications including land, water and atmospheric monitoring.
The mission is based on a constellation of two identical satellites flying in the same orbit but 180° apart: Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B. Together, they cover all of Earth’s land and coastal waters every five days. Once Sentinel-2C is operational, it will replace its predecessor, Sentinel-2A, following a brief period of tandem observations. Sentinel-2D will eventually take over from Sentinel-2B.
Sentinel-2C was the last liftoff for the Vega rocket. After 12 years of service, Vega is being retired to make way for the upgraded Vega-C rocket.
Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja
An ArianeGroup facility in Les Mureaux, France, hosts the largest friction stir welding machines in Europe for producing the Ariane 6 cryogenic tanks for Ariane 6’s core stage.
Credits: ArianeGroup-MIP-Thomas-LEAUD
The incredibly distant galaxy GS-z13-1, observed just 330 million years after the Big Bang, was initially discovered with deep imaging from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Now, an international team of astronomers has definitively identified powerful hydrogen emission from this galaxy at an unexpectedly early period in the Universe’s history, a probable sign that we are seeing some of the first hot stars from the dawn of the Universe.
This image shows the location of the galaxy GS-z13-1 in the GOODS-S field, as well as the galaxy itself, imaged with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) programme. These data from NIRCam allowed researchers to identify GS-z13-1 as an incredibly distant galaxy, and to put an estimate on its redshift value. Webb’s unique infrared sensitivity is necessary to observe galaxies at this extreme distance, whose light has been redshifted into infrared wavelengths during its long journey across the cosmos.
To confirm the galaxy’s redshift, the team turned to Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument. With new observations permitting advanced spectroscopy of the galaxy’s emitted light, the team not only confirmed GS-z13-1’s redshift of 13.0, they also revealed the strong presence of a type of ultraviolet radiation called Lyman-α emission. This is a telltale sign of the presence of newly forming stars, or a possible active galactic nucleus in the galaxy, but at a much earlier time than astronomers had thought possible. The result holds great implications for our understanding of the Universe.
[Image description: An area of deep space is covered by a scattering of galaxies in many shapes and in colours ranging from blue to whitish to orange, as well as a few nearby stars. A very small square is shown zoomed in, in a box to the left. In the centre a red dot, a faraway galaxy, is marked out by lines and labelled 'Redshift (z)=13', signifying its extreme distance. Two much larger galaxies are labelled 'z=0.63' and 'z=0.70'. The box is titled 'JADES-GS-z13-1'.]
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, STScI, CSA, JADES Collaboration, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA), J. Witstok, P. Jakobsen, A. Pagan (STScI), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb; CC BY 4.0
Key moments around the launch of BepiColombo. Following launch and separation of the spacecraft, and first acquisition of signal, the solar arrays will be deployed. Some 12 hours later a monitoring camera onboard the transfer module will capture an image of one of the deployed solar arrays. During the day after launch a second set of images will look towards the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the deployed antennas. After three days of
All times following launch are approximate. Watch the launch live.
Credits: ESA
In time for its summer launch this year, Ariane 6 has arrived at the port of Pariacabo in Kourou, French Guiana – home of Europe’s Spaceport – and is ready to be assembled.
All the elements that make up the rocket are manufactured in mainland Europe and then transported by this novel ship, Canopée (canopy in French). It is the first custom-built transporter to use sails, reducing emissions and saving on fuel by up to 30%, and on this trip, it has travelled for 10 days covering over 7000 km.
The hybrid-propulsion vessel is 121 m long and has 37 m tall sails. Canopée rotates continuously between stop-offs to load each Ariane 6 stage and other parts and ship them across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe’s spaceport.
On this trip, Canopée brings the central core for Ariane 6’s first flight. Having collected the upper stage from Bremen, Germany, Canopée moved on to Le Havre, France, to load the main stage of Ariane 6.
The next-generation cargo ship has been designed for ArianeGroup to meet the complex requirements of Ariane 6 transport – the stages and engines of Ariane 6 are high-tech equipment that require delicate care during transport.
Canopée’s structure is tailored to carry large, fragile loads as well as navigate the shallow Kourou river to Pariacabo harbour. From here the various Ariane 6 components are offloaded and transported by road to the new Ariane 6 launch vehicle assembly building just a few kilometres away.
Here, the launcher stages are unpacked and installed on the assembly line for integration, and finally, liftoff.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup/Optique Vidéo du CSG - P.Piron
A test version of the 10.5-m long magnetometer boom built for ESA’s mission to Jupiter, developed by SENER in Spain, seen being tested at ESA’s Test Centre in the Netherlands, its weight borne by balloons.
The flight model will be mounted on the Juice spacecraft – Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – due to launch in 2022, arriving at Jupiter in 2029. The mission will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
The Juice spacecraft will carry the most powerful remote sensing, geophysical, and in situ payload complement ever flown to the outer Solar System. Its payload consists of 10 state-of-the-art instruments.
This includes a magnetometer instrument that the boom will project clear of the main body of the spacecraft, allowing it to make measurements clear of any magnetic interference. Its goal is to measure Jupiter’s magnetic field, its interaction with the internal magnetic field of Ganymede, and to study subsurface oceans of the icy moons.
The deployment of this qualification model boom has been performed before and after simulated launch vibration on Test Centre shaker tables to ensure it will deploy correctly in space. Since the boom will deploy in weightlessness, three helium balloons were used to help bear its weight in terrestrial gravity.
Credits: ESA–G. Porter,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Matthias Maurer were among the distinguished guests at the official inauguration of LUNA, Europe’s ‘Moon on Earth’ analogue facility, on 25 September 2024 in Cologne, Germany. This innovative facility, operated by ESA and the German Aerospace Agency (DLR), is designed to replicate the lunar surface and will play a crucial role in preparing astronauts for future missions to the Moon, including NASA’s Artemis programme.
LUNA features a 700-square-metre area covered in ‘regolith simulant,’ allowing astronauts and engineers to test space technology, conduct research, and simulate lunar operations in realistic conditions. With this state-of-the-art facility, Europe is at the forefront of space exploration, providing essential insights for upcoming lunar missions and beyond.
Credits: DLR/ESA
Samples of the multi-layer insulation and coatings planned to cover the skin of ESA’s Juice spacecraft were subjected to a beam from the electron gun anchored at the top of this Electrostatic Discharge chamber before being selected for the mission to Jupiter.
Space might be a vacuum, but it is far from empty. Once ESA’s Juice spacecraft embarks on its eight-year journey to Jupiter, encounters with charged particles and radiation can gradually build up electrostatic charges across its surfaces. These in turn could perturb the mission’s instruments to measure the electromagnetic and plasma environment surrounding the spacecraft.
Some charging buildup is inevitable but in particular mission designers wished to avoid differential charging across the spacecraft: as well as disturbing instrument readings these might even in the worst case trigger damaging ‘electrostatic discharge’, resembling space lightning.
Accordingly all the surface layers of the Juice spacecraft have been designed to be as conductive as possible, to prevent any buildup of charge. But the sustained low temperatures of the Jupiter system, coupled with ageing effects, has the potential to increase resistance of materials over time, making charge accumulations more likely.
The ESD Chamber, part of ESA’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory at ESTEC in the Netherlands, was therefore used to test the charging properties of candidate materials. Its interior can be pumped down to a space-quality vacuum and it incorporates a liquid nitrogen cryogenic shroud to take temperatures down to -150°C. Test samples are placed on a baseplate whose temperature can be controlled down to -240°C.
Charging investigations were carried out on multi-layer insulation, candidate coatings and also the treated cover glass of solar panels, checking in particular how charging properties changed with temperature.
For more information on how the Juice mission was kept ‘clean’ in terms of electromagnetism and plasma buildups, click here.
Credits: ESA
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
Tiny integrated circuits destined for space missions, etched onto a single wafer of silicon, examined under a magnifier.
To save money on the high cost of fabrication, various chips designed by different companies and destined for multiple ESA projects are crammed onto the same silicon wafers, etched into place at specialised semiconductor manufacturing plants or ‘fabs’.
Once manufactured, the chips, still on the wafer, are tested. The wafers are then chopped up. They become ready for use when placed inside protective packages – just like standard terrestrial microprocessors – and undergo final quality tests.
Through little metal pins or balls sticking out of their packages these miniature brains are then connected to other circuit elements – such as sensors, actuators, memory or power systems – used across the satellite.
Considering the time and money needed to develop complex chips like these, ESA’s Microelectronics section maintains a catalogue of chip designs, known as Intellectual Property (IP) cores, available to European industry through ESA licence.
Think of these IP cores as the tiniest mission ‘building blocks’: specialised designs to perform particular tasks in space, laid down within a microchip. These range from single ‘simpler’ functions such as decoding signals from Earth to control the satellite to highly complex computer tasks such as operating a complete spacecraft.
Credits: ESA-A Le Floc'h
This is a zoom-in of Euclid’s Deep Field North, showing the Cat’s Eye Nebula in the centre of the image, around 3000 light-years away. Also known as NGC 6543, this nebula is a visual ‘fossil record’ of the dynamics and late evolution of a dying star. This dying star is shedding its outer colourful shells.
[Image description: The Cat’s Eye Nebula takes centre stage in a sparkling sea of stars and galaxies. A dot lies at the centre of the nebula, the sight of the dying star. Around it are a series of complex and colourful layers and loops of gas and dust that have been ejected by the star over time. Further away are tendrils and patches of gas and dust in various shapes and sizes that give the impression of fragments of a burst balloon frozen around the point of explosion. Millions of galaxies lie in the background. Numerous bright stars with distinct diffraction spikes are also clearly visible.]
Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
NASA, Axiom Space and SpaceX are targeting 07:31 BST/08:31 CEST (02:31 EDT) on Wednesday, 25 June, for the launch of the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, Axiom Mission 4 with ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski on his Ignis mission.
Follow Sławosz’s journey on the Ignis website, check our launch kit and connect with him on his Instagram and X accounts.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
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
Sentinel-3B being removed from the fuelling stand to be installed on its flight adapter.
The Copernicus Sentinel-3B satellite is being prepared for liftoff, scheduled for 25 April 2018. Its identical twin, Sentinel-3A, has been in orbit since February 2016. The two-satellite constellation offers optimum global coverage and data delivery for Europe’s Copernicus environment programme.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
On the day of launching into space on a Soyuz, astronauts go through a number of traditions. ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst will be travelling to the International Space Station on the Soyuz MS-09 alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 6 June 2018.
After signing the door of the hotel they spend their last day on Earth before launch, they get into their Sokol pressure suits. A Russian orthodox priest blesses the astronauts and launcher as per tradition.
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
An artist's impression of the lunar outpost called the Gateway. The Gateway is the next structure to be launched by the partners of the International Space Station.
During the 2020s, it will be assembled and operated in the vicinity of the Moon, where it will move between different orbits and enable the most distant human space missions ever attempted.
Placed farther from Earth than the current Space Station – but not in a lunar orbit – the Gateway will offer a staging post for missions to the Moon and Mars.
Like a mountain refuge, it will provide shelter and a place to stock up on supplies for astronauts en route to more distant destinations. It will also offer a place to relay communications and can act as a base for scientific research.
The Gateway will weigh around 40 tonnes and will consist of a service module, a communications module, a connecting module, an airlock for spacewalks, a place for the astronauts to live and an operations station to command the Gateway’s robotic arm or rovers on the Moon. Astronauts will be able to occupy it for up to 90 days at a time.
A staging outpost near the Moon offers many advantages for space agencies. Most current rockets do not have the power to reach our satellite in one go but could reach the space Gateway. Europe’s Ariane would be able to deliver supplies for astronauts to collect and use for further missions deeper into space – much like mountain expeditions can stock up refuges with food and equipment for further climbs to the summit.
The Gateway also allows space agencies to test technologies such as electric propulsion where Earth’s gravity would interfere if done closer to home. New opportunities for space research away from Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere are planned for the outpost. Its close position will provide rapid response times for astronauts controlling rovers on the Moon.
Credits: ESA/NASA/ATG Medialab
The Artemis II rocket has reached its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States, ready for a historic journey. Over the weekend, engineers slowly and carefully rolled the nearly 100-metre-tall Space Launch System rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B. The 6.5-km journey took around 12 hours and was carried out using NASA’s crawler-transporter, which has been moving rockets to launch pads for over 50 years.
Standing nearly 100 m tall, the Space Launch System will weigh approximately 2.6 million kg once fully fuelled and ready for liftoff. At its top sits the Orion spacecraft, bearing the ESA and NASA logos and designed to carry four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby mission. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight of the Artemis programme and the first time humans have ventured towards the Moon in over 50 years.
Their journey depends on our European Service Module, built by industry from more than 10 countries across Europe. This powerhouse will take over once Orion separates from the rocket, supplying electricity from its four seven-metre long solar arrays, providing air and water for the crew, and performing key propulsion burns during the mission, including the critical trans-lunar injection that sends the spacecraft on its trajectory towards the Moon.
European engineers will be at mission control around the clock, monitoring operations from ESA’s ESTEC site in the Netherlands and alongside NASA teams in the Mision Evaluation Room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The European Service Module’s main engine carries a unique legacy. Originally flown on six Space Shuttle missions between 2000 and 2002, the engine was refurbished and tested after two decades in storage and installed on the second European Service Module at Airbus in Bremen, Germany, giving this historic piece of hardware a new role in deep-space exploration.
The next major milestone is the wet dress rehearsal, during which teams will practise fuelling the rocket and running through the launch countdown, bringing Artemis II one step closer to launch.
Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja
Concordia research station in Antarctica is located on a plateau 3200 m above sea level. A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to –80°C in the winter, with a yearly average temperature of –50°C.
As Concordia lies at the very southern tip of Earth, the Sun does not rise above the horizon in the winter and does not set in the summer. The crew must live without sunlight for four months of the year.
The station is a collaboration between the French Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) and Italian Programma Nazionale di Richerche Antartide (PNRA).
Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–C. Possnig
The crew of Soyuz MS-13 is officially approved for launch following the final pre-launch State Commission meeting and press conference in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
All three crewmembers have trained extensively for their mission to the International Space Station. The State Commission meeting is the culmination of this training, where senior spaceflight officials review and certify crewmembers for flight.
ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov will be launched in their Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Saturday 20 July. This date coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and marks the start of Luca’s second space mission known as ‘Beyond’.
While in orbit, Luca will support over 50 European experiments and more than 200 international experiments. He is also expected to perform a number of spacewalks to repair the cooling systems of dark matter hunter, AMS-02.
More information about Luca’s Beyond mission is available on the blog. This will be updated throughout his mission, with updates also shared on Twitter via @esaspaceflight.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
The Sun’s inner corona, coloured artificially to appear dark green, in an image taken on 23 May 2025 by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3, ESA’s formation-flying mission capable of creating artificial total solar eclipses in orbit.
The ASPIICS instrument captures the solar corona in two different ‘spectral lines’, each line corresponding to a different element contained in the coronal gases.
This image shows observations in the coronal green line – a spectral line emitted by iron atoms that lost half of their electrons due to extremely high temperatures. This allows us to see the hottest contents of the corona, at up to 2 million degrees. On the upper left side, a hot loop can be seen extending from the Sun’s surface into the corona, a structure which generally appears following a solar flare.
See more images from Proba-3’s first artificial solar eclipse here.
[Image description: This is an image of the Sun taken during an artificial solar eclipse. Against a black background, the Sun’s bright body is covered by a black disc, and blue-green hair-like tendrils extend from the black disc in all directions. Brighter green light peeks from behind the black disc’s edge, slowly fading towards the outer edges of the image.]
Credits: ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Aganippe Fossa, a fascinating groove at the foot of Mars’s colossal Arsia Mons volcano.
Labels have been placed across the image, highlighting features and regions of note. Be sure to click on these labels and zoom in to explore the landscape in detail!
This image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 13 December 2023. It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the colour channels of the HRSC. North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 25 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 3°S/233°E.
[Image description: This tan-coloured rectangle of Mars is bumpy and irregular in the left half, with numerous small mounds clustering together and a number of jagged grooves and ridges seen throughout. The right half of the frame is smoother and marked by zebra-like stripes, a result of windblown dust. A dark scar, reminiscent of a dashed line, emerges from the bottom-middle of the image and arcs round to the middle-right.]
Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
ESA's newly selected astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 arrived at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, on 3 April 2023 to begin their 12-month basic training.
The group of five candidates, Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois, and Marco Sieber, are part of the 17-member astronaut class of 2022, selected from 22 500 applicants from across ESA Member States in November 2022.
The astronaut candidates will be trained to the highest level of standards in preparation for future space missions. During basic training, this includes learning all about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalk and survival training.
This image shows the candidate Raphaël Liégeois on his first day at the European Astronaut Centre, ready to embark on their journey to become certified ESA astronauts.
Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja
This pair of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images of Mars taken on 28 December (top) and 29 December (bottom) 2024. Each image shows a different side of the planet, with the accompanying moon Phobos. Various features are identified in the images, including the polar ice caps and clouds, as well as multiple terrestrial features.
At the midpoint of the observations, Mars was approximately 98 million kilometres from Earth. Thin water-ice clouds that are apparent in ultraviolet light give the Red Planet a frosty appearance. The icy northern polar cap was experiencing the start of Martian spring.
In the top image, the bright orange Tharsis plateau is visible with its chain of dormant volcanoes. The largest volcano, Olympus Mons, pokes above the clouds at the 10 o’clock position near the northwest limb. At an elevation of over 21 000 meters, it is 2.5 times the height of Mt. Everest above sea level. Valles Marineris, Mars’ over 4,000-kilometre-long canyon system, is a dark, linear, horizontal feature near center left.
In the bottom image, high-altitude evening clouds can be seen along the planet’s eastern limb. The 2,250-kilometre-wide Hellas basin, an ancient asteroid impact feature, appears far to the south. Most of the hemisphere is dominated by the classical “shark fin” feature, Syrtis Major.
[Image description: Two views of Mars. Top left text: Mars & Phobos, Hubble Space Telescope; filters in colors: F275W, purple; F410M, blue; F502N, green; F673N, red. Top image: December 28, 2024 20:00 UT. Most of the planet is shades of orange. The brightest orange area on the left half. At the top and bottom, white polar caps. Limb is blue. Text top center: northern polar cap, clouds. On planet, top to bottom, left to right: Arcadia Planitia, Tempe Terra, Acidalia Planitia; Olympus Monds; Tharsis Montes, Chryse Planitia; Valles Marineris, Terra Meridiana; Solus Planum; Argyre Planitia, Noachis Terra. To the right, dot: Phobos. Lower image: December 29, 2024 13:18 UT. Compass arrows at right, north pointing up, = east left. The planet has similar features; the brightest orange area is two centered two blobs. Text above Mars: northern polar cap, clouds. On-planet: Utopia Planitia; Arabia Terra, Syrtis Major; Terra Meridiani, Schiaparelli Crater, clouds; Noachis Terra, Huygens Crater, Syrtis Minor; Hellas Planitia. At left, dot: Phobos.]
Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI; CC BY 4.0
The 122-tonne reflector dish for ESA's newest deep space communication antenna was lifted and place atop its tower in Australia on 19 September 2024. In the foreground, ESA's existing deep space antenna at the site continues its daily work relaying commands to and data from distant spacecraft such as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury or ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer.
Credits: ESA