This image shows the Aquila Rift star-forming complex, based on a combination of data from ESA’s Herschel and Planck space telescopes. The bright areas in the picture shows the emission by interstellar dust grains in three different wavelengths observed by Herschel (250, 350, and 500 microns) and the lines crossing the image in a ‘drapery pattern’ represent the magnetic field orientation (based on the Planck data.)

The Aquila Rift is a region that spans the constellations of Aquila and Serpens and contains the Aquila Rift cloud complex. This harbours the Serpens star-forming region, a part of which is shown in this image, which has widespread filaments.

The bright area towards the left is a network of filaments contains the Westerhout 40 (W40) star forming region. W40 contains both massive and low-mass stars, and the ionising radiation from the newly formed massive stars has created a so-called H II region, which is a cloud of partially ionised hydrogen gas. Around 520 young stars are located in W40. The bright area visible on the right of the image is the young star MWC 297, which powers the diffuse nebula Sh 2-62 around it.

Credits: ESA/Herschel/Planck; J. D. Soler, MPIA

What goes up, nearly always comes back down. When it comes to the objects we send to space, atmospheric reentries are actually a fundamental tool in minimising the creation of space debris and ensuring a sustainable future in space.

Objects in low-Earth orbit, affected by the 'drag' forces caused by Earth's atmosphere, gradually lower in altitude and then make a rapid and fiery descent towards Earth.

Small objects disintegrate as they reenter due to the immense friction and heat created, but parts of larger bodies can reach the ground so should be controlled to land over uninhabited regions.

Join Stijn Lemmens and Jorge del Rio Vera to find out more about why this matters in the joint ESA-UN podcast that narrates this infographic.

Credits: ESA / UNOOSA

Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, ESA project astronaut and the first Polish astronaut of the new generation to fly to space, is continuing a cherished tradition at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. As he prepares for the upcoming Ignis mission, Sławosz is planting his astronaut tree—an enduring symbol of his connection to Earth before he journeys beyond it. During the ceremony, he was joined by Frank De Winne, Head of the European Astronaut Centre, Group Leader for Low Earth Orbit Exploration and former ESA astronaut, who offered a helping hand with the planting.

The Ignis mission, named after the Latin word for ‘fire,’ represents the spark igniting a new era in Poland’s space endeavours. The symbolism of fire and flight is also reflected in the American sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) tree chosen for each astronaut. In autumn, its leaves turn a vivid red and orange, mirroring the fiery tail of a rocket at launch—a powerful image that resonates with both the Ignis mission patch and the very essence of space exploration.

Sławosz was selected as an ESA astronaut reserve member in 2022 and became a project astronaut in 2023. Now assigned to Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), he is undergoing intensive training with his crew mates before the expected launch no earlier than May 2025.

His flight, sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, will carry out an ambitious programme of scientific and technological experiments for Poland and all of Europe.

The astronaut tree-planting tradition at EAC has its roots in the long-standing human spaceflight custom of planting trees before launch. ESA astronauts from the 2009 and 2022 classes who have flown missions have followed this ritual, and today, Sławosz continues the tradition in Cologne.

With his tree standing among those of preceding ESA astronauts, Sławosz’s Ignis tree burns bright in spirit, symbolising the strength, resilience and international collaboration that define human spaceflight. As it grows, it will serve as a lasting tribute to his journey and the knowledge he will bring back to Earth.

Credits: ESA - A.Conigli

These four crucial hardware units are built to endure spaceflight conditions but never leave the ground. Together they form the thermal data acquisition system of the largest thermal vacuum chamber in Europe, the Large Space Simulator.

Featuring a Sun simulator that reproduces unfiltered sunshine, the mammoth LSS chamber allows entire satellites to be operated in the equivalent illumination, vacuum and temperature conditions of space for weeks on end.

Known as NgDCUs, New Generation Data Collection Units, these rarely glimpsed boxes are normally fitted into the equipment bay of the motion simulator within the LSS. This is used to rotate a satellite being tested within the cylindrical test chamber, which at 15 m high and 10 m wide is big enough to accommodate an upended London double decker bus.

Currently undergoing their biennial calibration process to make sure their accuracy remains well within specification, the NgDCUs are used to gather thermal data from within a satellite during each test campaign.

The cables that extend from each unit are connected to thermocouples and other sensors embedded within the test satellite. Each unit fits seven data cards within up acquiring test data across a maximum 54 channels, adding up to more than 1500 channels overall. These internal thermal measurements are supplemented by optical and thermal cameras mounted within the LSS.

“For typical test chambers, this kind of acquisition system would be operated outside vacuum,” explains electronics engineer Koen Debeule of ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre. “But because these units need to rotate along with the test satellite they have to be built to withstand sustained hard vacuum and temperature swings. Being built to flight quality in this way really makes them unique.”

Hardware for the NgDCUs came from Syderal in Switzerland with software supplied by Terma in the Netherlands.

Based at the ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, the LSS has performed pre-flight testing for many of ESA’s biggest missions, including Rosetta, Juice and Plato. The chamber incorporates a Sun simulator with up to 19 IMAX cinema-class Xenon light bulbs and liquid or gaseous nitrogen shrouds lining its walls to reproduce the chill of space.

The Test Centre is operated for ESA by European Test Services. It is the largest facility of its kind in Europe, providing a complete suite of equipment for all aspects of satellite testing under a single roof.

Credits: ESA-SJM Photography

This summer, a team of robots explored a simulated martian landscape in Germany, remotely guided by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. This marked the fourth and final session of the Surface Avatar experiment, a collaboration between ESA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to develop how astronauts can control robotic teams to perform complex tasks on the Moon and Mars.

The session introduced new levels of autonomy and complexity. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim operated two robots – ESA’s four-legged Spot and DLR’s humanoid Rollin’ Justin – to retrieve scattered sample containers and deliver them to a lander. Spot navigated the terrain autonomously, while Justin was guided through a mix of direct control and pre-set commands. This setup allowed Jonny to delegate tasks and focus on higher-level decisions, building on other sessions where robots required full teleoperation.

In a second scenario, ESA’s Interact rover transported DLR’s robot dog Bert to a cave entrance. After removing a boulder, Jonny deployed Bert, which then simulated a malfunction in one of its legs. Jonny had to retrain Bert’s walking algorithm in real time before it continued into the cave and detected signs of martian ice. This tested how operators respond to unexpected challenges and adapt robotic systems on the fly.

The robots are controlled from the International Space Station using a custom-built interface developed by ESA and DLR, combining a joystick and a haptic-feedback device. The interface allows switching between first-person view for immersive teleoperation and a top-down map for broader mission oversight. This flexibility lets the astronaut manage multiple robots efficiently, balancing direct control with strategic delegation.

Over four sessions, the Surface Avatar team has refined its approach to human-robot interaction, improving both teleoperation and task delegation to autonomous systems. The experiment has also helped to identify which tasks astronauts prefer to control directly and which can be safely handed over to robotic systems, offering valuable insight for future mission planning.

Read our blog to find out more.

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

A Proba-V view of the internationally protected, volcanic archipelago of the Galápagos and its surrounding marine reserve. This island chain is renowned for its many endemic species that were studied by Charles Darwin, directly contributing to his famous theory of evolution by means of natural selection.

In 1535, the Spaniard Tomás de Berlanga, fourth bishop of Panama, first visited these islands by chance when he was sailing to Peru. On the maps of Mercator and Ortelius, famous geographers, the islands were named Insulae de los Galopegos or Islands of the Tortoises after the giant tortoises found there.

This false colour composition highlights vegetation in red on the flanks of several volcanoes, in particular Wolf, Darwin, Alcedo, Santo Tomás and Cerro Azul volcanoes on Isla Isabella, the largest island.

Launched on 7 May 2013, Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

Its main camera’s continent-spanning 2250 km swath width collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands at a 300 m pixel size, down to 100 m in its central field of view.

VITO Remote Sensing in Belgium processes and then distributes Proba-V data to users worldwide. An online image gallery highlights some of the mission’s most striking images so far, including views of storms, fires and deforestation.

This 100 m spatial resolution image was acquired on 27 February 2017.

Credits: ESA/Belspo – produced by VITO

Inauguration of the Paris Space Hub by the Prime Minister of France François Bayrou on the first day of the International Paris Air Show, 16 June 2025.

Learn more about Le Bourget 2025 here.

Credits: ESA - P. Servent

This picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts the starburst galaxy NGC 5253, observed by two of Hubble’s instruments across a span of ten years.

At the bottom is a wide view of the galaxy, comprising data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) using the Wide Field Channel, as well as the older Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Here the dense clouds of gas and dust in the galaxy are in full view, illuminated by bright and hot star clusters, at the centre of a vast array of stars. You can view this image in more detail here.

Above is a more detailed shot, obtained using the High Resolution Channel (HRC) of the ACS instrument. The pullout shows which region of the galaxy was captured by HRC. This focused image was used to study super star clusters in the dust-filled core of the galaxy. See the full image here.

[Image Description: A collage of two images of a dwarf galaxy. At bottom, the entire galaxy is seen against a dark background. A white box marks an area of the galaxy’s core, and a pullout connects this to the image above, which shows that area brightly and in more detail.]

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Zezas, W. D. Vacca, D. Calzetti; CC BY 4.0

ESA’s Aeolus satellite ready for liftoff on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Using revolutionary laser technology, Aeolus will measure winds around the globe and play a key role in our quest to better understand the workings of our atmosphere. Importantly, this novel mission will also improve weather forecasting.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

Thousands flocked to ESAC, ESA's astronomy heart nearby Madrid, Spain on Saturday 19 October to celebrate the ESA Open Day.

People got the chance to meet astronaut Thomas Reiter, space experts and saw behind the scenes of Europe’s space adventure where space science comes alive.

Credits: Bärbel and Peter Kretschmar

One of the sessions at Living Planet Symposium focused on human adaptability to extreme environments. The discussion was triggered by the different experiences of the three speakers: ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano, ESA CryoSat Mission Geophysicist Alessandro di Bella and Omar Di Felice, an extreme cyclist. All three have lived or worked in very difficult, albeit different, environments.

Credits: ESA/JürgenMai

The full disc image below shows a map of magnetic propertied for the whole Sun based on data from the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) on ESA’s Solar Orbiter. Taken on 18 June 2020, there is a large magnetically active region in the lower right-hand quadrant of the Sun.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/PHI Team/ESA & NASA

Copernicus Sentinel-1C standing proud on its payload adapter between the two fairing halves that will protect the spacecraft on the launch pad and on its ascent towards space.

Sentinel-1C, the third satellite in the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, is set to launch in December 2024 on a Vega-C rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.

Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst during his last week of training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA. Alexander reviewed the main tasks he has to perform during his mission. His training started two years ago and has moved from general maintenance classes to specific tasks related to the Horizons mission.

Among these tasks are work on the airlock, the replacement of umbilical equipment for Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs), testing of tools, review of experiments, making repairs and checking the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module.

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

This colour-coded topographic image of Mars shows Arcadia Planitia in Mars’s northern lowlands.

It was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 10 November 2024 (orbit 26333) 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 18 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 41°N/211°E.

Read more

[Image description: A topographical satellite map of a landscape with varied elevation and colour gradients. The left side of the image is dominated by blue and purple hues, suggesting lower elevations, while the right side transitions into green and tan colours, indicating higher ground. There is a distinct circular feature in the lower right quadrant that resembles an impact crater. The boundary between the blue/purple area and the green/tan area is irregular, possibly representing a cliff, or escarpment.

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

Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, this image shows the narrow strait that connects eastern Europe to western Asia: the Bosphorus in northwest Turkey. The image contains satellite data stitched together from three radar scans acquired on 2 June, 8 July and 13 August 2018.

Separating the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, the strait is one of the busiest maritime passages in the world, with around 48 000 ships passing through every year. Daily traffic includes international commercial shipping vessels and oil tankers, as well as local fishing and ferries. Ships in the strait can be seen in the image as multi-coloured dots. Three bridges are also visible spanning the strait and connecting the two continents.

The two identical Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments, which can see through clouds and rain, and in the dark, to image Earth’s surface below. The multi-temporal remote sensing technique combines two or more radar images over the same area to detect changes occurring between acquisitions.

In the far-left of this image, the aqua-green patches of land show the changes in the fields between the three satellite acquisitions.

Turkey’s most populous city, Istanbul, can be seen on both sides of the Bosphorus. The city appears in shades of white owing to the stronger reflection of the radar signal from buildings, which contrasts with the dark black colour of the inland lakes and surrounding waters.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The BepiColombo spacecraft stack is prepared for transport for mounting in the launcher.

BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter is seen at the top of the stack, ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter is in the middle, and ESA’s Mercury Transfer Module is at the bottom.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

The Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite takes us over South Sudan. Having gained independence from Sudan in July 2011, South Sudan is the youngest country in the world. It has an estimated population of 13 million people, more than 80% of whom live in rural areas. Most of the population relies on farming, fishing or herding to meet their food and income needs.

The Sobat river is traced in a vibrant green colour along the left part of the image. This is the most southerly of the great eastern tributaries of the White Nile, the section of the Nile between Malakal, South Sudan and Khartoum, Sudan.

Tropical forests, swamps and grassland make up the majority of South Sudan’s terrain. A large, swampy area called the Sudd, which is about 320 km wide and 400 km long, can be found in the centre of the country. This is thought to be one of the largest freshwater ecosystems in the world and is fed by the White Nile and rainfall runoff from surrounding areas. It is home to large fish populations, millions of migratory birds, and various endangered species.

The area has also provided shelter for refugees fleeing the ongoing Sudanese civil war, which broke out in South Sudan in December 2013.

The red and gold in the lower-central part of the image shows smoke from a fire. The smoke is being driven by a northerly wind. The black parts of the image, similarly, show burnt areas of land – possibly the result of slash and burn agriculture. By burning dry grass, herders are able to fertilise the soil with ash, promoting new growth that can be used to feed livestock. Subsistence farmers also tend to use this method to manage land, returning nutrients to the soil and clearing the ground of unwanted plants in the process. Some of the negative longer-term impacts of this practice include air pollution, deforestation and erosion.

Sentinel-2 carries an innovative wide swath high-resolution multispectral imager for observing our land and vegetation. The mission mainly provides information for agricultural and forestry practices and for helping manage food security.

This image, which was captured on 18 January 2018, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

In preparation for his Beyond mission, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano was at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA, in March 2019.

His training included working on a spacewalk, or Extravehicular Activity (EVA).

Luca already has two spacewalks under his belt but in ‘building 9’ of the Johnson Space Center, Luca worked with the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility and refreshed his skills on maintaining the US spacewalk suits called Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU).

The training is important as Luca has some spacewalks planned that will see him repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS-02 particle detector. The dark-matter hunter was launched 16 May 2011 on Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134. It records over 17 billion cosmic rays, particles, and nuclei a year. The results from AMS-02 have shown unexpected phenomena not predicted by cosmic ray models—and changing our understanding of the cosmos.

The mission was initially meant to run for only three years but has been so successful that its mission life has been extended. Three of the four cooling pumps however have stopped functioning and require repair.

A series of spacewalks are planned to replace the cooling system for the $2 billion instrument but they were never designed to be replaced in space.

The first spacewalk is intended to determine just how and where to intervene, and what tools will be needed for the process.

Luca will go beyond Earth’s atmosphere when he returns to the International Space Station in 2019 as part of Expedition 60/61, alongside NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Roscosmos astronaut Alexander Skvortsov.

Luca was the first of the 2009 astronaut class to fly to the Space Station. His first mission Volare, meaning 'to fly' in Italian, took place in 2013 and lasted 166 days, during which time Luca conducted two spacewalks and many experiments that are still running today.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

What are you like at docking a virtual spacecraft with a space station? And, more importantly, how does this change over 60 days lying in bed?

This image shows a participant in the current ESA-NASA bedrest study at the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) :envihab facility in Cologne, Germany.

Wearing a virtual reality headset and using joystick controllers, she is attempting to dock a spacecraft as part of a simulation that will be repeated at regular intervals throughout her 60 days in bed.

Bedrest has long been used to mimic some of the changes our bodies experience in the weightlessness of space. Participants lie in beds with the head end tilted 6° below horizontal and must ensure one shoulder is touching the mattress at all times.

As blood flows to the participants’ heads and muscle is lost from underuse, researchers use activities such as the docking simulation to better understand the physical and cognitive effects of microgravity-like conditions. They then test techniques to try and combat these effects, from diet to physical exercise.

This bedrest study is the first of its kind to be conducted in partnership between ESA and NASA. It is also the first to employ DLR’s short-arm centrifuge as a way of recreating different gravity levels for participants.

Once a day, a selection of the study’s participants will lie in DLR’s short-arm centrifuge where they will be spun to encourage blood to flow back towards their feet. This will allow researchers to better understand the potential of artificial gravity in mitigating the effects of weightlessness on human bodies.

Credits: DLR

This image shows Terra Cimmeria, a region found in the southern highlands of Mars. The area outlined by the bold white box indicates the area imaged by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on 11 December 2018 during orbit 18904.

Learn more

Credits: NASA MGS MOLA Science Team

In July 2025, engineers at ESA’s technical heart, ESTEC, tested the Smile spacecraft’s soft X-ray imager (SXI). SXI will be the first-ever camera to take X-ray photos of Earth’s magnetic field.

The engineers were checking for cracks in SXI’s fragile optics following mechanical and thermal testing of the spacecraft. Though the optics were undamaged, they found a cobweb or thread of glue that will be cleaned in the coming weeks.

This photo looks directly into the instrument, which follows a design inspired by lobsters’ eyes. It uses a lightweight, well-established and cost-effective technique called micro pore optics to focus X-rays.

The photos taken by SXI will help us map out how the magnetic field – our shield against the solar wind – moves and changes in shape in response to being hit by particles from the Sun.

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: Close-up of a spacecraft instrument in a cleanroom. The bottom section shows a large black rectangular opening with slats inside, framed by copper-coloured edges. Above it, there are numerous orange cables and electronic components. A person’s hand holding a torch is visible on the right, shining light on the equipment.]

Credits: ESA-M.Roos

The third Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite, Sentinel-1C, has launched aboard a Vega-C rocket, flight VV25, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 5 December 2024 at 22:20 CET (18:20 local time).

Sentinel-1C extends the legacy of its predecessors, delivering high-resolution radar imagery to monitor Earth’s changing environment, supporting a diverse range of applications and advance scientific research. Additionally, Sentinel-1C introduces new capabilities for detecting and monitoring maritime traffic.

The launch also marks Vega-C’s ‘return to flight’, a key step in restoring Europe’s independent access to space. Vega-C is the evolution of the Vega family of rockets and delivers increased performance, greater payload volume and improved competitiveness.

Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja

The Copernicus Sentinel-3B satellite will be carried into orbit on a Rockot launcher.

Once safely in orbit and fully commissioned, this new satellite will begin its mission to map Earth’s oceans and land surfaces with its powerful optical and radar systems. The Sentinel-3 mission is set to play a key role in the world’s largest environmental monitoring programme – Copernicus.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The Russian Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft that will transport ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano to the International Space Station is rolled out onto launchpad number one at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

This rocket will be launched on Saturday 20 July, marking the start of Luca’s second space mission known as Beyond.

In the lead-up to liftoff, component parts of a Soyuz spacecraft are brought to Kazakhstan to be assembled. Once the rocket is ready, it is loaded onto a train and transported to the launchpad.

The rollout happens in the morning, two days ahead of launch day. It is considered bad luck for the crew to witness this rollout or see the rocket again before the day of their launch, though the rollout is witnessed by the backup crew and support teams.

When the train arrives at its destination on the launchpad, the rocket is put into position. When it is fully lifted, four green arms ensure it is secured correctly for liftoff. These arms will mechanically rotate away to release the rocket at the time of launch.

After the rocket has been secured, the service structure containing the stairs and elevator as well as the umbilical towers that provide fuel and liquid oxygen, are erected.

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

The X-ray Spectrometer/Telescope (STIX) studies solar X-ray emissions, which are exclusively emitted during solar flares. Even if solar activity is currently low, the STIX team was lucky enough to observe a solar flare on 7 June 2020. Although weak, the flare was still large enough to test almost all the aspect of STIX functionality.

The data shown here represents the spectrum of the X-rays detected from the flare, and the way they changed with time. The red signal comes from heated ‘flare loops’, which are magnetic arches in the solar coronal that are filled with gas and heated to around 11 million degrees Celsius by the energy released during the flare.

The blue signal represents electrons that were accelerated during the flare. These high-energy electrons heat the lower layers of the solar corona, which provides the material that fills the flare loops. Hence the red curve increases during when the blue curve is high. After the acceleration stops, the flare loops start to cool and the X-ray emission decreases accordingly.

Focusing X-rays is difficult and generally requires large instruments, which were not suitable for Solar Orbiter. So STIX uses an indirect imaging system of metal masks in front of the detectors to block part of the incoming X-rays. The shadow pattern this creates on the detector can be used to ‘reconstruct’ an image after the data has been transmitted to Earth.

Doing this for the first time, however, involves a huge scientific and mathematical effort, as many instrumental corrections need to be applied, and so the effort is on-going. Once the reconstruction process is successful, the STIX team will generate images automatically.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/STIX Team/ESA & NASA

SpaceX Crew-2 with ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet arrive at NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on 16 April 2021.

French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is returning to the International Space Station on his second spaceflight. The mission, which is called Alpha, will see the first European to launch on a US spacecraft in over a decade. Thomas is flying on the Crew Dragon, alongside NASA astronauts Megan MacArthur and Shane Kimbrough, and Japanese astronaut Aki Hoshide.

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

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is already helping researchers fine-tune their classifications of distant galaxies – adding significant speed and detail to analysis that has been underway for decades.

New research has focused on several thousand galaxies in Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey that existed when the Universe was 600 million to 6 billion years old. The team found that most distant galaxies do not look like the more familiar spiral and elliptical galaxies that lie closer to Earth. The science team pinpointed four main classifications, shown illustrated above as both 3D objects and cross sections. They are ordered from least to most frequent.

At top left, Webb’s survey shows a classification that’s rare in the early Universe, but common today: Galaxies that are shaped like spheres or volleyball.

At top right are flattened circular disks or frisbees, which are only slightly more common.

The galaxy shapes that dominate during this early period look flat and elongated, like surfboards, shown at bottom left, or pool noodles, bottom right. This pair of classifications make up approximately 50 to 80% of all distant galaxies they’ve studied so far – a surprise, since these shapes are uncommon nearby.

The advances in astronomers’ classifications are owed to Webb’s sensitivity, high-resolution images, and specialisation in infrared light. The astronomical community will also need to fully classify more distant galaxies with much larger sample sizes from Webb and other telescopes before settling on any firm groupings.

[Image description: Illustrations of distant galaxy shapes appear in quadrants. Within each quadrant, there are two labels at top left, and two galaxy illustrations, a full 3D object at left and a cross section at right. From top left to bottom right: spheroid or volleyball; oblate or frisbee or; oval or surfboard; and prolate or pool noodle.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted (STScI), V. Pandya (Columbia University), H. Zhang (University of Arizona), L. Reading-Ikkanda (Simons Foundation)

MetOp-SG-A1 and Sentinel-5 standing proud in the cleanroom at the Airbus facilities in Toulouse, France.

The first in the new MetOp Second Generation series of weather satellites, MetOp-SG-A1 also carries the Copernicus Sentinel-5 mission and is planned to be launched in August 2025 aboard an Ariane 6 rocket.

Learn more

Credits: ESA - S.Corvaja

ESA's CubeSat Systems Unit oversees the design, building and flight of miniature CubeSats used to provide early in-orbit demonstration opportunities for European technologies - because the best place to test novel space systems is actually in space. Assembled from standardised 10-cm boxes, CubeSats offer smaller Member States the chance to build competences by overseeing entire missions.

Credits: ESA-F. Zonno

A close-up image taken with the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) High Resolution Telescope on ESA’s Solar Orbiter on 28 May 2020. The area is approximately 200 000 km x 200 000 km across and is centred on the middle of the Sun. It shows the Sun’s granulation pattern that results from the movement of hot plasma under the Sun’s visible surface.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/PHI Team/ESA & NASA

ESA’s Solar Orbiter is revealing the many faces of the Sun. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) Full Sun Imager (FSI) took the images in the top row and far right column across the week following 30 May 2020, and contributed to the central image.

The yellow images, taken at the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 17 nanometres, show the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, which exists at a temperature of around one million degrees. The red images, taken at a slightly longer wavelength of 30 nanometres, show the Sun’s transition region, which is an interface between the lower and upper layers of the solar atmosphere. In this region, which is only about 100 km thick, the temperature increases by a factor of up to 100 to reach the one million degrees of the corona.

Solar Orbiter will travel around the Sun and out of the ecliptic plane, which loosely defines where the planets orbit. So, EUI will be able to image the far side of the Sun as well as the solar poles. The middle image shows projected, simultaneous solar images from EUI FSI (red) at Solar Orbiter’s position during its first perihelion, the closest point in its orbit to the Sun, and the NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory mission (gray) in Earth orbit.

The image in the middle of the first column, was taken by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument on 18 June 2020. It shows a “magnetic map of the Sun” that reveals the magnetic field strengths on the solar surface. In the bottom right-hand corner there is the beginning of an active region. It can be seen from the closely neighbouring black and white regions, which signify opposite magnetic polarities. In times of increased magnetic activity, plots like this will show many more such active regions.

The blue, white and red image at bottom left is a tachogram of the Sun, again taken with PHI. It shows the line of sight velocity of the Sun, with the blue side turning to us and the red side turning away. In times of increased magnetic activity, this plot will become more turbulent.

Next to this image, is a view of the Sun in visible light, taken by PHI on 18 June 2020. There are no sunspots because there is very little magnetic activity.

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

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

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

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

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

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

Researchers take a group photo in front of the Air Zero G aircraft to mark the end of the 75th ESA parabolic flight campaign. The campaign was the third to take place under Covid-19 restrictions, and ran from 21 to 30 April in Bordeaux, France.

Participants and coordinators adjusted to a new way of flying: PCR tests were required to enter France, as well as rapid antigen or RT LAMP tests each day for every participant. Facilities on the ground as well as on board were adapted to allow for social distancing and cleanliness requirements. Surgical masks were worn at all times, and movement was restricted during the flights.

Otherwise, the parabolic flights were business-as-usual. Teams from various research institutes and universities performed experiments and technology demonstrations across many disciplines including complex fluidics, astronomical light scattering, protoplanetary agglomeration, and human physiology in altered states of gravity.

Initially used for training astronauts, parabolic flights are now mostly used for short-duration scientific and technological investigations in reduced gravity. These flights are the only way for humans to run tests in microgravity without going through lengthy astronaut-training and flights to the International Space Station.

To perform each parabola, the refitted A310 Air Zero G aircraft flies close to maximum speed and pulls the nose up to a 45° angle, then cuts the power to fall over the top of the curve. Whilst falling freely the passengers and experiments experience around 20 seconds of microgravity, until the plane is angled 45° nose-down, before pulling out of the dive to level off with normal flight.

These “pull up” and “pull out” manoeuvres before and after the weightless period increase gravity inside the plane up to 2g, but that is just part of the ride, repeated every three minutes for almost two hours.

A typical parabolic flight campaign involves three flights and requires a week of on-site preparation. Each flight offers 31 periods of weightlessness. The aircraft can also fly in arcs that provide lunar or martian gravity levels by adjusting the angle of attack of the wings.

Simplicity of preparation and operations, reduced cost, partial-gravity levels, multiple microgravity phases and opportunity for researchers to work directly on the experiments on board are some of the unique advantages..

Parabolic flights are organised by Novespace, which handles flight and ground operations. ESA, French space agency CNES, and German space agency DLR are the promoters and sponsors of the programme.

Credits: Novespace

This stereoscopic image shows Coloe Fossae on Mars. It was generated from data captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on 19 October 2024 (orbit 26257). The anaglyph offers a three-dimensional view when viewed using red-green or red-blue glasses.

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[Image description: A grey-toned view of Mars’s surface with several large circular craters and long, narrow ridges running diagonally across the scene. The terrain appears rough and uneven, with raised strips and deep depressions giving a sense of strong geological activity. The shading suggests a three-dimensional perspective, highlighting the height differences between ridges and surrounding plains.]

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

ESA’s Earth Explorer Aeolus satellite lifted off on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 22 August at 21:20 GMT (23:20 CEST). Using revolutionary laser technology, Aeolus will measure winds around the globe and play a key role in our quest to better understand the workings of our atmosphere. Importantly, this novel mission will also improve weather forecasting.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

The galaxy GS-NDG-9422 may easily have gone unnoticed. However, what appears as a faint blur in this NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope image may actually be a groundbreaking discovery that points astronomers on a new path of understanding galaxy evolution in the early Universe.

Detailed information on the galaxy’s chemical makeup, captured by Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, indicates that the light we see in this image is coming from the galaxy’s hot gas, rather than its stars. That is the best explanation astronomers have discovered so far to explain the unexpected features in the light spectrum. They think that the galaxy’s stars are so extremely hot and massive that they are heating up the nebular gas in the galaxy to more than 80 000 degrees Celsius, allowing it to shine even brighter in near-infrared light than the stars themselves.

The authors of a new study on Webb’s observations of the galaxy think GS-NDG-9422 may represent a never-before-seen phase of galaxy evolution in the early Universe, within the first billion years after the Big Bang. Their task now is to see if they can find more galaxies displaying the same features.

[Image description: A black background sprinkled with small, colourful galaxies in orange, blue, and white. On the left, a third of the way down from the top of the image, a very faint dot of a galaxy is outlined with a white square and pulled out in a graphic to be shown magnified. In the pullout square to the right, the galaxy is a hazy white dot edged in orange, with faint blue projections opposite each other at the 11 o’clock and 5 o’clock positions.]

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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Cameron (University of Oxford); CC BY 4.0

The ESA stand at the 53rd International Le Bourget Air & Space Show in Paris, France, on 17 June 2019.

Credits: ESA – P. Sebirot

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

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

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

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

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

The dish at Space Sciences Lab, UC Berkeley, just seconds after it moved into position to track a science probe in orbit around the moon. The big dish makes a cool sci-fi sound as it moves. It was a thrill to be standing right under it while it SLID into position! (Even though this particular dish rotation only took about 10 seconds, I still wondered if I would have to duck, lol). HSS!

The probe the folks at SSL were getting ready to monitor is called ARTEMIS P1, formerly THEMIS B. For more on the history of this project, see ARTEMIS/THEMIS Missions

Once again I'm in post-and-rush mode but I'm COUNTING on having a leisurely afternoon sliding through sliders and visiting you eight-days-a-weekers, too - see ya!

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

On 24 April 2024 the central core for Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6 that will fly to space for the first time was moved upright on the launchpad.

Four automated vehicles transported the Ariane 6 central core, that consists of the main and upper stage, from the launcher assembly building to the launch pad that is about 800 meters away.

Once at the launch pad, choreographed movements by two of the automated vehicles and a crane equipped with a lifting beam, raised the central core to its vertical launch position and placed it on the launch table. It was then rotated so that the stages’ fluid connections were positioned opposite the launch pad umbilicals that will supply the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel for launch.

The mobile building surrounding Ariane 6 is a 90-metre-high metallic structure that rolls away on rails once assembly is complete to allow Ariane 6 a clear view of the sky and space. The building has platforms for technicians to further assemble Ariane 6 while also protecting the rocket until it is ready for launch.

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

Credits: ESA-M. Pédoussaut

This replica model of ESA’s ‘Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer’, or M-Argo, was on display at the Agency’s recent Antennas workshop. It is the one of numerous small missions planned as part of ESA’s Technology Strategy, being presented at this month’s Space19+ Council at Ministerial Level.

This is a suitcase-sized nanospacecraft based on the CubeSat design employing standardised 10 cm cubic units within which electronic boards can be stacked and subsystems attached. M-Argo is a 12-unit CubeSat – with a 22 x 22 x 34 cm body – that would hitch a ride on the launch of a larger space mission whose trajectory takes it beyond Earth orbit, such as astronomy missions to a Sun–Earth Lagrange point.

The CubeSat would then use its own miniaturised electric thruster to take it into deep space and rendezvous with an asteroid, which it would survey using a multispectral camera and a laser altimeter to look for resources such as hydrated minerals that could be extracted in future. Other miniaturised payloads are also being considered.

“Such a small spacecraft has never independently travelled through deep space to rendezvous with an asteroid before,” comments Roger Walker, overseeing ESA’s Technology Cubesats. “It will enable the cost of asteroid exploration to be reduced by an order of magnitude or more.”

Numerous miniaturised technologies are currently being developed to enable the M-Argo mission, including the electric propulsion system, a high frequency ‘X-band’ communications system with a flat panel antenna – as seen in the image – to communicate with Earth at distances of up to 150 million km and a mechanism to steer the solar panels constantly at the Sun to generate enough power for the electric propulsion and communications systems.

The M-Argo CubeSat and its mission are currently being designed for ESA by a team consisting of Gomspace in Luxembourg and Politecnico di Milano in Italy.

“The team has identified a total of 148 near-Earth asteroids potentially reachable for a rendezvous using design,” adds Roger. “From these, five different asteroids have been carefully selected for further analysis in terms of optimising their rendezvous trajectories and close-up navigation - some of the closest to Earth in terms of the amount of fuel needed to get there: a key consideration for future mining of in-situ resources.

“M-Argo design has recently reached a milestone with the Mission Definition Review, which confirms that the CubeSat can rendezvous with any one of these five different asteroids, if launched during the 2023-2025 timeframe. The M-Argo team will now focus on completing the design concept of the CubeSat up until April next year. ”

“This is the first time ESA is designing a low-cost spacecraft for asteroid mining purposes in line with the Luxembourg space strategy. M-Argo and numerous other innovative technology-testing CubeSat missions, are being supported through the Fly element of the Agency’s General Support Technology Programme, part of ESA’s Technology Strategy being presented at Space19+.” says Kenza Benamar, Coordinator of the Fly element.

Also being presented at the Ministerial is the Hera asteroid mission, a larger-scale spacecraft that would deploy two CubeSats when it reaches its target binary asteroid system.

replica model of ESA’s ‘Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer’, or M-Argo, was on display at the Agency’s recent Antennas workshop. It is the one of numerous small missions planned as part of in ESA’s Technology Strategy, being presented at this month’s Space19+ Council at Ministerial Level.

This is a suitcase-sized nanospacecraft based on the CubeSat design employing standardised 10 cm cubic units within which electronic boards can be stacked and subsystems attached. M-Argo is a 12-unit CubeSat – with a 22 x 22 x 34 cm body – that would hitch a ride on the launch of a larger space mission whose trajectory takes it beyond Earth orbit, such as astronomy missions to a Sun–Earth Lagrange point.

The CubeSat would then use its own miniaturised electric thruster to take it into deep space and rendezvous with an asteroid, which it would survey using a multispectral camera and a laser altimeter to look for resources such as hydrated minerals that could be extracted in future. Other miniaturised payloads are also being considered.

“Such a small spacecraft has never independently travelled through deep space to rendezvous with an asteroid before,” comments Roger Walker, overseeing ESA’s Technology Cubesats. “It will enable the cost of asteroid exploration to be reduced by an order of magnitude or more.”

Numerous miniaturised technologies are currently being developed to enable the M-Argo mission, including the electric propulsion system, a high frequency ‘X-band’ communications system with a flat panel antenna – as seen in the image – to communicate with Earth at distances of up to 150 million km and a mechanism to steer the solar panels constantly at the Sun to generate enough power for the electric propulsion and communications systems.

The M-Argo CubeSat and its mission are currently being designed for ESA by a team consisting of Gomspace in Luxembourg and Politecnico di Milano in Italy.

“The team has identified a total of 148 near-Earth asteroids potentially reachable for a rendezvous using design,” adds Roger. “From these, five different asteroids have been carefully selected for further analysis in terms of optimising their rendezvous trajectories and close-up navigation - some of the closest to Earth in terms of the amount of fuel needed to get there: a key consideration for future mining of in-situ resources.

“M-Argo design has recently reached a milestone with the Mission Definition Review, which confirms that the CubeSat can rendezvous with any one of these five different asteroids, if launched during the 2023-2025 timeframe. The M-Argo team will now focus on completing the design concept of the CubeSat up until April next year. ”

“This is the first time ESA is designing a low-cost spacecraft for asteroid mining purposes in line with the Luxembourg space strategy. M-Argo and numerous other innovative technology-testing CubeSat missions, are being supported through the Fly element of the Agency’s General Support Technology Programme, part of ESA’s Technology Strategy being presented at Space19+.” says Kenza Benamar, Coordinator of the Fly element.

Also being presented at the Ministerial is the Hera asteroid mission, a larger-scale spacecraft that would deploy two CubeSats when it reaches its target binary asteroid system.

Credits: ESA-SJM Photography

By observing more than a third of the sky during its mission, ESA’s Euclid will provide a gigantic catalogue of billions of galaxies and stars. This will be a treasure trove of data that can be used to improve our understanding of many aspects of astronomy: from merging galaxies to the physics of small and cool stars.

Euclid has a four times higher resolution, and 15 times better sensitivity in the near-infrared than is possible from current ground-based surveys. For each galaxy in Euclid’s detailed three-dimensional map, we will know its shape, mass, and other properties such as an estimate of how many new stars it produces per year.

In the ‘nearby’ Universe, out to a distance of around 16 million light-years, Euclid will even be able to see which types of stars each galaxy hosts, and how these stars orbit around their galaxy centre. This will teach us about how different galaxies form.

Although the largest fraction of its observations will be devoted to a wide survey, Euclid will spend about ten percent of its time looking at just three patches of the sky. These regions are called the Euclid Deep Fields. By staring at these patches, Euclid will be able to see objects that are hundreds of times fainter than the ones ESA’s Gaia can detect. Two of these regions were chosen to overlap with Hubble ‘deep field’ measurements, while the third has been specially selected for Euclid.

Since 2013, ESA's Gaia mission has been producing a gigantic survey of almost two billion stars in the Milky Way. Euclid will augment this survey. Unlike Gaia, Euclid will also observe near-infrared light and will be able to spot the brown dwarfs and ultra-cool stars that Gaia will miss.

In addition to detecting new objects, Euclid will provide complementary information for stars that have already been observed by Gaia. It will measure infrared colours and spectra for these objects. This new information will allow astronomers to calculate the precise age and initial chemical composition of each star. This is crucial for determining how the heavier chemical elements have built up in our galaxy.

Euclid is ESA’s space telescope designed to explore the dark Universe. The mission will create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe ever produced across 10 billion years of cosmic time. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how large-scale structure is distributed across space and time, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Credits: ESA (acknowledgement: work performed by ATG under contract to ESA), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

This image shows the Chamaeleon II molecular cloud based on a combination of data from ESA’s Herschel and Planck space telescopes. The bright areas in the picture shows the emission by interstellar dust grains in three different wavelengths observed by Herschel (250, 350, and 500 microns) and the lines crossing the image in a ‘drapery pattern’ represent the magnetic field orientation (based on the Planck data.)

The Chamaeleon cloud complex consists of three molecular clouds of very different morphology and stages of evolution: Chamaeleon I, II and III, with Chamaleon III having no young stars.

Chamaeleon II, despite its name, would not be able to camouflage in with Chamaeleon I even though they have similar sizes and masses. The region is still actively forming stars and and has a smaller stellar population of around 60. It doesn’t have defined ridge like in Chamaeleon I, and is dominated by clumps.

Credits: ESA/Herschel/Planck; J. D. Soler, MPIA

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 Marco Sieber on his first day at the European Astronaut Centre, ready to embark on their journey to become certified ESA astronauts.

Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja

SpaceX CrewDragon for Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) - Ignis ready on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, USA on 10 June 2025. ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski is heading to the International Space Station on his first mission as part of Axiom Mission 4.

He is the second ESA project astronaut from a new generation of Europeans to fly on a commercial human spaceflight mission with Axiom Space.

Sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT), and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the mission—called Ignis—features an ambitious technological and scientific programme. It includes several experiments proposed by the Polish space industry and developed in cooperation with ESA, along with additional ESA-led experiments.

Follow Sławosz's journey on the Ignis mission website.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

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On 24 April 2024 the central core for Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6 that will fly to space for the first time was moved upright on the launch pad.

Four automated vehicles transported the Ariane 6 central core, that consists of the main and upper stage, from the launcher assembly building to the launch pad that is about 800 meters away.

Once at the launch pad, choreographed movements by two of the automated vehicles and a crane equipped with a lifting beam, raised the central core to its vertical launch position and placed it on the launch table. It was then rotated so that the stages’ fluid connections were positioned opposite the launch pad umbilicals that will supply the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel for launch.

The mobile building surrounding Ariane 6 is a 90-metre-high metallic structure that rolls away on rails once assembly is complete to allow Ariane 6 a clear view of the sky and space. The building has platforms for technicians to further assemble Ariane 6 while also protecting the rocket until it is ready for launch.

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

Credits: ESA-M. Pédoussaut