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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.
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.
[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.]
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!
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
The Cheops (CHaracterising ExOPlanet) spacecraft in the Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF) test chamber at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, on 7 September, 2018.
The Cheops spacecraft is currently undergoing a series of acoustic testing.
Cheops will observe bright stars known to host exoplanets, in particular Earth-to-Neptune-sized planets, anywhere in the sky. It will study the dip in brightness of a star as a planet transits in front of it, allowing the size of these planets to be determined. Combined with mass measurements already calculated from other observatories, Cheops will enable the planet’s density to be determined, and thus make a first-step characterisation of the nature of these worlds.
Credits: ESA - G. Porter
This colour-coded topographic image shows a region of Mars known as Australe Scopuli, in the south polar region of the planet. The area is rich in features resulting from the arrival of spring and the retreat of the ice cap.
The image was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 2 April 2024 (orbit 25569) 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 are red, as indicated on the scale at the top right.
North is to the top-right. The ground resolution is approximately 16 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 265°E/85°S.
[Image description: A topography map of a region of Mars colour coded according to relative heights. The scale goes from red (highest terrain) through yellow, green, blue and purple (lowest terrain).]
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 Rosemary Coogan on her first day at the European Astronaut Centre, ready to embark on their journey to become certified ESA astronauts.
Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja
ESA Astronaut Luca Parmitano in the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow, Russia, 19 June 2019 wearing the Sokol suit he will wear when he is launched to the International Space Station. Sokol suits, tailored to each astronaut, are worn in the Soyuz spacecraft as protection against air leaks.
Luca is training for his Beyond mission which will see him return to the International Space Station in 2019 as part of Expedition 60/61, alongside NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov.
Luca was the first of ESA’s 2009 astronaut class to fly to the International Space Station. His first mission Volare, meaning 'to fly' in Italian, took place in 2013 and lasted 166 days. Luca conducted two spacewalks and many experiments that are still running today.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Work is underway to complete the Ariane 6 launch complex at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
The mobile gantry is a 90 metre-high mobile metallic structure weighing 8200 tonnes when fully equipped, that rolls on rails equipped with platforms to access the appropriate launcher levels for integration on the launch pad. The gantry is moved away just before launch.
The first Ariane 6 flight is scheduled for 2020.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This image shows a region of Mars known as Caralis Chaos in wider context. Copious water is thought to have once existed here in the form of an ancient lake. This lake would have filled the flatter regions labelled Ariadnes Colles, Caralis Chaos, and Atlantis Chaos.
The area outlined by the larger white box indicates the area imaged by the High Resolution Stereo Camera aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on 1 January 2024 during orbit 25235, while the smaller white box shows the part of the surface featured in these new images.
Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team
As part of ESA’s Ocean Training Course, students dropped a special Bio-Geo-Chemical Argo float in the Lofoten eddy system. It is one of only a few to be deployed in support of the United Nations Ocean Conference to be held in Nice in June 2025.
This remarkable course is a transformative journey aboard the Norwegian tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl sailing from Norway to France where next-generation researchers have been immersed in the world of ocean science.
During this intensive voyage, students have been mastering the use of satellite data to drive research, innovation and sustainable development, gaining critical skills to become tomorrow’s leaders and ambassadors for ocean conservation. They have been guided by an international team of leading scientists, enabling a transfer of knowledge and inspiration.
Credits: ESA/Ocean Media Lab
ESA’s Vega-C rocket is complete on the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport and ready for liftoff, set for 4 December. The final element of the rocket, that includes the Sentinel-1C satellite that will be launched into space was installed on top of the 35-m launcher on 29 November – like a cherry on a cake.
On launch day, the first three Vega-C stages will fire, burn through their fuel and be expended in rapid succession, enabling the rocket to reach space in just eight minutes. The fourth stage with Sentinel-1C will orbit Earth and prepare for release an hour and fifty minutes after liftoff.
Although the components are stacked and ready on the launch pad, technicians are connecting, checking and testing right up until launch day. A final ‘launch readiness review’ will be held the day before liftoff, authorising Vega-C to be ignited and return to the skies.
Credits: ESA-Manuel Pedoussaut
When living on the Moon, there will be no such thing as rubbish. An ESA project has investigated a new method of 3D printing that could enable the reuse of scrap metal salvaged from old spacecraft or landers for the in-situ production of new high-performance parts.
To establish a viable lunar economy, future settlers will need to make use of all the resources at their disposal, including scrap metal. At the same time they will need to overcome environmental challenges – most notably the high probability that manufacturing processes will be contaminated by lunar dust.
Austrian additive manufacturing company Incus, specialising in Lithography-based Metal Manufacturing (LMM), worked with Lithoz GmbH and OHB on an ESA project to establish the feasibility of printing using recycled metal, while showing that a degree of contamination by lunar dust is a manageable problem.
LMM involves printing layers of metal powder in a binder that can be selectively hardened where required by exposure to light. The part is then shaken free of the leftover feedstock and ‘sintered’ or baked hard.
"This project has proven that LMM technology is able to use recycled powder for the feedstock material and provide sustainable zero-waste workflow," comments Incus CEO Gerald Mitteramskogler. "We expect that further developments in metal recycling technologies will open the way to metal materials with more settled sintering processes for the lunar environment."
The project used a combination of new and recycled titanium, plus up to 10% of simulated lunar dust by volume. Higher levels of dust contamination were shown to increase ‘viscosity’ (or runniness) of the feedstock but optimal powder to binder ratios could overcome this phenomenon to achieve the desired part quality, with strength comparable to conventional Metal Injection Molding parts.
Martina Meisnar, ESA’s technical officer for the project, adds: “Considering the challenge of bringing humans back to the Moon and building a base, the topic of in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) is gaining significant momentum. Projects like this, recently completed by Incus and project partners, demonstrate that manufacturing methods like LMM are very good candidates to support such an endeavour.”
“This successful collaboration showed that lithography-based AM techniques are among the most promising candidates to let 3D printing in space become a reality in the future,” notes Martin Schwentenwein, Head of Material Development at Lithoz.
Francesco Caltavituro, system engineer for the project at OHB: “Our work done so far, and our follow-up research and development, aims to continue to open the way towards a sustainable Moon settlement released from dependency on Earth.”
The 18-month research project was supported through ESA’s Technology Development Element.
Credits: Incus
With satellites delivering a mindboggling amount of data about our planet along with the availability of the latest digital technologies, there are countless opportunities for innovation. ESA’s ɸ-week, explores how this new world can be embraced to bring even more benefits to all.
These drawings were done live during the conference main sessions and capture the essence of what the future of Earth Observation might look like.
Credits: ESA / courtesy of Picturise
Rollout to the launch pad of the Soyuz rocket with the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft inside, 4 June 2018. The spacecraft will launch ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 6 June.
The 50-m tall Soyuz rocket will propell the astronauts to their cruising speed of around 28 800 km/h. Within 10 minutes of rising from the pad, the trio travelled over 1640 km and gained 210 km altitude. Every second for nine minutes, their spacecraft accelerated 50 km/h on average.
The rocket is rolled to the launch pad on a train, the astronauts are not allowed to see this part of the launch preparation – it is considered bad luck.
This will be Alexander’s second spaceflight, called Horizons. He will also be the second ESA astronaut to take over command of the International Space Station. The Horizons science programme is packed with European research: over 50 experiments will deliver benefits to people on Earth as well as prepare for future space exploration.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
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 Sophie Adenot on her first day at the European Astronaut Centre, ready to embark on their journey to become certified ESA astronauts.
Credits: ESA-S. Corvaja
On 14 July, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch Chandrayaan-3 – a Moon mission featuring a lunar lander and a rover that will spend 14 days carrying out scientific activities on the surface.
In addition to ISRO’s own deep space communication antenna, the mission will rely on support from ground stations around the world, coordinated by ESA and NASA.
Communication is an essential part of every deep space mission. Ground stations on Earth keep operators safely connected to spacecraft as they venture into the unknowns and risks of space. Without ground station support, it’s impossible to get any data from a spacecraft, to know how it’s doing, to know if it is safe or even to know where it is.
ISRO operates a 32-metre deep space tracking station in India that enables it to locate, track, command and receive telemetry and scientific data from its distant spacecraft. But sometimes, ISRO’s operators need to track or command a spacecraft when it is outside the field of view of this antenna.
Building new giant antennas and control stations around the world is very expensive. So, like many space agencies and commercial companies across the globe, ISRO will receive support from the stations of partner organisations instead. Not only does this significantly reduces costs, but it also fosters international spaceflight collaboration.
Thanks to its global ‘Estrack’ network of deep space stations, ESA can help its partners track, command and receive data from spacecraft almost anywhere in the Solar System via its ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
ESA’s 15 m antenna in Kourou, French Guiana, will be used to track Chandrayaan-3 during the days after launch to help ensure that the spacecraft survived the rigours of lift off and is in good health as it begins its journey to the Moon.
As the spacecraft recedes from Earth, ESA will coordinate tracking support from the 32-metre antenna operated by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd in the UK. Goonhilly will support Chandrayaan-3’s propulsion and lander modules. Crucially, it will support the lander during the entire phase of lunar surface operations, helping to ensure that science data acquired by the rover arrives safely with ISRO in India.
Data and telemetry sent back by Chandrayaan-3 arriving via Kourou and Goonhilly will first be forwarded to ESOC. From there, they will be sent to ISRO for analysis.
The two European stations will compliment support from NASA’s Deep Space Network and ISRO’s own stations to ensure the spacecraft’s operators never lose sight of their pioneering Moon craft.
Follow @esaoperations on Twitter for updates on ESA’s support to Chandrayaan-3.
Credits: ESA
ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron move through the steps for their upcoming launch during a dry dress rehearsal at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.
As members of Crew-3, they will be launched to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance”. The first launch attempt is scheduled for 07:21 CET (06:21 GMT, 02:21 EDT) Sunday 31 October 2021, with a backup date of 3 November.
This will be the first spaceflight for Matthias who has selected the name “Cosmic Kiss” for his six months in orbit. During the flight to and from space, he and Kayla will be what is known as “mission specialists”. They will work with commander Raja Chari and pilot Tom Marshburn to monitor the spacecraft during the dynamic launch and re-entry phases of flight.
On Station, Matthias will become a long-duration crew member, spending around six months living and working in orbit. During this time, he will support more than 35 European experiments and numerous international experiments on board.
Matthias is the second European to fly on a SpaceX Crew Dragon. The first was ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet who flew as part of Crew-2.
Visit the Cosmic Kiss mission page for more information about Matthias’s mission.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
This image shows an area of Euclid’s Deep Field South. The area is zoomed in 16 times compared to the large mosaic.
Many galaxies are visible in this field, all with different shapes and colours because they have different ages and distances.
[Image description: A sea of stars and galaxies sparkle against a black background. Several galaxies can be identified by their elongated shape and/or spiral arms. Some galaxies are seen edge-on while one prominent spiral galaxy at the bottom centre is seen face-on. At the far right, between the middle and top of the image, are some interacting galaxies. Galaxy clusters are also seen, in particular near bottom centre, where features smeared into arcs represent gravitational lensing. The brightest stars in the image have diffraction spikes.]
Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
An unusual view of part of the BepiColombo spacecraft stack, taken by one of the monitoring cameras (or ‘selfie-cams’) fixed to the Mercury Transfer Module, MTM. The camera is looking up towards the solar array drive (top left) and the back side of the solar array closest to the ‘body’ of the spacecraft module. The image was taken in late September as part of launch preparations at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
MTM is equipped with three monitoring cameras, which provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. One of the monitoring cameras is positioned on the MTM with a field of view as shown in this image, looking up towards the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), which sits above. The MTM’s solar arrays are currently folded for launch, resulting in the presented image, but after their deployment the camera will have a clearer view. In particular, the MPO’s high-gain antenna will be in the field of view of the camera around one day after launch.
The other two cameras are placed on the other side of the module: one will look down the extended solar array of the MTM, the other towards the MPO, capturing glimpses of the medium-gain antenna once deployed and, later, of the magnetometer boom. Click here for a diagram showing the positions and example fields of views of each of the cameras.
The actual deployment of the solar arrays and antenna will be confirmed by telemetry data sent by the spacecraft after launch (click here for a timeline of activities immediately following launch). Later, the monitoring cameras will be switched on. The first sets of images are planned to be taken around 12 hours and 1.5 days after launch, and returned to Earth shortly after.
The monitoring cameras will be used ad-hoc during the cruise phase, notably during the flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury.
While the MPO is equipped with a high-resolution scientific camera, this can only be operated after separating from the MTM upon arrival at Mercury in late 2025 because, like several of the 11 instrument suites, it is located on the side of the spacecraft fixed to the MTM during cruise. Nonetheless, it will be possible to operate or partially operate as many as eight of the 11 instruments on the MPO during the flybys, along with three of the five instrument packages onboard JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. This will afford some unique data collection opportunities at Venus, for example.
BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It is the first European mission to Mercury, the smallest and least explored planet in the inner Solar System, and the first to send two spacecraft to make complementary measurements of the planet’s dynamic environment at the same time.
Launch is scheduled for 01:45 GMT on 20 October. Check for updates and follow the launch live here. When available, images from the monitoring cameras will be published on our website, and on Twitter via @ESA_MTM in the first instance.
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
As the COP30 climate conference gets underway in Brazil, the world’s attention is once again drawn to the plight of the Amazon – the planet’s largest and most vital rainforest. With the European Space Agency’s Earth Explorer Biomass satellite now in orbit, ESA is helping Brazil prepare to transform this new mission’s groundbreaking data into actionable knowledge for protecting the rainforest and confronting climate change.
Although the Biomass mission is still being commissioned, a side-by-side image reveals a section of Amazon rainforest. This image on shows the forest floor, while this image captures the canopy about 30 metres above the ground.
Credits: ESA/DLR/AreSys/Polimi
The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS for 17 hours between 26–28 November 2025.
3I/ATLAS is the first interstellar comet to have been imaged in X-ray light. Whether interstellar comets shine in X-rays as we are used to from comets originating within the Solar System, or whether they exhibit entirely different characteristics, has remained a long-standing mystery.
The X-ray image of the comet you see here was captured by XRISM’s soft X-ray telescope Xtend. The field of view covers a region of about 3 million km², revealing X-rays coming from a region of around 400 000 km around the comet nucleus. This could be caused by a diffuse cloud of gas surrounding the comet, although it requires further analysis.
XRISM’s X-ray image can be compared to that of the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, which also saw a diffuse X-ray glow around the comet.
These X-rays can come from the interaction of the solar wind with gases from the comet, such as water vapour, carbon dioxide, or carbon monoxide. Analysis of XRISM’s data from around the comet nucleus shows signs of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
Read the full XRISM web story here.
For the latest updates and FAQs related to comet 3I/ATLAS, go to our website
XRISM (pronounced krizz-em) is a mission led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in partnership with NASA and ESA. It carries two instruments: an X-ray calorimeter called Resolve capable of measuring the energy of individual X-ray photons to produce a spectrum at unprecedented level of ‘energy resolution’ (the capability of an instrument to distinguish the X-ray ‘colours’), and a large field-of-view X-ray CCD camera to image the surrounding field called Xtend.
[Image description: This image shows an X-ray view of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, captured by the JAXA-led XRISM spacecraft. Against a black background, purple-to-green blobs appear throughout the image. Around the centre-right of view, a larger, bright green blob stands out – this is the X-ray light coming from near the comet’s nucleus. A red arrow labelled “Sun direction” points left, and a yellow arrow labelled “comet motion” points to the right. At the bottom, a scale marker reads “38.5 arcmin ~ 3,000,000 km”, while a white circle labelled “r = 5 arcmin ~ 400,000 km” surrounds the bright comet blob.]
Credits: JAXA
Peering into the Universe beyond our galaxy, ESA’s Euclid will try to untangle the mysteries of the cosmic web to address five fundamental questions in cosmology:
- What is the structure and history of the cosmic web?
- What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?
- How has the expansion of the Universe changed over time?
- Is our understanding of gravity complete?
95% of the Universe appears to be made up of unknown “dark” matter and energy. Scientists estimate that dark matter makes up 25% of the Universe and dark energy 70%. Dark matter and energy affect the motion and distribution of visible sources, but do not emit, absorb or reflect any light. Scientists do not know yet what these entities actually are or whether our current understanding of how gravity behaves on the very large scale is completely correct. Revealing the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and testing the behaviour of gravity over the largest distances, are among the most compelling challenges of cosmology and fundamental physics today.
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
What do you know about the Moon? This set of infographics illustrates the most frequently asked questions and facts about Earth’s natural satellite.
ESA is teaming up with international partners to explore the Moon as a destination for both robotic missions and human explorers.
Orion, the NASA spacecraft, will bring humans farther than they have ever been before relying on the European Service Module to return humans to the Moon and take advantage of the new technology for human space transportation. ESA is providing service modules that will provide propulsion, life support, power, air and water, and control the temperature in the crew module.
Luna-Resurs is a partnership with the Russian agency Roscosmos that will carry European technology to land precisely and safely on the Moon and to drill into the surface to extract and analyse samples of the lunar terrain.
The Agency is looking at how we could extract and process local resources into useful products and services, such as drinkable water or breathable oxygen on the Moon.
The Heracles mission could take of in 2028 to allow us to gain knowledge on human-robotic interaction while landing a spacecraft on the Moon to collect samples with a rover operated from an orbiting lunar gateway and send the samples back to Earth.
Credits: ESA
Sławosz Uznański began his training at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne on 1 September 2023. Over the past months, he has been diligently preparing for his future space mission . He is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station on Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) and is assigned as mission specialist under the command of Axiom Space’s Chief Astronaut Peggy Whitson.
In April 2024, Sławosz joined his colleagues from the 2022 Astronaut Class in Bordeaux for a series of parabolic flights. These flights are an important part of astronaut training, allowing them to experience what microgravity feels like.
During a parabolic flight, a specially modified aircraft flies in a series of parabolic arcs. The plane climbs steeply, then dives down sharply, creating short periods of weightlessness inside the cabin. Each period of weightlessness lasts about 20 to 30 seconds and happens several times throughout the flight.
This training helps astronauts get used to the sensation of floating and performing tasks without gravity. By experiencing these conditions firsthand, they can better prepare for the challenges they’ll face when they are in space. For Sławosz and his fellow astronauts, it was a chance to practice moving and working in a microgravity environment before their actual missions.
Credits: ESA-A. Conigli
Overview of the integration activities in the S5 facility of Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, where the ESA-JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft are undergoing launch preparations.
The mission consists of two science orbiters – the Japanese Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) and ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) – and the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which will use solar electric propulsion to take the two orbiters to the Mercury, along with gravity assist flybys at Earth, Venus and Mercury itself.
BepiColombo is Europe's first mission to Mercury, due to launch this year on a journey the smallest and least explored terrestrial planet in our Solar System. When it arrives at Mercury in late 2025, it will endure temperatures in excess of 350 °C.
Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja
Hera systems engineer Pedro Escorial prepares the Juventas CubeSat for electromagnetic compatibility testing alongside its Hera mothership in ESA’s Maxwell chamber, part of Hera’s pre-flight test campaign at ESA’s Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
Hera is ESA’s first mission for planetary defence. Due for launch in October 2024, Hera will fly to the Didymos binary asteroid system in deep space to perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos moonlet in orbit around the primary body. The Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos is already historic, as the first Solar System object to have its orbit changed by human activity, by the 2022 impact of NASA’s DART mission.
Hera is intended to gather crucial missing data about Dimorphos for scientists, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique. To increase its yield of data, Hera carries with it ESA’s first deep space CubeSats, carrying additional instruments and planned to fly closer to the asteroid’s surface than the main spacecraft, before eventually landing.
Part of Hera’s testing was documented for the spacecraft team by photographer Max Alexander, who specialises in science communication through photography.
Credits: Max Alexander/ESA