Time perception is elastic – it stretches and bends time.

To your brain, a minute is relative. ESA astronaut, Alexander Gerst is performing an experiment throughout the Horizons mission to better understand why time seems to fly for astronauts on the International Space Station.

Take a look at this video to learn more.

Credits: ESA

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

A NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope viewofgalaxy 6dFGS gJ215022.2-055059– the large white-yellow blob at the centre of the image – and neighbouring galaxies, combined with X-ray observations of a black hole at the galaxy’s outskirts – the small white-purple dot to its lower left – obtained with NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory.

This is the best-ever candidate for a very rare and elusive type of cosmic phenomenon: a so-called intermediate-mass black hole in the process of tearing apart and feasting on a nearby star.

The discovery was based on data from ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory, NASA’s Chandra and Swift X-ray telescopes, and a number of other telescopes on ground and in space, including Hubble.

This rare breed of black hole was spotted as it disrupted and tore apart a nearby star, gorging on the resulting debris and throwing off an enormous amount of light in the process. It has a mass of around fifty thousand times that of the Sun, and is located within a massive cluster of stars on the outskirts of a galaxy some 740 million light-years away.

This view comprises data from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Explore this object in ESASky.

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Credits: Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble/STScI; X-ray: NASA/CXC/UNH/D. Lin et al.

This year’s Open Day combined an in-person tour of ESTEC for visitors with disabilities on Saturday 2 October with an online event open to all the following afternoon.

The in-person event was formally opened by Head of ESTEC and ESA Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality Franco Ongaro, André Kuipers and former Dutch Minister for the Disabled Rick Brink.

With overall visitor numbers limited by continuing COVID-19 precautions, the aim was to give people with disabilities (and their carers) a special chance to see ESTEC – including those who might have found it impractical to visit the establishment amid the busy crowds of past Open Days.

Stands were set up by various ESA teams so that visitors could touch and hear, as well as see, space hardware and test equipment. Participants finished their tour with a question and answer session with André about his 204 days living and working in space.

Sunday’s online participants were greeted by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher: “ESA is an Agency made of people, and this is your chance to meet many of those working behind the scenes.”

Highlights included a Q&A with German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, talks on future missions by ESA space scientists, presentations by ESA Education and Human Resources and a talk applying space recycling systems down to Earth – to convert pee into drinkable tea. The event encompassed multiple ESA establishments, including mission control centre ESOC in Germany, Earth observation centre ESRIN in Italy and space applications and telecommunications centre ESCAT in the UK.

Videos from Sunday’s virtual rooms will be available soon. For a full gallery of Saturday’s Open Day, click here.

Credits: ESA - SJM Photography

ESA’s EarthCARE satellite is all packed up in its container ready for shipment to the launch site in the US. The photograph shows the container ready to depart from Airbus’ facilities in Friedrichshafen, Germany, where EarthCARE was tested. Once it arrives at the launch site in California, it will be put into storage for a few weeks until it is time to ready the satellite for liftoff, which is planned for May.

EarthCARE carries a suite of instruments to answer some critical scientific questions related to the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface. Although clouds play an extremely important role in atmospheric heating and cooling, they remain one of the biggest mysteries – in fact the least understood factor – in our understanding of how the atmosphere drives the climate system. EarthCARE's unique set of four instruments provides a holistic view of the interplay between clouds, aerosols and radiation.

Credits: Airbus

Before Rosalind Franklin the ExoMars rover can search for signs of life on Mars, it must learn how to manoeuvre the landscape. Scientists and engineers are putting the rover through a series of locomotion tests to fine tune how it will respond to a challenging martian terrain.

The ExoMars mission will see Rosalind the rover and its surface platform land on Mars in 2021. There, the rover will move across many types of terrain, from fine-grained soil to large boulders and slopes to collect samples with a 2-m-long drill, and analyse them with instruments in its onboard laboratory. Engineers must ensure Rosalind does not get stuck in sand or topple over and that it is able to climb steep slopes and overcome rocks.

The ExoMars teams are using a dedicated rover to run locomotion tests. In this image, the full-sized locomotion model is about to move from the surface platform. This rover has been designed to behave exactly like Rosalind would do under martian gravity – that is about a third of gravity found on Earth. For that purpose, the model has a different weight distribution and features a boom mounted on top to achieve the exact location of the centre of gravity of the rover.

A special facility at RUAG Space in Zurich, Switzerland, emulates all the terrain conditions that Rosalind the rover is expected to encounter on Mars: different types of soil, various obstacle shapes and sizes and all kind of terrain slopes. A large hydraulic platform filled with 20 tonnes of soil was put in place for the tests.

Over the past few weeks, ESA, Roscosmos, Thales, Airbus and RUAG engineers have been testing the capability of the rover to egress from its landing platform onto the martian soil. Should the platform and rover find themselves on a slope upon landing, as simulated in the image, Rosalind the rover must be able to negotiate steep inclinations to descend from the platform. The team looked closely at the performance of the rover over the ramps at different inclination angles, from 5 up to 35 degrees.

The steep slope was a challenge for the rover. The wheels found it difficult at times to gain traction, a valuable lesson of what can be expected on Mars.

The rover has six wheels. Each wheel pair is suspended on a pivoted bogie so each wheel can be steered and driven independently. Its flexible metallic wheels, equipped with springs, offer great traction capability, allowing the rover to achieve better grip during obstacle climbing and achieve smoother locomotion.

Thanks to a triple-bogie locomotion system, the rover is able to overcome obstacles as big as its wheels. The rover uses inclinometers and gyroscopes to enhance its motion control.

Two cameras at the top of the rover’s mast allow Rosalind Franklin to see in 3D, like humans do, and identify rocks and slopes in front of it. This also allows the navigation system to take account of, and correct for, any wheel slippage. Rovers on Mars have previously been caught in sand, and continued wheel turning might actually dig them deeper – just like a car stuck in mud or snow.

These tests took place at the same time as the ExoFit field tests. In the most recent campaign, the rover drove from its landing platform and targeted sites of interest to sample rocks in the Mars-like landscapes of the Chilean desert.

Credits: ESA

Bloodletting Zodiac man with bloodletting pan and spindle.

Miscellany with astronomical, medical, and philosophical texts, 15th century

British Library, MS Harley 3719 ff. 158v-159

The Rt Hon Theresa May, Prime Minister of the UK, examines the ESA ExoMars rover in the Space Zone at the Farnborough International Airshow, accompanied by ESA Director General Jan Wörner, ESA astronaut Tim Peake and Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency Dr Graham Turnock, 16 July 2018.

Credits: ESA

ESA’s Biomass satellite has arrived in Kourou, French Guiana, where it will be prepared for liftoff on a Vega-C rocket.

Biomass mission will soon play a key role in delivering novel information about the state of our forests, how they are changing over time, and advance our knowledge of the carbon cycle. It is the first satellite to carry a fully polarimetric P-band synthetic aperture radar for interferometric imaging. Thanks to the long wavelength of P-band, around 70 cm, the radar signal can slice through the whole forest layer to measure the ‘biomass’, meaning the woody trunks, branches and stems, which is where trees store most of their carbon.

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Credits: ESA

BepiColombo will take seven years to get to planet Mercury, with a total of nine gravity assist flybys at Earth, Venus and Mercury before entering orbit. But the orbiters will be able to operate or partially operate some of their instruments during the cruise phase, affording unique opportunities to collect scientifically valuable data at Venus, for example. Moreover, some of the instruments designed to study Mercury in a particular way, can be used in a completely different way at Venus – the main difference being that Venus has a thick atmosphere while Mercury does not.

This graphic highlights some of the science themes that may be possible to study during the two flybys of Venus.

Credits: ESA

After arrival at ESTEC, the European Space Agency’s Plato spacecraft was unloaded from its container and moved into the cleanroom. Here it is tilted to a horizontal position on a rolling platform. The spacecraft is under protective film, and all 26 cameras have gold-coloured covers.

[Image description: In a cleanroom environment, several people wearing protective clothing – including hairnets and gloves – are handling a large space telescope. The telescope is covered in plastic sheeting and mounted on a wheeled platform. Surrounding it are various cables and pieces of machinery. In the background, a large transport container is visible.]

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Credits: ESA-SJM Photography

The 1.5 tonne descent module carried Tim Peake along with Russian flight commander Yuri Malenchenko and American flight engineer Tim Kopra as they returned from the International Space Station at the end of the Principia mission on 18 June 2016. Its surfaces are charred from atmospheric re-entry, when it had to withstand temperatures of 1,500°C.

The module has now returned to the Science Museum in London, where it will go on permanent display as part of the museum’s Summer of Space, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landings.

Credits: Science Musuem Group

ESA astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Matthias Maurer were among the distinguished guests at the official inauguration of LUNA, Europe’s ‘Moon on Earth’ analogue facility, on 25 September 2024 in Cologne, Germany. This innovative facility, operated by ESA and the German Aerospace Agency (DLR), is designed to replicate the lunar surface and will play a crucial role in preparing astronauts for future missions to the Moon, including NASA’s Artemis programme.

LUNA features a 700-square-metre area covered in ‘regolith simulant,’ allowing astronauts and engineers to test space technology, conduct research, and simulate lunar operations in realistic conditions. With this state-of-the-art facility, Europe is at the forefront of space exploration, providing essential insights for upcoming lunar missions and beyond.

Credits: DLR/ESA

From left, NASA Flight Engineer Andrew Morgan and Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA set up a work space in the Columbus laboratory module. Luca will soon test a device in Columbus that measures an astronaut’s mass using Newton’s Second Law of Motion. The device, named the Space Linear Acceleration Mass Measurement Device, applies a known force to an attached astronaut and the resulting acceleration is used to calculate an astronaut’s mass.

Credits: ESA/NASA

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

7th March 1970: Ten separate exposures on a single frame show the phases of a partial solar eclipse in the sky over Washington, DC.

Michel Denis, Spacecraft Operations Manager, ExoMars, during the ILA Public Days.

In the Space Pavilion at the Berlin Air and Space Show, a joint exhibition of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the German Aerospace Industries Association (BDLI), 28 and 29 April 2018.

Credits: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2018

5G: the new generation of wireless communication.

But what has space got to do with it?

Credits: ESA

Technicians at the Airbus facility in Bremen, Germany prepare the European Service Module for shipment to Kennedy Space Center. The service module departed for Germany 5 November 2018.

Orion is NASA’s next spacecraft to send humans into space. It is designed to send astronauts farther into space than ever before, beyond the Moon to asteroids and even Mars.

ESA has designed and is overseeing the development of Orion’s service module, the part of the spacecraft that supplies air, electricity and propulsion. Much like a train engine pulls passenger carriages and supplies power, the European Service Module will take the Orion capsule to its destination and back.

The Orion spacecraft is built by NASA with ESA providing the service module. The arrangement stems from the international partnership for the International Space Station. NASA’s decision to cooperate with ESA on a critical element for the mission is a strong sign of trust and confidence in ESA’s capabilities.

More than 20 companies around Europe are now building the European Service Module as NASA works on Orion and the Space Launch System.

Learn more about Orion and Europe’s involvement here. Follow the latest updates via the Orion blog.

Credits: NASA–Rad Sinyak

The Sun’s inner corona appears faint yellow in this image taken on 25 March 2025 by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3, ESA’s formation-flying mission capable of creating artificial total solar eclipses in orbit.

The ASPIICS instrument captures the solar corona in two different ‘spectral lines’, each line corresponding to a different element contained in the coronal gases.

This image, captured in the spectral line emitted by helium atoms, shows the solar corona similarly to how a human eye would see it during an eclipse through a yellow filter.

A grid shows the true position of the Sun behind the mission’s occulter, slightly off-centre. This image was acquired while the ASPIICS instrument was off-pointed, bringing the bright disc of the Sun as close as possible to the occulter’s edge. Even in this position, ASPIICS was able to make detailed observations, as demonstrated by a cloud of cold plasma visible in the top right.

Andrei Zhukov, ASPIICS Principal Investigator, explains: “The corona is extremely hot, about two hundred times hotter than the solar surface itself. Sometimes, clouds of relatively cold plasma are observed near the Sun – although these are still around 10 000 degrees, they are much colder than the surrounding million-degree hot plasma – creating what we call ‘a prominence’. We are very happy to have been able to capture one such structure in one of the first ASPIICS images.”

See more images from Proba-3’s first artificial solar eclipse here.

[Image description: This is an image of the Sun taken during an artificial solar eclipse. Against a black background, the Sun’s bright body is covered by a black disc. On this disc, a plot-like grid shows the real position and orientation of the Sun behind it, tilted with the north slightly to the right. Faint yellow light peeks from behind the black disc’s edge, slowly fading towards the outer edges of the image. Close to the disc’s edge, in the top right, a small cloud of bright yellow is visible.]

Credits: ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

With the campaign to launch ESA’s Aeolus wind satellite on 21 August well underway, the satellite’s telescope has been opened and expected to make sure it is perfectly clean and shiny.

While Aeolus’ novel laser technology is arguably the sexy part of the instrument, its telescope, which measures around 1.5 m across, it pretty dominant and equally important. It is used to collect backscattered light from the atmosphere and direct it to the receiver. In short, the laser system generates a series of short pulses of ultraviolet light which are beamed down into the atmosphere. The telescope collects the light backscattered from particles of gas and dust in the atmosphere. The time between sending the light pulse and receiving the signal back determines the distance to the ‘scatterers’ and therefore the altitude above Earth. As the scattering particles are moving in the wind, the wavelength of the scattered light is shifted by a small amount as a function of speed. The Doppler wind lidar measures this change so that the velocity of the wind can be determined.

It is clearly important to make sure that the instrument is absolutely spotless, so engineers at the launch site in Kourou have first turned to the telescope and given it a close inspection.

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

Solar Orbiter's suite of ten science instruments that will study the Sun. There are two types: in situ and remote sensing. The in situ instruments measure the conditions around the spacecraft itself. The remote-sensing instruments measure what is happening at large distances away. Together, both sets of data can be used to piece together a more complete picture of what is happening in the Sun’s corona and the solar wind.

The in situ instruments:

EPD: Energetic Particle Detector

EPD will measure the energetic particles that flow past the spacecraft. It will look at their composition and variation in time. The data will help scientists investigate the sources, acceleration mechanisms, and transport processes of these particles. Principal Investigator: Javier Rodríguez-Pacheco, University of Alcalá, Spain

The team involved in testing the Structural and Thermal model of the FCI, Flexible Combined Instrument, destined for Europe's Meteosat Third Generation Imaging satellites in June 2018.

Credits: ESA–G. Porter

Computer models are able to simulate the solar corona and create 'a digital eclipse'. Released in June 2025, the images from the Proba-3 mission will help refine these models to compare and adjust variables to match real images.

This image shows the simulation of the solar corona on 23 May 2025. The model's results correspond to magnetic field lines connected to the surface of the Sun, coloured by the speed of the solar wind, and using a transparency filter to see multiple overlapping lines.

The simulation matches closely the high-density streamers shown in Proba-3 images. However, coronal models lack detailed information on the Sun's polar zones leading to lower quality in the predictions in these areas.

This simulation was obtained using KU Leuven’s ‘COCONUT’ software. This software is one of multiple solar coronal models integrated within ESA's Virtual Space Weather Modelling Centre (VSWMC). It can be combined with a vast array of computer models describing other physical processes connecting the Sun to the Earth.

All together, they help to offer a comprehensive image of the solar activity impacting our planet and help citizens and industry prepare against them.

Credits: T. Baratashvili, KU Leuven, Belgium

Axiom 3 Mission crew training inside a SpaceX Dragon vehicle in Hawthorne, California.

From left to right, ESA project astronaut and mission specialist Marcus Wandt, commander Michael López-Alegría, pilot Walter Villadei, and mission specialist Alper Gezeravcı.

Marcus Wandt from Sweden will spend up to 14 days on the International Space Station conducting microgravity research and educational activities.

Marcus is the first of a new generation of European astronauts to fly on a commercial human spaceflight opportunity with Axiom Space. His mission is supported by ESA and the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA).

Marcus Wandt was selected in November 2022 as a member of the ESA astronaut reserve after a year-long selection process. The 2022 ESA recruitment campaign received over 22 5000 applications from across its Member States.

Credits: Space X

The crew of Soyuz MS-13 receive the traditional blessing from a Russian Orthodox priest prior to departing for the Baikonour cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan on 20 July 2019.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut and Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov will be launched in their Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Saturday 20 July. This date coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and marks the start of Luca’s second space mission known as ‘Beyond’.

While in orbit, Luca will support over 50 European experiments and more than 200 international experiments. He is also expected to perform a number of spacewalks to repair the cooling systems of dark matter hunter, AMS-02.

More information about Luca’s Beyond mission is available on the blog. This will be updated throughout his mission, with updates also shared on Twitter via @esaspaceflight.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski in the European-built, seven-windowed Cupola with the Polish flag during the Ignis mission. Ignis is Poland’s first government-sponsored human spaceflight to the International Space Station.

Sławosz conducted 13 experiments proposed by Polish companies and institutions and developed in collaboration with ESA, along with three additional ESA-led experiments. These covered a broad range of areas including human research, materials science, biology, biotechnology and technology demonstrations. 

The Ax-4 mission marks the second commercial human spaceflight for an ESA project astronaut. Ignis was sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT) and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA).  

Credits: ESA-S. Uznański-Wiśniewski

The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury lifts off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Pristine environments, limited resources, and near-complete isolation are just some of the attractions of Antarctica, often termed the White Desert. Numerous research stations dot the outer regions of the continent where scientists gather data on glaciology, seismology, climate change and the stars.

The French-Italian Concordia research station is one of three year-round stations and is located on Dome C, a plateau some 3200 m above sea level. Secluded from the world in inhospitable conditions, the crew stationed there tackle temperatures that can drop to –80°C in the winter, with a yearly average temperature of –50°C.

The air is extremely dry, so the crew suffer from continuously chapped lips and irritated eyes. The great open landscape alternates between months of night and months of daylight, and colours, smells and sounds are almost non-existent, adding to the sense of loneliness.

In other words, Concordia is perfect.

Here, researchers study the atmosphere, free from pollution, to gain insights into how the world’s population is changing Earth’s climate. Scientists conduct glaciology research by analysing the Antarctic plateau to reveal clues to our past as chemicals are trapped and frozen in the ice.

The thin atmosphere, clear skies and zero light-pollution around Concordia make it an enviable place for observing the Universe. The very southern location of Antarctica also makes it ideal for studying Earth’s magnetic field.

Delving deeper, Concordia is looking at the inside movements of Earth. A seismograph at Concordia measures movement and the research base is part of the international network of seismograph stations.

And then there is the human factor. Despite all the hardships of life in Antarctica, up to 16 people spend around a year at a time living in Concordia in the name of science. In addition to helping conduct other experiments and station maintenance, they are an experiment themselves. And ESA sends a medical doctor to Concordia to study the crew, like this year’s resident Dr Carmen Possnig, imaged above.

The elevation, isolation and sensory deprivation can wreak havoc on crewmembers’ biological clock, making it hard to get a good night’s sleep. Researchers track the effects of this on the human body and mind which adds to data being collected on astronauts on the International Space Station.

Insights are used to help people on Earth like shift workers, bedridden patients and those suffering from sleep disorders, and of course, astronauts serving in low Earth orbit.

Antarctic research at Concordia is helping humans adapt, mentally and physically, to a changing climate, a longer voyage in space, and eventually, life on another planet.

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–Filippo Cali Quaglia

This colour-coded topographic view shows Aurorae Chaos, a large area of chaotic terrain located in the Margaritifer Terra region on Mars.

Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites, yellows, and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right. This view is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. It comprises data obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express on 31 October 2018 during orbit 18765.

The ground resolution is approximately 14 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 327°E/11°S. North is to the right.

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

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano's Beyond mission timeline.

Credits: ESA

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

The JANUS camera onboard ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is designed to take detailed, high-resolution photos of Jupiter and its icy moons.

JANUS will study global, regional and local features and processes on the moons, as well as map the clouds of Jupiter. It will have a resolution up to 2.4 m on Ganymede and about 10 km at Jupiter.

This image of our own Moon was taken during Juice’s lunar-Earth flyby on 19 August 2024. The main aim of JANUS’s observations during the lunar-Earth flyby was to evaluate how well the instrument is performing, not to make scientific measurements.

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Credits: ESA/Juice/JANUS; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Positioning Sentinel-3B's sticker on the rocket fairing. The Copernicus Sentinel-3B satellite is scheduled for liftoff on 25 April 2018. Its identical twin, Sentinel-3A, has been in orbit since February 2016. The two-satellite constellation offers optimum global coverage and data delivery for Europe’s Copernicus environment programme.

Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja

ESA’s Young Professionals Satellite, YPSat, being checked out in a cleanroom at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, in preparation for the inaugural launch of Ariane 6, coming soon.

YPSat is a project run in its entirety by ESA Young Professionals to give them direct early experience in designing, building and testing hardware for space. Equipped with cameras – seen here at the top of the payload – a quantum-based magnetic sensor and an amateur radio unit, YPSat’s goal is to capture all the key phases of Ariane 6's first flight.

Members of the YPSat team arrived in French Guiana a week ago to begin an integration process including a battery health check, and various checks to ensure the nominal functionality of all systems. After that the YPSat payload will be bolted to the Ariane 6 launch adapter.

Seen here are Katrin Geigenberger and Martin Nenkov of the YPSat team. Follow further updates on YPSat’s progress via the team’s LinkedIn.

Ariane 6’s first attempt for launch will happen within the first two weeks of July 2024.

Credits: ESA

The third Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite, Sentinel-2C, has launched aboard the final Vega rocket, flight VV24, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 5 September at 03:50 CEST (4 September 22:50 local time).

Sentinel-2C will provide high-resolution data that is essential to Copernicus – the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme. Developed, built and operated by ESA, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission provides high-resolution optical imagery for a wide range of applications including land, water and atmospheric monitoring.

The mission is based on a constellation of two identical satellites flying in the same orbit but 180° apart: Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B. Together, they cover all of Earth’s land and coastal waters every five days. Once Sentinel-2C is operational, it will replace its predecessor, Sentinel-2A, following a brief period of tandem observations. Sentinel-2D will eventually take over from Sentinel-2B.

Sentinel-2C was the last liftoff for the Vega rocket. After 12 years of service, Vega is being retired to make way for the upgraded Vega-C rocket.

Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja

ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (middle) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (top) being arranged in their launch configuration together with the Mercury Transfer Module (bottom) in a so-called ‘fit-check’. While the MPO and MMO are now integrated, the real integration of the MTM will take place after propellants have been added to the modules.

Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG – J. Odang

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst arrived at Cologne airport on the evening of 20 December 2018. He had landed on Earth for the second time earlier in the morning together with NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Prokopiev. Their Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft landed in the steppe of Kazakhstan at 05:02 GMT (11:02 local time). The landing concluded Alexander’s Horizons mission that saw him take over command of the International Space Station during Expedition 57.

The trio’s landing in the Kazakh steppe marked the successful conclusion of over six months in space during which Alexander conducted over 60 European experiments, became the second ever European commander of the International Space Station, welcomed six resupply vehicles, installed the first commercial facility for research in the Columbus laboratory, delivered an important message on climate change for leaders at the COP24 climate change conference, captured real-time footage of a Soyuz launch abort and much, much more.

Horizons was Alexander’s second mission to the International Space Station – the first was Blue Dot in 2014.

Alexander will take his time to readapt to Earth’s gravity supported by ESA’s team of space medicine experts at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. He will also continue to provide ground-based data for researchers to support experiments performed in space.

Credits: ESA–P. Sebirot

This image shows the Orion B 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.)

Orion B, along with Orion A, make up the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a large group of bright and dark nebulae stretching across the iconic constellation of Orion. The Orion B portion of the complex is home to the Flame Nebula, seen as a large bright area at the bottom of the image. The Flame Nebula is an emission nebula and contains a cluster of newly formed massive stars at its centre. Protruding from the edge at the bottom of the image as a small lump is the famous Horsehead Nebula.

At the top of the image near a cross of filaments are two bright areas, the reflection nebulae NGC 2071 and NGC 2068, which also have high dust densities.

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

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

This image shows a magnetogram taken with the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) High Resolution Telescope on ESA’s Solar Orbiter on 28 May 2020. It spans an area of approximately 200 000 km x 200 000 km on the solar surface. The small structures seen are magnetic regions of both north and south polarities, some of which have sizes of a few 1000 km.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/PHI Team/ESA & NASA

Galileo satellite 23 – otherwise known as Full Operational Configuration satellite 19 – being lowered next to its fellow Galileo satellite 24 inside the Satellite Preparation Building of Europe's Spaceport. The satellite pair arrived in French Guiana on 4 May 2018. The red-tagged items on the end of the satellite are Galileo's thrusters for attitude and orbit adjustment.

Credits: ESA-CNES-Arianespace/Optique Video du CSG - JM Guillon

At the Airbus integration hall in Bremen, Germany, technicians installed the last radiator on the European Service Module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft marking the module’s finished integration.

ESA’s European service module will provide power, water, air and electricity to NASA’s Orion exploration spacecraft that will eventually fly beyond the Moon with astronauts. The European Service Module is now complete for Orion’s first mission that will do a lunar fly-by without astronauts to demonstrate the spacecraft’s capabilities.

Much like closing the bonnet on a car, with the radiators in place technicians can no longer access the internals of the European service module, symbolically ending the assembly and integration of the module that will fly further into our Solar System than any other human-rated spacecraft has ever flown before.

Credits: ESA–A. Conigli

The European Space Agency is working with companies keen to develop and use space-enabled seamless 5G connectivity to develop ubiquitous services. At the UK Space Conference, held from 24 to 26 September in Newport, ESA is showcasing its work with several British-based companies, supported by the UK Space Agency.

Learn more about ESA and 5G.

Credits: ESA-Stephen Makin

ESA Director General Jan Wörner welcomes Franz Josef Pschierer, Bavarian State Minister of Economic Affairs, Energy and Technology, to the Space Pavilion at ILA, the Berlin Air and Space Show, on 27 April 2018.

Credits: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2018

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

From a distance of five million kilometres to within 20 metres, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft captured images of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from all angles.

Between the first and the last images lies one of humanity’s greatest space adventures to rendezvous with and follow a comet as it orbited the Sun, and deploy a lander to its surface.

Seen from afar, the comet is usually likened to a duck in shape, but in this enchanting close-up view its profile resembles that of a cat’s face seen side-on.

The two ‘ears’ of the cat make up the twin peaks either side of the ‘C. Alexander Gate’ – named for US Rosetta Project Scientist Claudia Alexander who passed away in July 2015. These impressive cliffs lie at the border between the Serqet and Anuket regions on the comet’s head. The image was taken on 6 October 2014 from a distance of 18.6 km to the comet.

This is just one of almost 70 000 images taken with Rosetta’s high-resolution imaging system OSIRIS that are now available via a new online and mobile-friendly ‘comet viewer’ created in a joint project with the Department of Information and Communication at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, who lead the OSIRIS team.

The image viewer hosts the full archive, but also has subsections organising image sets into themes: for example, images showing towering cliffs and bizarre cracks on the comet surface, or those focusing on spectacular dust fountains as the comet launched gas and dust jets into space as its surface ices were warmed as it came closer to the Sun on its orbit.

The collection of OSIRIS images captured the farewell of lander Philae as it dropped towards the surface of the comet, and later, towards the end of the mission, the feverish search for the hidden robot.

Within the new comet viewer, each of the nearly 70 000 images is supplemented with the date on which it was taken, the distance to the comet, and a short accompanying text briefly describing what is seen in the image. The images can be downloaded in full resolution and can also be directly shared to Twitter and Facebook.

For users who wish to delve deeper or use the archive for research purposes, the images are also available in scientific data format; in addition, there is information available on the filters used, focal lengths, and exposure times as well as references to the scientific documentation and evaluation software.

The tool supplements the official ESA Archive Image Browser which also hosts the images taken by Rosetta’s navigation camera made available throughout the mission, and ESA's Planetary Science Archive, for which the OSIRIS image archive was completed in June 2018.

Read more

Explore the image viewer

Click here to access the original image pictured here and associated data from within the new tool.

Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA (CC BY 4.0)

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst will be launched into space on the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 6 June 2018.

All astronauts that fly on a Soyuz have a final authorisation for launch given by the state commission followed by a last press conference on Earth before liftoff.

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 project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski at the Axiom mission 4 wave off event in Melbourne, Florida on 6 June 2025.

Credits: ESA - M. Cowan