An image of the Sun’s corona obtained with the Metis instrument on ESA’s Solar Orbiter. This was obtained on 21 June 2020, shortly after the spacecraft’s first perihelion, and was taken in ultraviolet light (121.6 nm). It shows the two bright equatorial streamers and fainter polar regions that are characteristic of the solar corona during times of minimal magnetic activity.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/Metis Team (ESA & NASA)

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

A view of the complete CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite, Cheops, surrounded by thermal test hardware before insertion into the thermal-vacuum chamber at the Airbus Engineering Validation Test facility in Toulouse, France. These tests were performed between 20 July and 2 August 2018 to demonstrate that the satellite is ready to operate in the extreme cold of space.

More about the testing campaign: Chilled and checked, shaken and not stirred

Credits: ESA/Airbus

With many millions living in coastal communities around the world, sea-level rise is a major concern. The information we get from satellites is essential for understanding how fast our seas are rising so that decision-makers are equipped to take appropriate mitigating action. Satellites carrying altimeter instruments systematically measure the height of the sea surface so that sea-level rise can be closely monitored. Altimetry measurements over the last 25 years show that, on average, sea-level is rising about 3 mm a year, and this rise is accelerating

Credits: ESA

An image of the Sun’s corona obtained with the Metis instrument on ESA’s Solar Orbiter. This image comes from the instrument’s first light, which was obtained on 15 May 2020, and was taken in ultraviolet light (121.6 nm). It shows the two bright equatorial streamers and fainter polar regions that are characteristic of the solar corona during times of minimal magnetic activity.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/Metis Team (ESA & NASA)

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

One of our favourite Ariane 5 launch images: the detail is amazing, courtesy of ESA photographer Stephane Corvaja. This is Ariane 5 VA233 on 17 November 2016 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, carrying four Galileo satellites into space.

Credits: ESA/S.Corvaja

Dutch ESA astronaut André Kuipers answering questions from visitors at the tenth annual ESA Open Day at the Agency’s technical centre ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

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

The two stages for Ariane 6’s first flight are now assembled as one and ready for the next step on the road to launch. The upper stage and main stage were connected in the launcher assembly building (BAL) at Europe’s Spaceport. Together these stages form the central core of Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6.

Teams from ArianeGroup, France’s space agency CNES and ESA are working hard to get the stages ready to be moved to the all-new Ariane 6 launch pad, where the central core will be raised to its vertical launch position. This is where the two boosters for the first Ariane 6 flight will be connected, the first booster is already waiting in storage. Lastly the payloads will be placed on top of the central core and covered by the fairing – Ariane 6’s nose cone that splits vertically in two.

The stages were connected in just three weeks after arriving at Europe’s Spaceport on the novel hybrid sail ship Canopée on 21 February.

Ariane 6 is an all-new design, created to succeed Ariane 5 as Europe's heavy-lift launch system. With Ariane 6's upper stage restart capability, Europe's launch capability will be tailored to the needs of multiple payload missions, for example to orbit satellite constellations. This autonomous capability to reach Earth orbit and deep space supports Europe's navigation, Earth observation, scientific and security programmes. Ongoing development of Europe's space transportation capabilities is made possible by the sustained dedication of thousands of talented people working in ESA's 22 Member States.

Credits: ESA-M. Pédoussat

Just like Earth has an ozone layer, so do Venus and Mars. In fact, Mars has three distinct layers, although they are much weaker than the one on Earth and vary greatly in location and with time.

Ozone, a molecule containing three oxygen atoms – is a pollutant at ground level on Earth (it is the main ingredient of urban smog) but at higher altitudes it provides an essential protective layer against harmful solar ultraviolet light, which is why the ozone hole is so concerning. Plant life today plays a critical role in taking in carbon dioxide and replenishing our oxygen and ozone. But ozone is also found on Venus and Mars, where it is created by non-biological means. On these planets ozone is formed when sunlight breaks up carbon dioxide molecules, releasing oxygen atoms, which can sometimes re-combine into ozone molecules. Understanding the different ozone-forming processes on different planets will be important for studying the diversity of exoplanets, in case the combination of ozone with other atmospheric constituents is relevant from a biological perspective.

ESA has a fleet of upcoming exoplanet missions – Cheops, Plato and Ariel – that will each tackle a different aspect of exoplanet science. In particular, Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission, will perform a chemical census of a large and diverse sample of exoplanets by analysing their atmospheres in great detail.

ESA has demonstrated expertise in studying Mars from orbit, now we are looking to secure a safe landing, to rove across the surface and to drill underground to search for evidence of life. Our orbiters are already in place to provide data relay services for surface missions. The next logical step is to bring samples back to Earth, to provide access to Mars for scientists globally, and to better prepare for future human exploration of the Red Planet.

This set of infographics highlight’s ESA’s contribution to Mars exploration as we ramp up to the launch of our second ExoMars mission, and look beyond to completing a Mars Sample Return mission.

Credits: ESA – S. Poletti

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

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

A high-resolution image from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, taken with the HRIEUV telescope on 30 May 2020. These images show the Sun’s appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images at this wavelength reveal the upper atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, with a temperature of around 1 million degrees.

On 30 May, Solar Orbiter was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun, meaning that it was closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL

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

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, but no one can say for sure where they came from. Two leading theories propose that they are either asteroids captured into Mars orbit, or were born from the debris thrown out from a giant impact on the surface of Mars. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, is planning a mission to survey the two moons, and return a sample from one of them. Europe is also participating to the Martian Moons Exploration mission. Clarifying the origin of the two moons will help us understand more about how the Solar System formed and evolved.

ESA has demonstrated expertise in studying Mars from orbit, now we are looking to secure a safe landing, to rove across the surface and to drill underground to search for evidence of life. Our orbiters are already in place to provide data relay services for surface missions. The next logical step is to bring samples back to Earth, to provide access to Mars for scientists globally, and to better prepare for future human exploration of the Red Planet.

This set of infographics highlight’s ESA’s contribution to Mars exploration as we ramp up to the launch of our second ExoMars mission, and look beyond to completing a Mars Sample Return mission.

Credits: ESA – S. Poletti

Down on the ground, death equals stillness – but not in space. Abandoned satellites are prone to tumble in unpredictable ways and an ESA project with the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern sought to better understand this behaviour.

ESA’s Clean Space initiative has plans to remove dead satellites from highly trafficked orbits. The preferred method of ‘Active Debris Removal’ involves grabbing the target object, in which case knowledge of its precise orientation and motion will be vital. So the need is clear to understand the tumbling that almost all satellites and rocket bodies undergo after their mission end-of-life.

The project combined optical, laser ranging and radar observations to refine an existing ‘In-Orbit Tumbling Analysis’ computer model, aiming to identify, understand and predict the attitude motion of a fully defunct satellite within a few passes. More than 20 objects were observed during a two-year campaign.

The long list of perturbation triggers includes ‘eddy currents’ as internal magnetic fields interact with Earth’s magnetosphere, drag from the vestigial atmosphere, gravity gradients between the top of an object and its bottom, outgassing and fuel leaks, the faint but steady push of sunlight – known as ‘solar radiation pressure’ – micrometeoroid and debris impacts, even the sloshing of leftover fuel.

Among the study findings was rocket bodies and satellites in lower orbits are mostly influenced by gravity gradients and eddy currents, while up at geostationary altitudes, satellites with large solar panels are sensitive to solar radiation pressure.

The project was supported through ESA’s General Support Technology Programme, developing promising technologies for space.

Find out more here.

Credits: ESA/University of Bern

Gravity affects everything we do on Earth but we know surprisingly little about how it works and how it affects life. Until recently scientists had no way of experimenting without gravity to understand what life would be like without it.

Research in space or with facilities on Earth that recreate aspects of space bring knowledge, discoveries and improvements to our daily life and further our exploration of the Solar System.

ESA offers many platforms for conducting experiments across the whole spectrum of scientific disciplines. You can run an experiment in a sounding rocket, drop towers, centrifuges, Antarctica and even the International Space Station.

ESA has a centrifuge for hypergravity experiments. With a full range of gravity levels at their disposal, gravity becomes just another variable for scientists in the laboratory. The Large Diameter Centrifuge at ESA’s technical heart, ESTEC, can spin at 67 revolutions a minute to recreate gravity 20 times more than we feel on Earth. The four arms can carry up to eight experiments of up to 80 kg each to spin under different gravity levels. Long-during projects can even be left spinning for six months to examine, for example, how a plant would grow on Mars or other larger planets.

Proposals for experiments are always welcome and can be submitted via the research announcement page

Credits: ESA

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

Pangaea-X is a test campaign that brings together geology, high-tech survey equipment and space exploration. Astronauts, scientists, operations experts and instrumentation engineers work side-by-side to advance European know-how of integrated human and robotics mission operations.

An extension of ESA’s Pangaea geology training, the training involves working with the latest technologies in instrumentation, navigation, remote sensing, 3D imaging and geoscience equipment.

The Pangaea-X crew explores the barren and dry landscape of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Spain, to prepare for the day when we set foot on other worlds. Known as the island of a thousand volcanoes, Lanzarote was chosen because of its geological similarity with Mars, such as a volcanic origin, mild sedimentary processes owing to a dry climate, hardly any vegetation and a well-preserved landscape.

More about Pangaea

Follow the Pangaea blog

Credits: ESA–A. Romeo

The double-satellite Proba-3 stack and their upper stage were encapsulated within their launcher fairing on 29 November. The last red tag and green tag items were removed/installed and the team took a final look at their mission with their own eyes. Proba-3 is due to launch on a PSLV-XL launcher at the SHAR base of the Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, on 4 December.

ESA’s twin Proba-3 platforms will perform precise formation flying down to a single millimetre, as if they were one single giant spacecraft. To demonstrate their degree of control, the pair will produce artificial solar eclipses in orbit, giving prolonged views of the Sun’s ghostly surrounding atmosphere, the corona.

Follow the launch campaign on our Proba-3 blog.

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

This is one of a series of images featuring Mercury’s Vivaldi crater taken by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 4 September 2024 as the spacecraft sped by for its fourth of six gravity assist manoeuvres at the planet.

The image was taken at 23:53 CEST by the Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 2 (M-CAM 2), when the spacecraft was about 355 km from the planet’s surface. The spacecraft’s closest approach of 165 km took place at 23:48 CEST.

The surface of Mercury hosts many fascinating geological features, of which the Vivaldi peak ring basin, named after the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), is one of the most spectacular. Vivaldi measures 210 km across, and because BepiColombo saw it so close to the sunrise line, its landscape is beautifully emphasised by shadow.

Also in the image are the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s medium gain antenna (top centre) and magnetometer boom (right).

North is to the lower left.

More about BepiColombo's fourth Mercury flyby

[Image description: Planet Mercury in the background with its grey, cratered, pock-marked surface. In the foreground are some spacecraft parts]

Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

On 22 and 23 November 2022, ESA Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States observers gathered in Paris, France, for the ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level (CM22). They discussed how to strengthen Europe’s space sector for the benefit of all - including climate change monitoring and mitigation, secure communications under European control and rapid and resilient crisis response, and the ESA budget for the next three years.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

The ELA-4 launch zone at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is currently undergoing reconstruction in preparation for Europe’s Ariane 6 launch vehicle.

In this image you see the Launcher Assembly Building (BAL) which is 20 m tall, 112 m long and 41 m wide, located some 1 km away from the launch zone. It is used for launch vehicle horizontal integration and preparation before rollout to the launch zone.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

An image of the Sun’s corona obtained with the Metis instrument on ESA’s Solar Orbiter. This image comes from the instrument’s first light, which was obtained on 15 May 2020, and was taken in visible light (580-640 nm). It shows the two bright equatorial streamers and fainter polar regions that are characteristic of the solar corona during times of minimal magnetic activity.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/Metis Team (ESA & NASA)

This image shows Aganippe Fossa, a snaking groove found at the foot of Mars’s giant Arsia Mons volcano, in a wider context. 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 13 December 2023 during orbit 25189, while the smaller white box shows the part of the surface featured in these new images.

Read more

[Image description: This map shows a patch of Mars with two volcanos marked. Also indicated is a long white rectangle labelled 'HRSC orbit 25 189' and a smaller rectangle within. Inside the smaller rectangle, we see the label 'Aganippe Fossa'. The colouring of the map provides information about the height of the land, with the highest land shown in white and the lowest in green. The area marked with the small rectangle is red.]

Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team

On the day of launching into space on a Soyuz, astronauts go through a number of traditions. ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst will be travelling to the International Space Station on the Soyuz MS-09 alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 6 June 2018.

After signing the door of the hotel they spend their last day on Earth before launch, they get into their Sokol pressure suits. A Russian orthodox priest blesses the astronauts and launcher as per tradition.

This will be Alexander’s second spaceflight, called Horizons. He will also be the second ESA astronaut to take over command of the International Space Station. The Horizons science programme is packed with European research: over 50 experiments will deliver benefits to people on Earth as well as prepare for future space exploration.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

Official opening of the International Space University’s Space Studies Program on 25 June 2018, at ESA in the Netherlands.

The opening ceremony was attended by HM the King of the Netherlands and addressed by ESA Director General Jan Wörner.

The nine-week programme will see more than 130 participants representing 37 nationalities take part in lectures, workshops and team projects to gain an interdisciplinary understanding of all aspects of the space industry.

This year’s ISU programme is co-hosted by the Technical University Delft and the Netherlands Space Office, in close cooperation with ESA and Leiden University.

Two groups of participants will focus in particular on issues of space safety and sustainability as they prepare project reports on the role space should play in human adaptation to global climate change and on new ideas for the removal of space debris from Earth orbit using ecologically sound technology.

Credits: ESA - G. Porter

This is a figure from an atlas of astronomy published in 1869

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 second Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite, Sentinel-3B, lifted off on a Rockot from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 17:57 GMT (19:57 CEST) on 25 April 2018. Sentinel-3B joins its twin, Sentinel-3A, in orbit. The pairing of identical satellites provides the best coverage and data delivery for Europe’s Copernicus programme – the largest environmental monitoring programme in the world.

The satellites carry the same suite of cutting-edge instruments to measure oceans, land, ice and atmosphere. While these data are fed primarily into the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service, all the Copernicus services benefit to produce knowledge and information products in near-real time for a wide range of applications. The Sentinel-3 mission is essential for applications for ocean and coastal monitoring, numerical weather and ocean prediction, sea-level change and sea-surface topography monitoring, ocean primary production estimation and land-cover change mapping.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

ESA astronaut Tim Peake and Suzie Imber pose for a quick photo with the some of the police team on duty today at Farnborough.

Credits: ESA

On 22 and 23 November 2022, ESA Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States observers gathered in Paris, France, for the ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level (CM22). They discussed how to strengthen Europe’s space sector for the benefit of all - including climate change monitoring and mitigation, secure communications under European control and rapid and resilient crisis response, and the ESA budget for the next three years.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

This stereoscopic image shows the wrinkled surroundings of Olympus Mons (a feature named Lycus Sulci). It was generated from data captured by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on 18 January 2023 during orbit 24056. The anaglyph offers a three-dimensional view when viewed using red-green or red-blue glasses.

Read more

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

On 22 and 23 November 2022, ESA Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States observers gathered in Paris, France, for the ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level (CM22). They discussed how to strengthen Europe’s space sector for the benefit of all - including climate change monitoring and mitigation, secure communications under European control and rapid and resilient crisis response, and the ESA budget for the next three years.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

Robert Meisner, ESA Communication Department, 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

Ariane 6 launches to the sky on 9 July 2024.

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

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

On 22 and 23 November 2022, ESA Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States observers gathered in Paris, France, for the ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level (CM22). They discussed how to strengthen Europe’s space sector for the benefit of all - including climate change monitoring and mitigation, secure communications under European control and rapid and resilient crisis response, and the ESA budget for the next three years.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

Dr. Carmen Possnig is the ESA-sponsored medical doctor spending 12 months at Concordia research station in Antarctica.

She facilitates a number of experiments on the effects of isolation, light deprivation, and extreme temperatures on the human body and mind.

The station is a collaboration between the French Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV) and Italian Programma Nazionale di Richerche Antartide (PNRA).

Credits: ESA/IPEV/PNRA–C. Possnig

Solar Orbiter is scheduled to launch on an Atlas V 411 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Flordia, USA, at 05:15 CET on 8 February 2020 (23:15 EST on 7 February).

The spacecraft will separate from the launcher around 53 minutes after launch, followed by acquisition of spacecraft signal. In the days after launch, the instrument boom and antennas will be deployed.

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Its mission is to perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high-latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection. Data from the spacecraft’s suite of ten instruments will provide unprecedented insight into how our parent star works in terms of the 11-year solar cycle, and how we can better predict periods of stormy space weather.

Credits: ESA-S.Poletti

An image of Europe's Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station captured by ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano during his second spacewalk to maintain the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer AMS-02.

ID: 516D5642

Credit: ESA/NASA-L.Parmitano

On 22 and 23 November 2022, ESA Member States, Associate States and Cooperating States observers gathered in Paris, France, for the ESA Council Meeting at Ministerial Level (CM22). They discussed how to strengthen Europe’s space sector for the benefit of all - including climate change monitoring and mitigation, secure communications under European control and rapid and resilient crisis response, and the ESA budget for the next three years.

Credits: ESA - P. Sebirot

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: ESA–K. Oldenburg

A high-resolution image from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, taken with the HRIEUV telescope on 30 May 2020. These images show the Sun’s appearance at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Images at this wavelength reveal the upper atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, with a temperature of around 1 million degrees.

On 30 May, Solar Orbiter was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun, meaning that it was closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before.

Credits: Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL

Teams sign the fairing stickers on the BepiColombo launcher that will carry the mission into space.

BepiColombo is a joint endeavour between ESA and JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Credits: ESA - M. Pedoussaut

ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski in ESA’s Columbus laboratory.

During the Ignis mission, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski 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

This image shows the Idaeus Fossae region of Mars in wider context.

The area outlined by the larger white box indicates the area imaged by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on 8 November 2024 (orbit 26 325). The smaller white box within shows the patch of surface featured in new images released in December 2025.

Mars Express releases from 2006 and 2013 featured parts of the prominent outflow channels visible to the left of frame here, known as Sacra Mensa and Kasei Valles.

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[Image description: A colour-coded topographic map of a region on Mars called Idaeus Fossae. The map shows elevation differences with green, blue, and orange shades, and labels major areas such as Tempe Terra, Acidalia Planitia, Chryse Planitia and Lunae Planum. Several craters and valleys are marked, along with a white rectangle indicating the HRSC orbit coverage.]

Credits: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team

The Orion spacecraft for Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the Moon in over 50 years, is now equipped with its powerful solar wings. Built and attached by European engineers, these four, seven-metre-long solar arrays are attached to ESA's European Service Module, rotating to absorb the most sunlight and provide essential power to Orion and its crew as they travel to the Moon and back.

The solar arrays were manufactured by engineers at Airbus in the Netherlands and were sent to the United States in 2023. Since then, they have been through rigorous testing, including an acoustic test that simulates the intense vibrations at launch. Last week, engineers from Airbus installed the four solar arrays at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. They carefully secured each wing with 16 hold-down mechanisms to ensure stability during launch; once in orbit, an electrical current will trigger deployment, allowing the panels to unfold automatically.

With the solar wings now installed, the next step is to add protective fairing panels around the European Service Module. Once Orion reaches space, these panels will detach, and the solar arrays will unfold to greet the Sun's light, powering the spacecraft.

Learn more about the intricate solar array installation process on our blog.

Credits: Lockheed Martin

At 11:12 GMT (13:12 CEST), 6 June 2018, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst was launched into space alongside NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos commander Sergei Prokopyev in the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch went as planned as the 50-m tall Soyuz rocket propelled 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 spacecraft is an improved model from the last time Alexander was launched into space in 2014 with many technological upgrades to make the spacecraft lighter and more modern. For example, halogen lights have been replaced with LEDs, and newer and larger solar panels increase power generation.

Over the next two days, while circling Earth 34 times, the trio will catch up with the International Space Station where they will spend the next six months. The journey is relatively smooth and quiet after the rigours of launch. With no Internet or satellite phones, the crew relies on radio to communicate at set intervals with ground control.

The German astronaut is a returning visitor to the International Space Station, the first of ESA’s 2009 class of astronauts to be sent into space for a second time. During the second part of his mission Alexander will take over as commander of the International Space Station, only the second time an ESA astronaut will take on this role so far.

Credits: ESA - S. Corvaja

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