Space News & Blog Articles

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission brings us this cloud-free view of Svalbard, a remote Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.

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A science team has combined data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the Keck II telescope to see evidence of cloud convection on Saturn’s moon Titan in the northern hemisphere for the first time. Most of Titan’s lakes and seas are located in that hemisphere, and are likely replenished by an occasional rain of methane and ethane. Webb also has detected a key carbon-containing molecule that gives insight into the chemical processes in Titan’s complex atmosphere.

On 12 March 2013, Galileo satellite GSAT0104, alongside its fellow In-Orbit Validation (IOV) satellites, made history by enabling the first position fix by Europe’s independent satellite navigation system Galileo. Now, after 12 years of service mostly in the area of Search and Rescue, GSAT0104 makes history again by becoming the first satellite in the Galileo constellation to be decommissioned.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our Solar System’s largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. With Webb’s advanced sensitivity, astronomers have studied the phenomena to better understand Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

As the night closed in on Spain and Portugal on 28 April, polar satellites followed the blackout that lasted well into the early hours of the morning in several regions.

The European Space Agency will be present at the 55th edition of International Paris Air Show, taking place on 16-22 June at Le Bourget airport.

Week in images: 05-09 May 2025

Image: Part of the Italian island of Sardinia is featured in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

For the first time, two spacecraft in orbit were aligned in formation with millimetre precision and maintained their relative position for several hours without any control from the ground.

The activities to assemble the European Space Agency’s Plato mission are progressing well now that 24 of the spacecraft’s 26 cameras have been installed. Once in space, Plato will use its many eyes to survey a very large area of the sky and hunt for terrestrial planets. The spacecraft’s supporting element is also coming together in parallel.

Thanks largely to Copernicus Sentinel-1, scientists have discovered that a glacier in Antarctica is rapidly siphoning ice from neighbouring flows – at a pace never before seen. Until now, researchers believed that this process of ‘ice piracy’ in Antarctica took hundreds or even thousands of years, but these latest findings clearly demonstrate that this isn’t always the case.

Fresh from the cleanroom in Bremen, Germany, the second of the Meteosat Third Generation satellites and the first instrument for the Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission have arrived at Cape Canaveral harbour, in the US.

Just a week after its launch, ESA’s Biomass mission has reached another critical milestone on its path to delivering unprecedented insights into the world’s forests and their vital role in Earth’s carbon cycle – the satellite’s 12-metre-diameter antenna is now fully deployed.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher emphasises the importance of cooperation in space activities

Video: 00:03:23

Astrophysicist and Nobel Prize Laureate Didier Queloz answers the who, what, where, when and why of exoplanets in this 3-part series. 

As the new Biomass satellite settles into life in orbit following its launch on 29 April, ESA has released its most extensive satellite-based maps of above-ground forest carbon to date. Spanning nearly two decades, the dataset offers the clearest global picture yet of how forest carbon stocks have changed over time.

Week in images: 28 April - 02 May 2025

Image: The Ocean and Land Colour Instrument on Copernicus Sentinel-3 captured this image of Earth’s biggest iceberg, A23a, on 5 April 2025.

Video: 00:02:59

ESA’s state-of-the-art Biomass satellite launched aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 29 April 2025 at 11:15 CEST (06:15 local time).