Space News & Blog Articles
The European Space Agency's Ministerial Council – more formally Council at Ministerial level – takes place in Bremen, Germany on 26 and 27 November 2025.
Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over one of Earth’s most extreme environments: the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has been cruising towards Mercury since October 2018. With just one year to go until it arrives at its destination, what has the mission achieved so far? And what can we expect from its two spacecraft after they enter orbit around the Solar System’s smallest and least-explored rocky planet?
Smile has passed its qualification and flight acceptance review, meaning that it meets all requirements for launch. The launch window has been set for 8 April to 7 May 2026.
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The press conference, at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, follows the signing of contracts between Thales Alenia Space Italy, UK and France, OHB system AG (Germany) and Nammo (UK) for the ESA’s lunar lander programme Argonaut.
The European Space Agency (ESA) brings public and ESA-wide recognition of the outstanding performance of European companies working in the frame of ESA programmes and projects.
Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed an actively growing supermassive black hole within a galaxy just 570 million years after the Big Bang. Part of a class of small, very distant galaxies that have mystified astronomers, CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 represents a vital piece of this puzzle and challenges existing theories about the formation of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe. The discovery connects early black holes with the luminous quasars we observe today.
The European Space Agency’s HydroGNSS, a twin-satellite mission to gather data on Earth’s water cycle, is scheduled to launch on 19 November at 19:18 CET (10:18 Pacific Time). Live coverage of the launch will be shown on ESA Web TV.
For decades, the Amazon rainforest has quietly absorbed vast quantities of human-generated carbon dioxide, helping to slow the pace of climate change. Recent evidence, however, suggests that this vital natural buffer may be weakening – though uncertainties remain.
The latest guardian of our oceans has taken its place in orbit. The Copernicus Sentinel-6B satellite is now circling Earth, ready to continue a decades-long mission to track the height of the planet’s seas – a key measure of climate change.
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The Sun is always mesmerising to watch, but Solar Orbiter captured a special treat on camera: a dark ‘prominence’ sticking out from the side of the Sun.
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Copernicus Sentinel-6B was launched on 17 November 2025, ready to continue a decades-long mission to track the height of the planet’s seas – a key measure of climate change. The satellite was carried into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, US.
Since comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object, was discovered on 1 July 2025, astronomers worldwide have worked to predict its trajectory. ESA has now improved the comet’s predicted location by a factor of 10, thanks to the innovative use of observation data from our ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft orbiting Mars.
Image: This very high-resolution image captures the beautiful medieval core of the Czech capital, Prague.
Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory and the LOFAR telescope have definitively spotted an explosive burst of material thrown out into space by another star – a burst powerful enough to strip away the atmosphere of any unlucky planet in its path.

