Space News & Blog Articles

Image: Biomass cleared for fuelling

Launched just seven months ago, ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has been proving how the New Space approach can accelerate the development of missions capable of delivering detailed temperature and humidity profiles for short-term weather forecasts.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected Airbus to design and build the landing platform for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover. In 2028, ESA will launch this ambitious exploration mission to search for past and present signs of life on Mars.

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Meet Arnaud Prost—aerospace engineer, professional diver, and member of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve. From flying aircraft to getting a taste of spacewalk simulation, his passion for exploration knows no bounds.

Week in images: 24-28 March 2025

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For over a decade, ESA’s Gaia mission has mapped our galaxy with stunning precision—rewriting the story of the Milky Way. As its mission enters a new phase, we look back at its most groundbreaking discoveries.

The first image from a new Italian Earth observation satellite mission was published today: a high-resolution image of a strip of the Italian peninsular showing the city of Rome at a resolution of 2.66 metres. This is three times higher than the resolution currently available for systematic acquisition over Italy.

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures the striking landscape surrounding the Waza National Park in Cameroon.

Two spacecraft flying as one – that is the goal of European Space Agency’s Proba-3 mission. Earlier this week, the eclipse-maker moved a step closer to achieving that goal, as both spacecraft aligned with the Sun, maintaining their relative position for several hours without any control from the ground.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has powered down its Gaia spacecraft after more than a decade spent gathering data that are now being used to unravel the secrets of our home galaxy.

Image: Spying a spiral through a cosmic lens (Webb telescope image)

Using the unique infrared sensitivity of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, researchers can examine ancient galaxies to probe secrets of the early Universe. Now, an international team of astronomers has identified bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in an unexpectedly early time in the Universe’s history. The surprise finding is challenging researchers to explain how this light could have pierced the thick fog of neutral hydrogen that filled space at that time.

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Aside from sunlight, the Sun sends out a gusty stream of particles called the solar wind. The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission is the first to capture on camera this wind flying out from the Sun in a twisting, whirling motion. The solar wind particles spiral outwards as if caught in a cyclone that extends millions of kilometres from the Sun.

As ESA’s Hera planetary defence mission flew past planet Mars it autonomously locked onto dozens of impact craters and other prominent surface features to track them over time, in a full-scale test of the self-driving technology that the spacecraft will employ to navigate around its target asteroids.

Image: ESA's Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a beautiful juxtaposition of the nearby protostellar outflow known as Herbig-Haro 49/50 with a perfectly positioned, more distant spiral galaxy. Due to the close proximity of this Herbig-Haro object to Earth, this new composite infrared image of the outflow from a young star allows researchers to examine details on small spatial scales like never before. With Webb, we can better understand how the jet activity associated with the formation of young stars can affect the environment surrounding them.

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The high-performance computing (HPC) environment will be available for scientific research and technological development activities, supporting all ESA programmes as well as the researchers and small- and medium-enterprises from Member States.

Week in images: 17-21 March 2025

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Meet Andrea Patassa—test pilot, aviator, passionate outdoor adventurer, and Member of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve. 

Image: Inner space engineering