European Space Agency

Ice melting from glaciers around the world is depleting regional freshwater resources and driving global sea levels to rise at ever-faster rates. According to new findings, through an international effort involving 35 research teams, glaciers have been losing an average of 273 billion tonnes of ice per year since the year 2000 – but hidden within this average there has been an alarming increase over the last 10 years. View the full article

Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique power of the mission to uncover fleeting X-ray sources in the sky. View the full article

The European Space Agency (ESA) and AAC Clyde Space, a New Space company specialising in small satellite technologies, have jointly signed a contract for the first phase of satellite constellation project INFLECION. The initiative will transform Maritime Domain Awareness – the understanding of activities at sea – by enhancing safety, efficiency, compliance, and environmental sustainability in maritime operations. View the full article

The European Space Agency (ESA) is ready to guide the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft through its closest encounter with Venus so far. Today’s flyby will be the first to significantly ‘tilt’ the spacecraft’s orbit and allow it to see the Sun’s polar regions, which cannot be seen from Earth. Studying the Sun’s poles will improve our understanding of solar activity, space weather, and the Sun-Earth connection. View the full article

On 13 and 14 February 2025, the European Space Agency (ESA) celebrated 20 years of supporting space innovation through its ESA Business Incubation Centres (BIC) network. The event in Munich, Germany, brought together entrepreneurs, successful space companies, experts and policymakers. View the full article

Week in images: 10-14 February 2025 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Video: 00:42:11 Watch the latest updates on ESA’s Fly! Feasibility Study with Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA Director of Human and Robotic Exploration, John McFall, Member of the ESA Astronaut Reserve & Fly! Subject Matter Expert, Jerome Reineix, Fly! Study Manager, and Alessandro Alcibiade, Fly! Flight Surgeon. Announced in November 2022 during the Ministerial Council held in Paris, France, this unique and groundbreaking study is aimed at understanding and challenging the limitations posed by physical disabilities to human spaceflight. Concluded in late 2024, the Fly! Feasibility Study successfully demonstrated it is technically feasible to fly someone with a physical disability, like John’s, on a six-month mission to the International Space Station as a fully integrated crew member. It underpinned the desire to ensure that space exploration is not limited by physical constraints and that every individual can contribute to our collective understanding of the cosmos and of the benefits of spaceflight for life on Earth. The end of the feasibility study marks the start of the next phase: Fly! Mission Ready . This is an essential step to carry out the first long-term mission for an astronaut with a physical disability. View the full article

Image: For Valentine’s Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission picks out a heart in the landscape north of Mount St Helens in the US state of Washington. View the full article

In a first for space cuisine, ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski will bring pierogi, the traditional Polish dumplings, to the International Space Station during the upcoming Axiom Mission 4. View the full article

Launched just two months ago and still in the process of being commissioned for service, the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite is, remarkably, already showing how its radar data can be used to map the shape of Earth’s land surface with extreme precision. These first cross-satellite ‘interferometry’ results assure its ability to monitor subsidence, uplift, glacier flow, and disasters such as landslides and earthquakes. View the full article

The European Space Agency (ESA) has jointly signed a contract with Thales Alenia Space to develop Element #2 of its High-throughput Digital and Optical Network (HydRON), an advanced laser-based satellite system that will transform the way we communicate in space. This phase will establish a satellite collector in low Earth orbit (LEO), capable of connecting different orbital layers using cutting-edge optical technology. View the full article

After years of meticulous development, ESA’s next Earth Explorer satellite, Biomass, is ready to be packed up for transport to Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, where it will launch aboard a Vega-C rocket this spring. Before final preparations and shipment, media representatives had the exclusive opportunity today to see the satellite up close in the cleanroom at Airbus’ facilities in Toulouse, France. View the full article

Today we mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Join us in a journey around Europe with EIROforum organisations to discover the brilliant talents who are shaping the future of science and technology, and dive deeper into the story of a European Space Agency young professional making her way in space. View the full article

Euclid, the European Space Agency’s dark Universe detective, has made an astonishing discovery – right in our cosmic backyard. View the full article

Optical technology has the potential to revolutionise the field of positioning, navigation and timing. To drive the development of this technology, ESA has signed a contract with a consortium of European companies that will conduct a definition study (Phase A/B1) and associated critical technology predevelopment. This is the first step toward a potential in-orbit demonstrator for optical time synchronisation and ranging (OpSTAR) that will be proposed at the ESA Council at Ministerial Level in November 2025, to validate intersatellite optical links before future use in operational satellite navigation systems. View the full article

Week in images: 03-07 February 2025 Discover our week through the lens View the full article

Image: The ranges and valleys of the Swiss Alps stand out in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission in December 2024. View the full article

The European Space Agency (ESA) has endorsed the United Nations' (UN) designation of 2029 as the International Year of Asteroid Awareness and Planetary Defence. The initiative will foster international collaboration in the field of planetary defence and educate the public on the risks and opportunities associated with near-Earth asteroids. View the full article

Image: The ranges and valleys of the Swiss Alps stand out in this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission in December 2024. View the full article

Space is not the safest place to be. During spaceflight, both devices and humans risk exposure to high levels of radiation. Without sufficient protection, instruments would malfunction, and astronauts might face serious health risks. A team of researchers from Ghent University in Belgium are testing the potential of 3D-printed hydrogels – materials that can soak up large amounts of water – to serve as highly-effective radiation shields. View the full article

Image: XMM-Newton finds two stray supernova remnants View the full article

In a landmark achievement, ESA successfully migrated Galileo’s Control Centres in a highly complex operation involving over 200 people from the Agency, industry and EUSPA. This milestone marked the beginning of a global operation to upgrade Galileo’s entire Ground Segment, a vast network of stations spread around the world. View the full article

Video: 00:00:40 Back in 2023, we reported on Solar Orbiter’s discovery of tiny jets near the Sun’s south pole that could be powering the solar wind. The team behind this research has now used even more data from the European Space Agency’s prolific solar mission to confirm that these jets exist all over dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere, and that they really are a source of not only fast but also slow solar wind. The newfound jets can be seen in this sped-up video as hair-like wisps that flash very briefly, for example within the circled regions of the Sun's surface. In reality they last around one minute and fling out charged particles at about 100 km/s. The surprising result is published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics, highlighting how Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of instruments can unveil the mysteries of the star at the centre of our Solar System. The solar wind is the never-ending rain of electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. It pervades the Solar System and its effects can be felt on Earth. Yet despite decades of study, its origin remained poorly understood. Until now. The solar wind comes in two main forms: fast and slow. We have known for decades that the fast solar wind comes from the direction of dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere called coronal holes – regions where the Sun’s magnetic field does not turn back down into the Sun but rather stretches deep into the Solar System. Charged particles can flow along these ‘open’ magnetic field lines, heading away from the Sun, and creating the solar wind. But a big question remained: how do these particles get launched from the Sun in the first place? Building upon their previous discovery, the research team (led by Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany) used Solar Orbiter’s onboard ‘cameras’ to spot more tiny jets within coronal holes close to the Sun’s equator. By combining these high-resolution images with direct measurements of solar wind particles and the Sun’s magnetic field around Solar Orbiter, the researchers could directly connect the solar wind measured at the spacecraft back to those exact same jets. What’s more, the team was surprised to find not just fast solar wind coming from these jets, but also slow solar wind. This is the first time that we can say for sure that at least some of the slow solar wind also comes from tiny jets in coronal holes – until now, the origin of the solar wind had been elusive. The fact that the same underlying process drives both fast and slow solar wind comes as a surprise. The discovery is only possible thanks to Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of advanced imaging systems, as well as its instruments that can directly detect particles and magnetic fields. The measurements were taken when Solar Orbiter made close approaches to the Sun in October 2022 and April 2023. These close approaches happen roughly twice a year; during the next ones, the researchers hope to collect more data to better understand how these tiny jets ‘launch’ the solar wind. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. This research used data from Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Solar Wind Plasma Analyser (SWA) and Magnetometer (MAG). Find out more about the instruments Solar Orbiter is using to reveal more about the Sun. Read our news story from 2023 about how Solar Orbiter discovered tiny jets that could power the solar wind Read more about how Solar Orbiter can trace the solar wind back to its source region on the Sun View the full article

Today, ESA, the Finnish government and the Finnish Meteorological Institute took the initial steps towards establishing a ‘supersite’ for Earth observation calibration and validation in Sodankylä in Finnish Lapland. Envisaged as a joint investment, this world-class site would bring benefits to both ESA, by helping to further ensure satellites deliver accurate data over high latitude environments, and to Finland by providing Finnish businesses with new opportunities to develop and test environmental sensors and technology. View the full article

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