Space News & Blog Articles

Image: Hubble image of barred spiral galaxy IC 486

Image: Western Australia’s Kimberley region is featured in this double view from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have joined forces to capture new views of Saturn, revealing the planet in strikingly different ways. Infrared and visible observations show layers and storms in the ringed planet’s atmosphere.

Wildfires that swept across the Amazon in 2024 were the most devastating in more than two decades. New research funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) suggests emissions may have been up to three times higher than earlier estimates.

An invisible companion consuming material from the naked-eye star gamma-Cas has been revealed as the culprit for curious X-rays coming from the stellar system. This closes the case on a mystery that has puzzled astronomers for more than fifty years. 

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On 25 March, the first two satellites of the Celeste in-orbit demonstration mission will lift off aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Māhia Launch Complex in New Zealand.

Arctic rivers and runoff from the land pour vast volumes of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean, influencing seawater salinity, sea-ice formation and ocean circulation, thereby playing an important role in regulating Earth’s heat balance.

Image: Artemis II rocket back at its launchpad after a second rollout at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Week in images: 16-20 March 2026

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This video was published on social media by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:

Image: Smile fuelled for launch

On 25 March, the first two satellites of the Celeste LEO-PNT in-orbit demonstration mission will lift off aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Māhia Launch Complex in New Zealand.

The Smile mission is set to launch on a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Thursday 9 April at 08:29 CEST/07:29 BST/03:29 local time. Follow along as we communicate on the final preparations for launch. Journalists are invited to join online media briefings in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

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Watch the replay of the media information session where ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun outline the key decisions and main outcomes of the Council meeting held in Interlaken, Switzerland, on 18 and 19 March 2026.

Image: This image from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission shows us the maritime traffic passing through the Øresund Strait in 2025.

A successful deep-space manoeuvre has put ESA’s Hera spacecraft on course for its rendezvous with the Didymos binary asteroid system later this year.

With more than 400 positions to be published in 2026, the European Space Agency has launched a recruitment drive to support ESA’s programmes, missions and strategic initiatives following the 2025 Ministerial Council in Bremen. To help make these projects a reality, we will be recruiting many new colleagues in engineering and science, as well as support services! Your next big opportunity could be here, so read on to find out more. You can also set up a job alert to be the first one to know when opportunities are published.   

Comet K1, whose full name is Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), had just passed its closest approach to the Sun and was heading out of the Solar System. Though it had been intact just days before, K1 fragmented into at least four pieces while the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was watching. The odds of that happening while Hubble viewed the comet are extraordinarily miniscule.

ESA Impact: our story so far this year

Thanks to the success of the Arctic Weather Satellite prototype and Eumetsat’s recent greenlight to develop a full constellation of similar satellites called Sterna, the European Space Agency has awarded OHB Sweden with the contract to build 20 satellites.