Space News & Blog Articles

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars in Carina Nebula that were previously obscured.

Highly anticipated observations hint at treasure trove of discoveries to come

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the distant Universe so far.

Webb’s enormous mirror and precise instruments joined forces to capture the most detailed measurements of starlight filtering through the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System to date.

The Ariane 6 launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana now hosts the first example of ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket. This Ariane 6 combined tests model will be used to validate the entire launch system during its ground phase in readiness for the inaugural launch of Ariane 6. 

Video: 00:01:48

ESA’s newest launcher stands nearly 35m tall when its four stages and payload are fully stacked. For its inaugural flight, VV21, the main payload is LARES-2, a scientific mission of the Italian space agency, ASI.

How can Europe exploit its technical, industrial and financial strengths to ensure it remains a leader in space transportation in the 2030s and beyond? How can ESA, Europe’s national space agencies and institutions, and both established and new industrial partners better co-ordinate their efforts to meet global competition that demands innovation and cost-reduction? 

A 12-strong star-studded advisory group is to guide ESA’s human and robotic space exploration as the agency aims to increase European ambitions in space.

Vincent Müller, a recent school-leaver, will visit all of ESA’s European sites in the next two weeks. The lucky winner of a free Interrail ticket from the DiscoverEU programme, he decided to use the ticket to make this journey and will share his experiences in a blog to enthuse young people to pursue a career in space.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will soon reveal unprecedented and detailed views of the Universe, with the upcoming release of its first full-colour images and spectroscopic data.

Week in images: 04-08 July 2022

Image: Discs for fault detection

ESA’s new medium-lift Vega-C rocket is nearly ready for its inaugural flight. You can follow live on ESA Web TV. Flight VV21 will lift off as soon as 13 July at 13:13 CEST, pending suitable conditions for launch.

Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, part of the Canary Islands lying in the North Atlantic Ocean, are featured in this false-colour image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

Video: 00:43:03

Watch the replay of the Q&A session with the media to learn more about the preparations for the upcoming launch of Vega-C. The inaugural flight of this new rocket in the Vega family is currently planned on 13 July 2022. Speakers include Stefano Bianchi, ESA Head of Flight Programmes Department, Benoit Pouffary, ESA Vega & Space Rider Launch System Engineering Manager, Ettore Scardecchia, Avio Head of Engineering and Mario Cosmo, ASI Director of Science and Research.

The ESA astronaut selection has been progressing as planned, with phase two of the selection process ending in March this year, and phase three ending in June.

Video: 00:01:50

FedCon is one of Europe's largest science fiction conventions, its 2022 edition held earlier this month in Bonn in Germany. Actors from the many incarnations of Star Trek, as well as Star Wars, Doctor Who, and other science fiction shows met with thousands of fans.

With air temperatures in excess of 10°C above the average for the time of year in parts of Europe, the United States and Asia, June 2022 has gone down as a record breaker. The fear is that these extreme early-season heatwaves are a taste of what could soon be the norm as climate change continues to take hold. For those in cities, the heat dissipates slower creating ‘urban heat islands’, which make everyday life even more of a struggle.

As excitement mounts for the unveiling of Webb’s first full-colour images on Tuesday 12 July, here’s how to participate in the global celebration via ESA’s channels. Choose from watching a livestream, attending an in-person event, or joining our social media activities.

In a complex role-played version of a mission to the Moon, controllers at ESOC combined with a team of geological scientists and ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter to oversee a rover’s collection of rock samples. Acting as if he were in lunar orbit, the astronaut was in fact based in a hotel room in Catania, Sicily, with the rover 23 km away and 2 600 m uphill on the volcanic flanks of Mount Etna. As Thomas commanded the rover to pick up rocks his hand experienced just what the robot’s gripper felt – an added dimension in remote control.