Space News & Blog Articles

Thousands of never-before-seen young stars are spotted in a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus, captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula for the appearance of its dusty filaments in previous telescope images, the nebula has long been a favourite for astronomers studying star formation. In addition to young stars, Webb reveals distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition of the nebula’s gas and dust.

Astronauts with their sights on the Moon are receiving world-class geology training during the fifth edition of ESA’s Pangaea campaign. From choosing landing sites for a future Artemis mission, to designing science operations for the lunar surface, the course challenges space explorers to become field scientists.

Week in images: 29 August - 02 September 2022

More than 265 000 visitors headed to Cologne in Germany for Gamescom last week – the world’s largest computer and video games fair. As well as the latest games releases, they got a chance to discover that ESA and the gaming world have a lot in common.

Image: Webb takes its first exoplanet image

Image: One small step for a robot

Europe’s latest Galileo satellites in space have joined the operational constellation, transmitting navigation signals to three billion users across planet Earth as well as relaying distress calls to rescuers. Their entry into service follows a summer test campaign and will result in a measurable increase in positioning accuracy and improved data delivery performance of the overall Galileo system.

This month NASA’s DART spacecraft will collide with the smaller of the two Didymos asteroids in deep space, attempting to shift its orbit in what will be humankind’s first test of the ‘kinetic impactor’ planetary defence technique. Meanwhile, down on the ground, ESA’s follow-on mission to Didymos has reached its own crucial milestone.

Image: Captured from space by Copernicus Sentinel-1 on 30 August 2022, this image shows the extent of flooding that is currently devastating Pakistan. Heavy monsoon rainfall has led to more than a third of the country now being underwater.

Image: Inflatable Moon base

Mars Express takes us over the Holden Basin – part of a region that is a high-ranking target in the search for signs of past life on the Red Planet. This image was taken on 24 April 2022 by the spacecraft’s High Resolution Stereo Camera.

Teams are moving forward to the Moon with a second launch attempt of the Artemis I mission on Saturday, 3 September. The two-hour launch window starts at 20:17 CEST (19:17 BST).

New images of the spectacular Phantom Galaxy, M74, showcase the power of space observatories working together in multiple wavelengths. In this case, data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope compliment each other to provide a comprehensive view of the galaxy.

Week in images: 22-26 August 2022

Save the date: this year’s 11th annual ESA Open Day at ESTEC in the Netherlands is confirmed to take place on Sunday 2 October. One of a string of ‘ESA Days’ across Member States, this is the day when the gates of the Agency’s technical heart will be thrown open to the general public, to see space hardware and testing facilities and meet space scientists, engineers and ESA astronauts.

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The Orion spacecraft with integrated European Service Module sit atop the Space Launch System, imaged at sunrise at historic Launchpad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

Image: ESA astronaut rad-detectors on Artemis

The countdown has started for the first human-rated launch to the Moon in over half a century. ESA’s European Service Module will be powering the Orion spacecraft to our natural satellite and back.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has found definitive evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away. The result provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet, and is indicative of Webb’s ability to also detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets.