Space News & Blog Articles

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

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.

ESA's Strategy 2040

On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission released its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take centre stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organisation in the cosmic web.

ESA Impact: Top 2025 space photos so far

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A group of volunteers is spending two months lying in bed—with their feet up and one shoulder always touching the mattress—even while eating, showering, and using the toilet. But why? This extreme bedrest study is helping scientists understand how space travel affects the human body and how to keep astronauts healthy on long missions.

Week in images: 27-31 January 2025

The European Space Agency (ESA) Planetary Defence Office is closely monitoring the recently discovered asteroid 2024 YR4, which has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2032.

Hisdesat, Spain's premier provider of secure satellite communications, is set to launch its SpainSat Next Generation I (SNG I) satellite aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 29 January from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 20:34 EST (30 January at 02:34 CET). The European Space Agency (ESA)-supported satellite will provide more cost-effective, adaptable and secure communication services for governments and emergency response teams across Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East and up to Singapore in Asia.

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Listen to the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft as it flew past Mercury on 8 January 2025. This sixth and final flyby used the little planet's gravity to steer the spacecraft on course for entering orbit around Mercury in 2026. 

A study using data from ESA’s Swarm mission suggests that faint magnetic signatures created by Earth’s tides can help us determine magma distribution under the seabed and could even give us insights into long-term trends in global ocean temperatures and salinity.

A capacity increase by almost 80%! In late July 2024, the Malargüe deep-space communication station completed an important upgrade of its antenna feed that will allow missions to send much more data back to Earth.

Week in images: 13-17 January 2025

Image: Seed-sized space chip

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image captures the borders between North and South Dakota and Minnesota blanketed with snow and ice.

The largest photomosaic of the Andromeda galaxy, assembled from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observations, unveils hundreds of millions of stars. It took more than 10 years to collect data for this colorful portrait of our neighbouring galaxy and was created from more than 600 snapshots. This stunning, colourful mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars, and is spread across roughly 2.5 billion pixels.

With ESA’s EarthCARE satellite and four measuring instruments all working extremely well and fully commissioned, the mission’s ‘first level’ data stream is now freely available.