European Space Agency
The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states dedicated to the exploration of space. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, ESA has a worldwide staff of about 2,200
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This year will mark the European Space Agency’s 50th anniversary and promises to be a landmark year for the European aerospace industry. In addition to milestone events in our programmes, September will also mark 30 years of satellite navigation for Europe. This spring brings the second commercial mission involving a project astronaut to the International Space Station on Axiom Mission 4, while events such as ESA's Living Planet Symposium and the International Paris Air Show will gather the space community face to face. View the full article
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Last night a crucial step in the European Space Agency’s eclipse-making Proba-3 mission was completed: the two spacecraft, flying jointly since launch, have successfully separated. This leaves them ready to begin their cosmic dance in the world’s first-ever precision formation-flying mission. View the full article
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The first IRIDE satellite – the Pathfinder Hawk – is now in orbit around Earth after lifting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on 14 January. As its ‘Pathfinder’ name suggests, this new microsatellite is a prototype for one of the six IRIDE constellations, which are tailored to provide information for a wide range of environmental, emergency and security services for Italy. View the full article
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Video: 00:01:36 Fly over Mercury with BepiColombo for the final time during the mission’s epic expedition around the Sun. The ESA/JAXA spacecraft captured these images of the Solar System's smallest planet on 7 and 8 January 2025, before and during its sixth encounter with Mercury. This was its final planetary flyby until it enters orbit around the planet in late 2026. The video begins with BepiColombo's approach to Mercury, showing images taken by onboard monitoring cameras 1 and 2 (M-CAM 1 and M-CAM 2) between 16:59 CET on 7 January and 01:45 CET on 8 January. During this time, the spacecraft moved from 106 019 to 42 513 km from Mercury's surface. The view fro…
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The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton has detected rapidly fluctuating X-rays coming from the very edge of a supermassive black hole in the heart of a nearby galaxy. The results paint a fascinating picture that defies how we thought matter falls into such black holes, and points to a potential source of gravitational waves that ESA’s future mission, LISA, could see. View the full article
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Slovenia has celebrated its status ESA's 23rd Member State with a day of space activities including a primetime television broadcast from the Herman Potočnik Noordung Space Technology Center in Vitanje. View the full article
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Image: Five wildfires are still currently burning (as of 10 January) in areas of north Los Angeles. This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on 9 January 2025, shows the Palisades and the Eaton fires, with smoke seen reaching Catalina Island and the Santa Barbara reserve. View the full article
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Week in images: 06-10 January 2025 Discover our week through the lens View the full article
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Video: 01:22:54 Watch the replay of ESA's start-of-the-year press briefing looking ahead to 2025. View the full article
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On 8 January 2025, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flew past Mercury for the sixth time, successfully completing the final ‘gravity assist manoeuvre’ needed to steer it into orbit around the planet in late 2026. The spacecraft flew just a few hundred kilometres above the planet's north pole. Close-up images expose possibly icy craters whose floors are in permanent shadow, and the vast sunlit northern plains. View the full article
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Image: Fanned by very strong winds, a wildfire is ripping through the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, California. This image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission vividly depicts the smoke billowing from the fire near Santa Monica on 7 January 2025, not long after the fire broke out. View the full article
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On 8 January 2025, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission will fly just 295 km above Mercury's surface, with a closest approach scheduled for 06:59 CET (05:59 UTC). It will use this opportunity to photograph Mercury, make unique measurements of the planet’s environment, and fine-tune science instrument operations before the main mission begins. This sixth and final flyby will reduce the spacecraft’s speed and change its direction, readying it for entering orbit around the tiny planet in late 2026. View the full article
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Video: 00:01:14 At the start of this new year, we look back at close-up pictures and solar flare data recorded by the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission over the last three years. See and hear for yourself how the number of flares and their intensity increase, a clear sign of the Sun approaching the peak of the 11-year solar cycle. This video combines ultraviolet images of the Sun's outer atmosphere (the corona, yellow) taken by Solar Orbiter's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument, with the size and locations of solar flares (blue circles) as recorded by the Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX) instrument. The accompanying audio is a sonification ba…
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Image: Pale blue (supernova) dot View the full article
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Don’t miss the final ESA Impact of the year! Your interactive gateway to the most captivating stories and stunning visuals from ESA. View the full article
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In a world first, ESA and Telesat have successfully connected a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite to the ground using 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) technology in the Ka-band frequency range, marking a crucial step towards making space-based connections as simple as using a mobile phone. View the full article
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Global warming is driving the rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, contributing to global sea level rise and disrupting weather patterns worldwide. Because of this, precise measurements of its changing shape are of critical importance for adapting to climate change. Now, scientists have delivered the first measurements of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s changing shape using data from ESA's CryoSat and NASA's ICESat-2 ice missions. View the full article
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Video: 00:10:27 In 1975, 10 European countries came together with a vision to collaborate on key space activities: science and astronomy, launch capabilities and space applications: the European Space Agency, ESA, was born. In 2025, we mark half a century of joint European achievement – filled with firsts and breakthroughs in science, exploration and technology, and the space infrastructure and economy that power Europe today. During the past five decades ESA has grown, developing ever bolder and bigger projects and adding more Member States, with Slovenia joining as the latest full Member State in January. We’ll also celebrate the 50th anniversary of ESA’s Es…
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Year in images 2024 Our year through the lens: a selection of our favourite images for 2023 View the full article
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Image: Hera asteroid mission in your house View the full article
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Image: With the festive season approaching, even Earth-observing satellites are getting into the spirit, capturing a stunning compilation of European cities that resemble stars. View the full article
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Image: The southern lights at Concordia station in Antarctica View the full article
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Video: 00:01:22 An ethereal dance of misty clouds of interstellar dust with a myriad of distant stars and galaxies speckled like paint drops over a black canvas. This is a sonification of a breathtaking image king image taken by ESA's Euclid space telescope of the young star-forming region Messier 78. The sonification offers a different representation of the data collected by Euclid, and lets us explore the stellar nurseries in M78 through sound. Close your eyes and listen to let the cosmic image be drawn by your mind’s eye, or watch as the traceback line in this video follows the sounds to colour the image from left to right. The twinkling sounds of various pi…
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