Astronomy

Week in images: 31 March - 04 April 2025

Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:08:54

Meet Amelie Schoenenwald— biotechnologist, business expert, and PhD in structural biology. Whether in the lab or the great outdoors, she thrives in extreme environments, ready to embrace the adventure of ESA’s Astronaut Reserve.

In this miniseries, we take you on a journey through the ESA Astronaut Reserve, diving into the first part of their Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) near Cologne, Germany. Our “ARTists” are immersing themselves in everything from ESA and the International Space Station programme to the European space industry and institutions. They’re gaining hands-on experience in technical skills like spacecraft systems and robotics, alongside human behaviour, scientific lessons, scuba diving, and survival training. 

ESA’s Astronaut Reserve Training programme is all about building Europe’s next generation of space explorers—preparing them for the opportunities of future missions in Earth orbit and beyond.

This interview was recorded in November 2024.

Learn more about Amelie’s favourite space mission.

You can listen to this episode on all major podcast platforms.

Keep exploring with ESA Explores!

A team that includes aerospace engineers, historians and writers have proposed retrieving the 67-year-old Vanguard 1 satellite from orbit.

Get out your

For a long time, the Kakeya conjecture, which involves rotating an infinitely narrow needle, kept mathematicians guessing—until now

Convection processes beneath Venus' scorched surface may help explain the planet's many volcanoes, a new study reports.

Scientists estimate there are about 4,000 species of native bees in the U.S.—and they’re both cooler and ecologically more important than honeybees

According to new simulations, many, even most, planets get ejected from their star early in their history

USAID is responsible for global health efforts that have saved the lives of millions of children. What happens when those programs are cut?

Scientists have uncovered a massive galaxy that existed just 2 billion years after the Big Bang. But how did this colossal "Big Wheel" form so early in the universe? The answer could change everything we know about galaxy growth.

SpaceX's Fram2, the first crewed mission ever to orbit Earth over its poles, will splash down today (April 4), and you can watch the action live.

Any advanced civilisation needs power. Don’t know about you but I’ve been camping lots, even wild camping but the experience is a whole lot easier if you have power! It’s the same for a long-term presence on the Moon (not that I’m likening my camping to a trip to the Moon!) but instead of launching a bunch of solar panels, a new paper suggests we can get power from the lunar regolith! Researchers suggest that the fine dusty material on the surface of the Moon could be melted to provide a type of crystals that can produce solar electricity! This would allow solar panels to be built on the Moon with only 1% of components sent from Earth!

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission shows us what is left of the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world.

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This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases NGC 346, a dazzling young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 210 000 light-years away in the constellation Tucana. The Small Magellanic Cloud is less rich in elements heavier than helium — what astronomers call metals — than the Milky Way. This makes conditions in the galaxy similar to what existed in the early Universe.

Although several images of NGC 346 have been released previously, this view includes new data and is the first to combine Hubble observations made at infrared, optical, and ultraviolet wavelengths into an intricately detailed view of this vibrant star-forming factory.

NGC 346 is home to more than 2500 newborn stars. The cluster’s most massive stars, which are many times more massive than our Sun, blaze with an intense blue light in this image. The glowing pink nebula and snakelike dark clouds are the remnant of the birthplace of the stars in the cluster.

The inhabitants of this cluster are stellar sculptors, carving out a bubble from the nebula. NGC 346’s hot, massive stars produce intense radiation and fierce stellar winds that pummel the billowing gas of their birthplace and begin to disperse the surrounding nebula.

The nebula, named N66, is the brightest example of an H II (pronounced ‘H-two’) region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. H II regions are set aglow by ultraviolet light from hot young stars like those in NGC 346. The presence of the brilliant nebula indicates the young age of the star cluster, as an H II region shines only as long as the stars that power it — a mere few million years for the massive stars pictured here.

[Image description: A star cluster within a nebula. The background is filled with thin, pale blue clouds. Parts are thicker and pinker in colour. The cluster is made up of bright blue stars that illuminate the nebula around them. Large arcs of dense dust curve around, before and behind the clustered stars, pressed together by the stars’ radiation. Behind the clouds of the nebula can be seen large numbers of orange stars.]

SpaceX sent 27 of its Starlink internet satellites toward low Earth orbit from California this evening (April 3).

Sometimes, a brief update is all that is needed to keep the public interested in major projects. That's precisely what John Baker and James Keane of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided to the 56th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in Texas last month. Their brief paper showcased the ongoing development of the Endurance autonomous rover, which was more thoroughly fleshed out in a massive 296-page mission concept study back in 2023. But what has the team been up to since then?

SpinLaunch has unveiled its plans for a new broadband satellite constellation known as Meridian Space.

Billed as the "World's Largest Astronomy & Space Expo," NEAF 2025 draws thousands of stargazers each year, with astronauts and exoplanet hunters speaking this year.

The next astronauts to fly to the moon now have a mission patch to represent their journey. NASA debuted the official Artemis 2 insignia, its first emblem for a moon-bound crew in more than 50 years.

SpaceX is gearing up for the ninth test flight of its Starship megarocket, which will be the first to reuse the vehicle's Super Heavy first stage.