ESO Top News

ESA will be broadcasting live as the European-Chinese Smile mission launches at 04:52 BST/05:52 CEST (00:52 local time) on 19 May 2026.

Smile will launch on a European Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Times subject to change at short notice.

Week in images: 04-08 May 2026

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Image: Part of the rugged and deeply indented coast of northeastern Greenland is featured in this radar image captured by Copernicus Sentinel-1.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to deepen collaboration in planetary defence, alongside a dedicated agreement for collaboration on the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) to the near-Earth asteroid Apophis.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is using Extended Reality (XR) to support training, enhance operations, improve simulation environments, and to bring the wonders of space to the public.

In the far northern reaches of Finnish Lapland, an ambitious new chapter in Earth observation is unfolding. The European Space Agency, together with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and Finnish industrial partners, is advancing plans to develop a state-of-the-art ‘supersite’ in Sodankylä.

The plan is to equip this remote site with an array of new advanced environmental measuring technologies, including a striking high-tech airship carrying sensors to perform regional surveys.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope together with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have looked deeply at thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies, studying clusters at different stages of evolution. Their findings show that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in, clearing away gas and filling the galaxy with ultraviolet light. The result gives us a better understanding of star formation in galaxies, as well as how and where planets can form.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has partnered with French video game studio DON’T NOD Entertainment on the development of Aphelion, a narrative science‑fiction game inspired by space exploration and scientific expertise.

Thirteen European satellites on the same rideshare launcher have successfully reached orbit, bringing capabilities to Italian and Greek monitoring programmes as well as CubeSats that will test satellite connectivity.

Week in images: 27 April - 01 May 2026

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The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite, launched last November, is now fully operational after successfully completing its critical in-orbit commissioning phase.

With all four Sentinel-1 satellites having now been deployed, this achievement marks a major milestone for this flagship radar mission – a journey that began more than a decade ago and that has helped pave the way for the future of Earth observation.

Image: Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 21 April 2026, this image shows a double bloom in the Netherlands: an array of vibrant colours in the tulip fields as well as the blue-greenish swirls of phytoplankton in the North Sea.

Video: 00:03:10

What did space deliver for Europe this month? From the Moon to low Earth orbit and beyond, here’s what the European Space Agency has been up to.

Updated on 30 April 2026

On 30 April 2026, four P120C boosters ignited and lifted Ariane 6 to the skies, for the second time. Flight VA268 took 32 satellites for Amazon’s Leo constellation to low-Earth orbit. Liftoff occurred at 05:57 local time (09:57 BST/10:57 CET) from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, with separation of the last satellites after 114 minutes.

The upper stage was then fired a third time to ensure a safe deorbit and allowing Ariane 6 to adhere to the zero debris approach.

Image: The great parachute bake-out

Video: 00:02:02

Watch ESA’s Mars chief engineer Albert Haldemann explain the sterilisation process of one of the parachutes of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission and why it matters.  

Carefully wrapped inside a donut-shaped bag is a 35-m diameter parachute, about to be baked inside a specialised dry-heat steriliser oven. The parachute needs to be at least 10 000 times cleaner than your smartphone. 

To get rid of any microbes it might have picked up during its time on Earth, the parachute was heated up in a specialised oven at the European Space Agency’s Life Support and Physical Sciences Laboratory at ESTEC, the agency’s technical centre in the Netherlands. All air inside the cleanroom continuously passes through a two-stage filter, and everyone entering the chamber must gown up more rigorously than a surgeon before passing through an air shower to remove any contaminants. 

The 74 kg parachute, made mostly of nylon and Kevlar fabrics, will endure a six-minute dive into the thin martian atmosphere and slow down the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover for a safe landing on the Red Planet. This feat will make it the largest parachute ever to fly on the Red Planet, or anywhere else in the Solar System besides Earth.  

The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will launch in 2028 and spend over 25 months travelling to the Red Planet where it will search for signs of life beneath the martian surface. 

The potential existence of past and perhaps even present-day life on our closest planetary neighbour requires rigorous sterilisation, to make sure that no microbes piggyback their way there from Earth. Any terrestrial microbes hardy enough to survive the ride through space could interfere with the investigation by causing ‘forward contamination’ and triggering a false positive. 

Protecting the martian environment from ourselves, in accordance with international planetary protection measures, is as important as protecting the mission itself. 

Image: Starry spiral in a familiar neighbourhood

To mark the first anniversary of the European Space Agency’s Biomass satellite, we present a selection of striking images captured over the past 12 months, revealing Earth’s forests, and much more, in new detail. In just one year, this pioneering mission has begun transforming our understanding of forest dynamics and advancing how scientists monitor the critical role forests play in regulating the global carbon cycle.

Week in images: 20-24 April 2026

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