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Video: 00:09:35

ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski captured these stunning timelapse videos during his 20-day stay aboard the International Space Station as part of Axiom Mission 4, known as Ignis. Filmed from the Cupola – the Space Station’s iconic seven-windowed observation module – the footage showcases breathtaking views of Earth and the Moon from orbit.

Launched on 25 June 2025 aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, Sławosz conducted 13 experiments proposed by Polish institutions in collaboration with ESA, plus three ESA-led investigations. These spanned human research, materials science, biology, biotechnology and technology demonstrations.

The Ax-4 mission marks the second commercial human spaceflight for an ESA project astronaut. Ignis was sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT) and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA).   

Access the related broadcast quality footage. 

Week in images: 19-23 January 2026

Discover our week through the lens

Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us at the Brazilian-Bolivian border over part of the Pantanal region, a unique ecosystem, home to an impressive variety of plants and wildlife.

Already recognised for its excellence and even adopted for operational weather forecasting, the European Space Agency’s Arctic Weather Satellite has now fulfilled its most important role. This small prototype mission has succeeded in paving the way for a new constellation of similar satellites, known as EPS-Sterna.

Image: A celebrity cluster in the spotlight

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The 18th European Space Conference (ESC) will take place on 27 and 28 January 2026 at the Square Convention Centre in Brussels, Belgium.

Just as avalanches on snowy mountains start with the movement of a small quantity of snow, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft has discovered that a solar flare is triggered by initially weak disturbances that quickly become more violent. This rapidly evolving process creates a ‘sky’ of raining plasma blobs that continue to fall even after the flare subsides.

To land on the right foot on the Red Planet, European engineers have been dropping a skeleton of the four-legged ExoMars descent module at various speeds and heights on simulated martian surfaces.

Image: Helix Nebula (NIRCam image)

Image: This image, captured by Copernicus Sentinel-3 on 18 January 2026, shows clouds of smoke from wildfires on the coast of Chile.