ESO Top News

Help us uncover the secrets of the Sun! Our Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been watching the Sun since February 2020. With five years’ worth of data waiting to be explored, it’s time to dig in. The new ‘Solar Radio Burst Tracker’ Zooniverse project is ready for you.

On 12 March 2025 ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence performs a flyby of Mars. The gravity of the red planet shifts the spacecraft’s trajectory towards the Didymos binary asteroid system, shortening its trip by months and saving substantial fuel.

This is a simulation of that flyby, with closest approach to Martian moon Deimos taking place at 12:07 GMT and Mars occurring at 12:51 GMT. It was made using SPICE (Spacecraft, Planet, Instrument, C-matrix, Events) software. Produced by a team at ESA’s ESAC European Space Astronomy Centre, this SPICE visualisation is used to plan instrument acquisitions during Hera’s flyby.

Hera comes to around 5000 km from the surface of Mars during its flyby. It will also image Deimos, the smaller of Mars’s two moons, from a minimum 1000 km away (while venturing as close as 300 km). Hera will also image Mars’s larger moon Phobos as it begins to move away from Mars. In this sped-up simulation, Deimos is seen 30 seconds in, at 12:07 GMT, while the more distant star-like Phobos becomes visible at two minutes in, at 12:49 GMT.

The spacecraft employs three of its instruments over the course of these close encounters, all located together on the ‘Asteroid Deck’ on top of Hera:

Hera’s Asteroid Framing Camera is formed of two redundant 1020x1020 pixel monochromatic visible light cameras, used for both navigation and science.

The Thermal Infrared Imager, supplied by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, images at mid-infrared wavelengths to determine surface temperatures.

Hera’s Hyperscout H is a hyperspectral imager, observing in 25 visible and near-infrared spectral bands to prospect surface minerals.

Did you know this mission has its own AI? You can pose questions to our Hera Space Companion!

On  Wednesday 12 March 2025 ESA’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence performs a flyby of Mars. The gravity of the red planet shifts the spacecraft’s trajectory towards its final destination of the Didymos binary asteroid system, shortening its trip by months and saving substantial fuel.

Watch the livestream release of images from Hera’s flyby by the mission’s science team on Thursday 13 March, starting at 11:50 CET!

Hera comes to around 5000 km from the surface of Mars during its flyby. It will also image Deimos, the smaller of Mars’s two moons, from a minimum 1000 km away (while venturing as close as 300 km). Hera will also image Mars’s larger moon Phobos as it begins to move away from Mars.

Launched on 7 October 2024, Hera on its way to visit the first asteroid to have had its orbit altered by human action. By gathering close-up data about the Dimorphos asteroid, which was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022, Hera will help turn asteroid deflection into a well understood and potentially repeatable technique.

Hera will reach the Didymos asteroid and its Dimorphos moonlet in December 2026. By gathering crucial missing data during its close-up crash scene investigation, Hera will turn the kinetic impact method of asteroid deflection into a well understood technique that could potentially be used for real when needed.

Did you know this mission has its own AI? You can pose questions to our Hera Space Companion!

Join us live for a star-studded event this Thursday, as scientists working on ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence release the mission’s first scientific observations beyond the Earth-Moon system, following its imminent flyby of Mars.

Biomass

ESA's forest mission

Marking another step towards new insights into Earth’s forests and their role in the carbon cycle, ESA’s groundbreaking Biomass satellite has arrived at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, to be prepared for liftoff on a Vega-C rocket at the end of April.

Week in images: 03-07 March 2025

Discover our week through the lens

At MWC25 Barcelona, the European Space Agency (ESA) unveiled a funding initiative, promoted in partnership with GSMA Foundry, to support projects aimed at integrating satellite and terrestrial networks for seamless connectivity.

Europe’s newest rocket, Ariane 6, took flight for the second time from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 13:24 local time on 6 March (16:24 GMT, 17:24 CET). This was the first commercial flight for Ariane 6, flight VA263, delivering the CSO-3 satellite to orbit. Arianespace was the operator and launch service provider for the French Procurement agency (DGA) and France’s space agency CNES on behalf of the French Air and Space Force’s Space Command (CDE).

Europe’s newest rocket, Ariane 6, took flight for the second time from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 13:24 local time on 6 March (16:24 GMT, 17:24 CET). This was the first commercial flight for Ariane 6, flight VA263, delivering the CSO-3 satellite to orbit. Arianespace was the operator and launch service provider for the French Procurement agency (DGA) and France’s space agency CNES on behalf of the French Air and Space Force’s Space Command (CDE).

At the European Space Agency’s technical heart in the Netherlands, engineers have spent the last five months unboxing and testing elements of Europe’s next space science mission. With the two main parts now joined together, Smile is well on its way to being ready to launch by the end of 2025.

The methane emitted in 2022 by the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines was more than double the volume estimated at the time, according to a study published in Nature.

A compelling collection of images that illustrates humanity’s efforts to mitigate the far-reaching impacts of violent solar outbursts has been unveiled in London.