ESO Top News

Week in images: 10-14 March 2025

Discover our week through the lens

The European Space Agency is releasing the first catalogue of astronomical data from the Euclid space telescope, including three new enormous image mosaics with zoom-ins. Follow the reveal live on Wednesday 19 March at 11:00 BST / 12:00 CET.

Watch the replay of our Hera mission Mars flyby event. On 12 March 2025, ESA’s Hera mission came to within 5000 km of the surface of the red planet and 300 km of Mars’s more distant and enigmatic moon Deimos. During this flyby, Hera performed observations of both Mars and the city-sized Deimos. Hera then needed to swing its High Gain Antenna back to Earth to transmit its data home. On Thursday, 13 March, these images were premiered by Hera’s science team from ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, explaining what they reveal, during our public webcast starting at 11:50 CET. The team was joined by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and renowned science fiction writer Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, as well as a surprise special guest!

While performing yesterday’s flyby of Mars, ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence made the first use of its payload for scientific purposes beyond Earth and the Moon. Activating a trio of instruments, Hera imaged the surface of the red planet as well as the face of Deimos, the smaller and more mysterious of Mars’s two moons.

High above the Arctic Circle, on the rugged terrain of Andøya, three ESA radionavigation engineers take a rare moment to unwind with a game of shuffleboard. Outside, sheep graze under the shimmering northern lights, a serene backdrop to their demanding mission: test how navigation technologies withstand interference signals. With 100TB of data collected over 5 days, their efforts promise to strengthen the reliability of satellite navigation for the benefit of us all.

European scientists are asking volunteers to lie down on a waterbed for 10 days as part of a pioneering dry immersion study to recreate some of the effects of spaceflight on the body.

Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth.

In September 2022 NASA’s DART spacecraft tested if it was possible to divert an asteroid by giving it a shove – and found out that it was! Important knowledge, should we wish to avoid going the same way as the dinosaurs. Astronomers can observe from afar how the smaller asteroid’s orbit has shifted since DART’s impact, but there is still a missing piece of the puzzle if we want to fully understand how ‘kinetic impacting’ works in practice. Suitable for kids and adults alike, this episode of ‘The Incredible Adventures of Hera’ explains what ESA’s asteroid detective and its CubeSat assistants are doing on their cosmic roadtrip through space towards the asteroid, and why it involves skimming close to Mars.

Watch the other episodes of The Incredible Adventures of the Hera Mission

The European Space Agency has unveiled the ESA Space HPC, a new resource for space in Europe. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher was joined by ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun and ASI president Teodoro Valente to cut the ribbon at ESA’s establishment in Italy, ESRIN.  

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.