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ESA Impact 2025 - October-December
ESA Impact 2025 - October-December
Welcome to ESA Impact, your interactive gateway to the most captivating stories and stunning visuals from the European Space Agency, now in a mobile-friendly format.
Do You Know What Time It Is? If You're On Mars, Now You Do.
Ask someone on Earth for the time and they can give you an exact answer, thanks to our planet's intricate timekeeping system, built with atomic clocks, GPS satellites and high-speed telecommunications networks. Ask for the time on Mars and the answer gets much more complicated.
Metrics
Click here to view the FY25 Services Catalog
The catalogs provide service description, chargeback rate, unit of measure, and service level indicators for each NSSC service.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)Click here to view the Service Level Agreement
The SLA provides information about roles, responsibilities, rates, and service level indicators for all NASA Centers. The SLA is negotiated on an annual basis in line with the fiscal year. A single SLA is shared by all NASA Centers and signed by the Associate Administrator, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, and the Office of Inspector General. The SLA provides for the delivery of specific services from the NSSC to NASA Centers and Headquarters Operations in the areas of:
- Financial Management
- Procurement
- Human Resources
- Information Technology
- Agency Business Services
*** On-Line Course Management and Training Purchases have been realigned to the OLC &Training Purchases section of the bill in accordance with the realignment of training funds. Center Special Projects have been consolidated into one Special Projects bill with the funding Center identified for each project.***
FY 2026 – Utilization Reports
October 2025
November 2025
FY 2025 – Utilization Reports
September 2025
August 2025
July 2025
June 2025
May 2025
April 2025
March 2025
February 2025
January 2025
December 2024
November 2024
October 2024
FY 2024 – Utilization Reports
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
Metrics
Click here to view the FY25 Services Catalog
The catalogs provide service description, chargeback rate, unit of measure, and service level indicators for each NSSC service.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)Click here to view the Service Level Agreement
The SLA provides information about roles, responsibilities, rates, and service level indicators for all NASA Centers. The SLA is negotiated on an annual basis in line with the fiscal year. A single SLA is shared by all NASA Centers and signed by the Associate Administrator, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, and the Office of Inspector General. The SLA provides for the delivery of specific services from the NSSC to NASA Centers and Headquarters Operations in the areas of:
- Financial Management
- Procurement
- Human Resources
- Information Technology
- Agency Business Services
*** On-Line Course Management and Training Purchases have been realigned to the OLC &Training Purchases section of the bill in accordance with the realignment of training funds. Center Special Projects have been consolidated into one Special Projects bill with the funding Center identified for each project.***
FY 2026 – Utilization Reports
October 2025
November 2025
FY 2025 – Utilization Reports
September 2025
August 2025
July 2025
June 2025
May 2025
April 2025
March 2025
February 2025
January 2025
December 2024
November 2024
October 2024
FY 2024 – Utilization Reports
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
Putting data centres in space isn't going to happen any time soon
Putting data centres in space isn't going to happen any time soon
Week in images: 15-19 December 2025
Week in images: 15-19 December 2025
Discover our week through the lens
The US beat back bird flu in 2025 – but the battle isn’t over
The US beat back bird flu in 2025 – but the battle isn’t over
Quantum computers turned out to be more useful than expected in 2025
Quantum computers turned out to be more useful than expected in 2025
NASA’s SPHEREx Just Dropped Its First Full-Sky Map, and the View Is Dazzling
NASA’s newest space telescope has unveiled a stunning map of the cosmos in infrared
It’s Raining Magnetic 'Tadpoles' on the Sun
Getting close to things is one way for scientists to collect better data about them. But that's been hard to do for the Sun, since getting close to it typically entails getting burnt to a crisp. Just ask Icarus. But if Icarus had survived his close encounter with the Sun, he might have been able to see massive magnetic “tadpoles” tens of thousands of kilometers wide reconnecting back down to the surface of our star. Or maybe not, because he had human eyes, not the exceptionally sensitive Wide-Field imagers the Parker Solar Probe used to look at the Sun while it made its closest ever pass to our closest star. A new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters from Angelos Vourlidas of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and his co-authors describes what they say on humanity’s closest brush with the Sun so far.
The Top 10 Math Discoveries of 2025
Hidden Fibonacci numbers, a new shape and the search for a grand unified theory of mathematics are among our choices for most exciting findings of the year
Hubble Glimpses Galactic Gas Making a Getaway
- Hubble Home
- Overview
- Impact & Benefits
- Science
- Observatory
- Team
- Multimedia
- News
- More
2 min read
Hubble Glimpses Galactic Gas Making a Getaway This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 4388, a member of the Virgo galaxy cluster. ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Veilleux, J. Wang, J. Greene
A sideways spiral galaxy shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. Located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo (the Maiden), NGC 4388 is a resident of the Virgo galaxy cluster. This enormous cluster of galaxies contains more than a thousand members and is the nearest large galaxy cluster to the Milky Way.
NGC 4388 appears to tilt at an extreme angle relative to our point of view, giving us a nearly edge-on prospect of the galaxy. This perspective reveals a curious feature that wasn’t visible in a previous Hubble image of this galaxy released in 2016: a plume of gas from the galaxy’s nucleus, here seen billowing out from the galaxy’s disk toward the lower-right corner of the image. But where did this outflow come from, and why does it glow?
The answer likely lies in the vast stretches of space that separate the galaxies of the Virgo cluster. Though the space between galaxies appears empty, this space is occupied by hot wisps of gas called the intracluster medium. As NGC 4388 moves within the Virgo cluster, it plunges through the intracluster medium. Pressure from hot intracluster gas whisks away gas from within NGC 4388’s disk, causing it to trail behind as NGC 4388 moves.
The source of the ionizing energy that causes this gas cloud to glow is more uncertain. Researchers suspect that some of the energy comes from the center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole spins gas around it into a superheated disk. The blazing radiation from this disk might ionize the gas closest to the galaxy, while shock waves might be responsible for ionizing filaments of gas farther out.
This image incorporates new data, including several additional wavelengths of light, that bring the ionized gas cloud into view. The image holds data from several observing programs that aim to illuminate galaxies with active black holes at their centers.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubbleMedia Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Explore the Night Sky
Hubble & Citizen Science
Hubble Science Operations
Hubble Glimpses Galactic Gas Making a Getaway
- Hubble Home
- Overview
- Impact & Benefits
- Science
- Observatory
- Team
- Multimedia
- News
- More
2 min read
Hubble Glimpses Galactic Gas Making a Getaway This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 4388, a member of the Virgo galaxy cluster. ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Veilleux, J. Wang, J. GreeneA sideways spiral galaxy shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. Located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo (the Maiden), NGC 4388 is a resident of the Virgo galaxy cluster. This enormous cluster of galaxies contains more than a thousand members and is the nearest large galaxy cluster to the Milky Way.
NGC 4388 appears to tilt at an extreme angle relative to our point of view, giving us a nearly edge-on prospect of the galaxy. This perspective reveals a curious feature that wasn’t visible in a previous Hubble image of this galaxy released in 2016: a plume of gas from the galaxy’s nucleus, here seen billowing out from the galaxy’s disk toward the lower-right corner of the image. But where did this outflow come from, and why does it glow?
The answer likely lies in the vast stretches of space that separate the galaxies of the Virgo cluster. Though the space between galaxies appears empty, this space is occupied by hot wisps of gas called the intracluster medium. As NGC 4388 moves within the Virgo cluster, it plunges through the intracluster medium. Pressure from hot intracluster gas whisks away gas from within NGC 4388’s disk, causing it to trail behind as NGC 4388 moves.
The source of the ionizing energy that causes this gas cloud to glow is more uncertain. Researchers suspect that some of the energy comes from the center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole spins gas around it into a superheated disk. The blazing radiation from this disk might ionize the gas closest to the galaxy, while shock waves might be responsible for ionizing filaments of gas farther out.
This image incorporates new data, including several additional wavelengths of light, that bring the ionized gas cloud into view. The image holds data from several observing programs that aim to illuminate galaxies with active black holes at their centers.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubbleMedia Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Explore the Night Sky
Hubble & Citizen Science
Hubble Science Operations
If I Stop the World, Will I Melt with You?
Depending on how you look at it, this catchphrase from a 1980s pop song is decently accurate: you can actually melt the planet if you stop its turning