Category: News

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What a difference a year makes! Today Hera’s asteroid mission for planetary defence is cruising through deep space on the far side of the Sun, headed to its final destination: the Didymos binary asteroid system. But a year ago, on 7 October 2024, it was unsure if the mission was ever going to take off at all.

Its launcher was grounded due to a launch anomaly and Hurricane Milton was closing on Cape Canaveral! The mission needed to lift off then and there because it had to perform a flyby of Mars to speed it on its way to Didymos. Any delay would add years to its travel time. But Hera received permission for launch and the heavens cleared just half an hour before launch. Liftoff happened to plan – the team had their mission in space!

Since then Hera has been testing out the ‘self-driving’ technology it will use around the asteroids on Earth and the Moon, performed its flyby of Mars and imaged its very first asteroid from three million kilometres, proving the capability of its main Asteroid Framing Camera. Next Hera is heading for aphelion, its furthest distance from the Sun. It will reach Didymos in autumn 2026, after which it will begin its mission to find out what happened to the smaller asteroid after NASA’s DART spacecraft impacted it in September 2022.

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Satellite navigation is essential to everything from tracking your morning jog to landing air ambulances. But as reliance on satellite navigation grows, so do the risks associated with its interruption, natural or intentional. In its pursuit of strengthening European resilience in navigation, the European Space Agency (ESA) took part in Jammertest.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has expanded its capability to communicate with scientific, exploration and space safety missions across our Solar System with the inauguration of a new 35-m diameter deep space antenna – the fourth for Estrack, ESA’s deep space tracking network.

Week in images: 29 September – 3 October 2025

Discover our week through the lens

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2025 marks a landmark year for Europe’s ‘bridge between Earth and space’. The European Space Agency’s Estrack satellite tracking network turns 50.

Since its inception in 1975, Estrack – ESA’s global network of ground stations – has formed the vital communication bridge between satellites in orbit and mission control at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

Now comprising six stations spanning six countries, Estrack has grown into a strategic asset for Europe, enabling communication with spacecraft, transmitting commands and receiving scientific data.

The network keeps an eye on satellites no matter their location: tracking them across Earth orbit, voyaging to comets or asteroids, keeping station at the scientifically important Sun-Earth Lagrange points, and deep into our Solar System. It even keeps tabs on European launchers as they soar into orbit, ensuring no rocket is ever out of reach.

This year, ESA is also expanding its deep space communication capabilities with the construction of a new 35-metre deep space antenna – the fourth of its kind. It will be joining the existing one at New Norcia station, Australia, to help meet the Agency’s fast increasing data download needs.

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Image:
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image captures an active lava lake on the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island.

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ESA’s Mars Express takes us on another mesmerising flight over curving channels carved by water, islands that have resisted erosion, and a maze of hilly terrain.

Central to the tour is a 1300 km-long outflow channel called Shalbatana Vallis. It cascades down from the highland region of Xanthe Terra to the smoother lowlands of Chryse Planitia.

Billions of years ago, water surged through this channel, creating many of the features we see today.

The tour culminates in a spectacular view of a 100 km-wide impact crater, smashed out of Mars’s surface when it collided with a space rock.

Enjoy the flight, and be sure to turn up the volume for the full audio guide experience.

Processing notes:

This film was created using the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC30) data, an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the mission’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic image, centred at 5°N/320°E, is combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape.

For every second of the movie, 50 separate frames are rendered following a predefined camera path in the scene. The vertical exaggeration used for the animation is three-fold. Atmospheric effects, like clouds and haze, have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 250 km.

The HRSC camera on Mars Express is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The systematic processing of the camera data took place at the DLR Institute for Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof. The working group of Planetary Science and Remote Sensing at Freie Universität Berlin used the data to create the film.

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The European Space Agency and the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) have announced they will work together on peaceful uses of space, starting with space weather monitoring and sharing space communications facilities.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a €50 million contract with aerospace company Thales Alenia Space to begin the preliminary design phase of the Security And cryptoGrAphic (SAGA) mission. This agreement enables SAGA to continue to its preliminary design review, marking a relevant step towards establishing secure, space-based communications using quantum technologies.

Following its arrival in California a few weeks ago, the time has come for spacecraft engineers to ready the next sea-level monitoring satellite, Copernicus Sentinel-6B, for launch, which is slated for November.

The first step has been to carefully remove this precious new satellite from its storage container and to start a series of comprehensive checks.

The third day of the 76th International Astronautical Congress was again full of interactions between the European Space Agency and international partners.

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are taking place within its underground ocean. Some of these reactions could be part of chains that lead to even more complex, potentially biologically relevant molecules.

Published today in Nature Astronomy, this discovery further strengthens the case for a dedicated European Space Agency (ESA) mission to orbit and land on Enceladus.

Our interactive publication covering captivating stories and stunning images from the most recent quarter of the year.