Category: News

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00:06:44

The European Space Agency’s Euclid mission has scouted out the three areas in the sky where it will eventually provide the deepest observations of its mission.

In just one week of observations, with one scan of each region so far, Euclid already spotted 26 million galaxies. The farthest of those are up to 10.5 billion light-years away.

In the coming years, Euclid will pass over these three regions tens of times, capturing many more faraway galaxies, making these fields truly ‘deep’ by the end of the nominal mission in 2030.

The first glimpse of 63 square degrees of the sky, the equivalent area of more than 300 times the full Moon, already gives an impressive preview of the scale of Euclid’s grand cosmic atlas when the mission is complete. This atlas will cover one-third of the entire sky – 14 000 square degrees – in this high-quality detail.

Explore the three deep field previews in ESASky:

–          Euclid Deep Field South

–          Euclid Deep Field Fornax:

–          Euclid Deep Field North:

Read more: Euclid opens data treasure trove, offers glimpse of deep fields

On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission released its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take centre stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organisation in the cosmic web.

ESA Impact: Top 2025 space photos so far

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Biomass out of the box

Week in images: 10-14 March 2025

Discover our week through the lens

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This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image showcases striking rocky formations amid the blue waters of Halong Bay in northeast Vietnam.

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.

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01:08:00

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.

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00:03:21

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.