Category: Science

Find out how our three new space explorers, Bepi, Mio and MTM, have been preparing for their epic adventure to Mercury

The BepiColombo mission to Mercury is scheduled to launch aboard an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 01:45 GMT (03:45 CEST) on 20 October 2018. Representatives of traditional and social media are invited to apply for accreditation to follow the launch live from ESA’s mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

The three spacecraft of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury are stacked together in launch configuration

Space Science Image of the Week: Bright carbon dioxide ice clings to the walls of a crater in the south polar region of Mars

Space Science Image of the Week: ESA’s Moon-orbiting SMART-1 probe ended its mission on the Moon 12 years ago today, but its final resting place was only seen last year

Space Science Image of the Week: These crisscrossed lines trace the footprints of the Mars Express radar investigation that points to buried water

A taste of the transformative science that the James Webb Space Telescope will enable, from chasing down the Universe’s first galaxies to characterising exoplanets in solar systems beyond our own

Final inspections for the Mercury Transfer Module’s solar arrays before being stowed for launch

As Japan’s Hayabusa2 drew closer to its target Ryugu asteroid, a strange new planetoid came into view – but one with a somewhat familiar shape. This distinct ‘spinning top’ asteroid class has been seen repeatedly in recent years, and might give a foretaste of things to come for ESA’s proposed Hera mission.

Test your memory and get to know BepiColombo and its journey to Mercury

ESA’s Integral satellite joined an international collaboration to find first evidence of the source of high-energy neutrinos: a flaring active galaxy or ‘blazar’

The ExoMars orbiter sends a selection of images from around the Red Planet

Hubble proves Einstein correct on galactic scales, using a ‘cosmic magnifying lens’ to make the most precise test of general relativity yet outside the Milky Way