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Watch the replay of the media information session in which ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun (CH) update journalists on key decisions taken at the ESA Council meeting, held at ESA Headquarters in Paris on 17 and 18 December 2025.
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Ever wondered how planetary systems like our own Solar System form? Thanks to the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, we’re getting a unique peek behind the cosmic curtain into these dusty environments.
In this collage, we see the images of 31 baby star systems. Click on the white dots next to each system to find out more about them. The bar on the top right shows the scale of the image in Astronomical Units (AU).
The collage also shows our own Solar System for reference on the bottom right, as it is predicted to have looked at an age of 1 million years, with the Sun at its centre (not visible).
All of the systems are centred around very young stars that have recently collapsed from vast clouds of gas and dust.
After the clouds collapsed under their own gravity, they spun faster and flattened into discs with hot, dense centres. These centres became the stars, sometimes multiple stars were formed. The discs around them are called protoplanetary discs.
The 31 baby systems are shown here in orange-purple, as seen by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) ground-based telescope.
Astronomers expect the remaining material in protoplanetary discs to clump together to form planets, but until now it’s been very difficult to spot them because of all the dust and gas present in discs. To date, very few planets have been detected around forming stars.
Enter Gaia.
In 31 out of 98 young star systems, Gaia has detected subtle motions that suggest the presence of unseen companions. For seven of these systems, the observed motions are consistent with objects of planetary mass. In eight systems, the data best match the presence of brown dwarfs – objects larger than planets but smaller than stars. The remaining sixteen systems likely have additional stars around.
Gaia’s predicted locations of these companions in the systems are shown in cyan. In the reference image of our baby Solar System, Jupiter’s orbit is also shown in cyan.
Gaia discovered the companions in the baby star systems thanks to its unique ability to sense the gravitational tug or ‘wobble’ a planet or companion induces on a star. This technique had already been used to find companions around older stars. But now, for the first time, a team of astronomers led by Miguel Vioque of the European Southern Observatory, Germany, has used this Gaia technique to find planets and companions around stars that are still forming.
The all-sky, large-scale nature of the Gaia survey enabled the team to study hundreds of forming stars and identify companions across large samples for the first time. This in contrast to costly ground-based searches that can only target a few stars at a time.
This ability of Gaia is revolutionising the field of star and planet formation. The companions that the telescope has already found, can now be followed up by telescopes like the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space telescope that can study the inner discs of the baby systems in more detail.
With Gaia’s upcoming fourth data release, many more hidden planets are expected to be uncovered.
This new finding has been described in ‘Astrometric view of companions in the inner dust cavities of protoplanetary disks’ by M. Vioque et al., accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
[Image description: A collage of 32 glowing discs on a black background. Each disc shows concentric rings in vivid colours: purple, orange, and yellow, with bright cyan centres. The discs vary in size and orientation, creating a striking pattern of circular and elliptical shapes.]
It has been a busy year for the European Space Agency’s Proba-3 mission. The satellite duo has already created more than 50 artificial solar eclipses in orbit since the mission operations began less than a year ago. The resulting data confirm Proba-3’s ability to provide the missing puzzle piece in our observations of the Sun’s enigmatic atmosphere – the corona.
On 17 December, two Galileo satellites lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 6 rocket. This marked the 14th launch for Europe’s Galileo constellation, reinforcing Europe’s satellite navigation capabilities, resilience and autonomy.
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On 17 December, two new Galileo satellites lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 6 rocket. This marked the 14th launch for Europe’s satellite navigation operational satellite programme, reinforcing Europe’s resilience and autonomy.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is responsible for carrying out the Galileo launch with Arianespace on behalf of the European Commission. The Galileo satellites were manufactured by OHB, under contract with ESA. Once in orbit, the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) will bring the satellites into service and oversee their operation.
The flight, designated VA266, was the first launch of Galileo satellites on Europe’s newest heavy-lift launcher Ariane 6.
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XMM-Newton sees comet 3I/ATLAS in X-ray light
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ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is on an epic eight-year journey to Jupiter. It left Earth in April 2023 and is due to arrive at the gas giant in 2031.
2025 has been another big year for Juice. It made its closest approach to the Sun and flew close by Venus for a gravity boost to help it on its way. This second episode of ‘The journey of Juice’ takes us on a journey of our own, discovering what Juice – and the humans behind it – have experienced this year.
In a clean room at ESA’s technical centre, thermal engineer Romain Peyrou-Lauge shows us the technologies that protect Juice from the intense heat of the Sun during this period.
In Uppsala, Sweden, scientists get together for a ‘science working team’ meeting to discuss the scientific aspects of the mission. Juice Project Scientist Olivier Witasse talks about how important it is to continue working as a team to prepare for Juice’s precious time spent collecting data at Jupiter.
The video culminates with operations engineer Marc Costa taking us to the Cebreros station in Madrid for the Venus flyby. There we meet deputy station manager Jorge Fauste, Juice intern Charlotte Bergot and Juice Mission Manager Nicolas Altobelli.
This series follows on from ‘The making of Juice’ series, which covered the planning, testing and launch of this once-in-a-generation mission.
The European Space Agency’s Swarm mission detected a large but temporary spike of high-energy protons at Earth’s poles during a geomagnetic storm in November. It did this not with the scientific instruments for measuring Earth’s magnetic field, but with its ‘star tracker’ positioning instruments – a first for the Swarm mission.
Air travellers will shrink their carbon footprint while reducing flight delays worldwide, thanks to a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA), satellite operator Viasat and aerospace company Boeing. Flights to test the space-based technology with new aviation standards from and to the USA and Europe took place in late October and early November.
In its 50th anniversary year, European Space Agency (ESA) Member States have recommitted to space science. A historic budget increase for the Science Programme of 3.5% per year through to 2028, in addition to inflation, will enable some of the most ambitious missions ever, and bolster European leadership in space science.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed the source of a super-bright flash of light known as a gamma-ray burst, generated by an exploding massive star when the Universe was only 730 million years old. For the first time for such a remote event, the telescope provided a detection of the supernova’s host galaxy. Webb’s quick-turnaround observations verified data taken by telescopes around the world that had been following the gamma-ray burst since it onset, which occurred in mid-March.
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Watch the replay of the media briefing held ahead of the 14th operational launch of the Galileo programme. The briefing covers the mission details for the launch of two Galileo satellites, which are set to lift off on 17 December aboard Ariane 6 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
Leading X-ray space telescopes XMM-Newton and XRISM have spotted an extraordinary blast from a supermassive black hole. In a matter of hours, the gravitational monster whipped up powerful winds, flinging material out into space at eye-watering speeds of 60 000 km per second.