Tag: ESA

Week in images: 22-26 September 2025

Discover our week through the lens

The European Space Agency (ESA) is participating in the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which will open its doors on Monday 29 September and last until Friday 3 October in Sydney, Australia. Over 8000 participants from 90 countries are expected to attend the event at the International Convention Centre (ICC) under the theme “Sustainable Space: Resilient Earth”.

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Part of the icy landscape of the Northeast Greenland National Park, the largest national park in the world, is pictured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image.

After meticulous preparation and rigorous evaluation, ESA’s Member States have selected WIVERN to become the 11th Earth Explorer mission to be implemented through the agency’s prestigious FutureEO programme.

Week in images: 15-19 September 2025

Discover our week through the lens

Hidden beneath the biggest ice mass on Earth, hundreds of subglacial lakes form a crucial part of Antarctica’s icy structure, affecting the movement and stability of glaciers, and consequentially influencing global sea level rise.

Thanks to a decade of data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite, researchers have identified 85 previously unknown lakes several kilometres under the frozen surface surrounding the South Pole. This increases the number of known active subglacial lakes below Antarctica by more than half to 231.

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This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image captures a cloud-free view over the island of Komodo in southeastern Indonesia.

The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) has revealed an unexpected difference between the powerful winds launching from a disc around a neutron star and those from material circling supermassive black holes. The surprisingly dense wind blowing from the stellar system challenges our understanding of how such winds form and drive change in their surroundings.

Scientists created the most accurate three-dimensional map of star-formation regions in our Milky Way galaxy, based on data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope. This map will teach us more about these obscure cloudy areas, and the hot young stars that shape them.