Since July 2025, the European Space Agency’s pair of Proba-3 satellites has already created 57 artificial solar eclipses. So far, the mission has collected more than 250 hours of high-resolution videos of the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. That’s the same amount of observing time as about 5000 total solar eclipse campaigns carried out on Earth.  

But the science is even more exciting. For the first time we can carefully track how material from the Sun moves through the inner corona, where space weather is born. The first results, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that solar wind structures in the inner corona can travel three to four times faster than scientists thought. 

Artemis II completed a 10-day journey around the Moon, carrying humanity farther into space than it has gone in over 50 years.

ESA played a critical role in the mission’s success. The European Service Module powered and sustained Orion throughout the journey, providing propulsion, power, water and breathable air for the crew.

Mostly built with contributions from 13 ESA Member States—Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg—the module represents Europe’s strength in international cooperation.

Looking ahead, ESA will continue to deliver on its commitments to the Artemis programme while advancing

Today, at 17:07  local time  on 10 April  (01:07  BST/02:07 CEST  11 April), NASA’s Orion spacecraft and its crew splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, marking the end of the Artemis II mission. ESA’s European Service Module powered this historic mission that took four astronauts around the Moon and back for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.