With thousands of emergency responders conducting search-and-rescue operations following the catastrophic flash flood that struck northern Nepal on 26 August, satellite imagery is helping to reveal the scale of the inundation and devastation across the affected region.

August was a busy month for ESA, between spectacular views, historic milestones and exciting new discoveries. 

From a total solar eclipse broadcast live from Spain and Sophie Adenot’s historic spacewalks, to the launch of MTG-I2 aboard Ariane 6, a breathtaking flight over Mars and a surprising discovery near our galaxy’s central black hole, here’s your monthly roundup from the European Space Agency. 

Roman will scan a large patch of the sky in visible to near-infrared light, with its wide field of view and advanced optical design. The mission will provide key insights that will help reveal the nature of dark energy and dark matter and find new exoplanets.

To achieve its science goals, Roman is equipped with a primary mirror of 2.4 m and two instruments: the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and a Coronagraph Instrument technology demonstrator.

Roman is a NASA-led mission to which ESA contributes as a Mission of Opportunity, providing scientific expertise and guidance to maximise the mission's scientific return. ESA

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, at 07:26 EDT / 12:26 BST/ 13:26 CEST on 30 August 2026. With the successful launch, Roman began its mission to survey the sky in visible to near-infrared light to help reveal the nature of dark energy and dark matter. The telescope will also investigate the true diversity of exoplanets in our galaxy.

Roman is a NASA-led mission to which the European Space Agency (ESA) contributed star trackers, batteries, and detectors for the coronagraph instrument. ESA will also provide communications

Homer’s The Odyssey chronicles Odysseus’s journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. A distance of approximately 530 km as the crow flies, yet it takes Odysseus ten years and countless adventures to arrive—without his crew or his boat. What could Odysseus’s journey have looked like if he had modern-day satellite navigation systems, such as Galileo, at his disposal?

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will take part in her third spacewalk during U.S. Spacewalk 99 on Tuesday 1 September. NASA live coverage will begin at 13:00 CEST, with the spacewalk expected to start at approximately 14:30 CEST and last around six and a half hours.

Together with NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, she will replace a retroreflector on the International Space Station’s Harmony module, supporting spacecraft navigation during rendezvous and docking operations. The astronauts will also carry out several maintenance tasks, including installing data-relay system jumper cables, preparing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s radiator for future maintenance and replacing a

The final two of ESA's pioneering Cluster spacecraft, Samba and Tango, will end their journeys as they burn up in our atmosphere on 31 August and 1 September respectively. Their targeted reentries mark the end of a mission that has transformed our understanding of Earth's magnetic environment. The final moments also offer a rare scientific opportunity for reentry observations from a plane.

The Meteosat Third Generation-Imager2 (MTG-I2) satellite, has been launched on board an Ariane 6 launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Liftoff was on 27 August 2026 at 22:11 CEST (17:10 local time).

MTG-I2 is part of the MTG constellation for Eumetsat – two are already in orbit – and it will produce images for weather forecasting in Europe in unprecedented detail. This mission provides completely new data products and capabilities for European weather services, especially suited to nowcasting of severe weather events.

The MTG-Imager satellites carry two instruments, a Lightning Imager and a Flexible

Week in images: 24-28 August 2026

Discover our week through the lens

Press Release N° 44–2026

Media representatives are invited to join online media briefings in several languages ahead of the launch of the FLEX and Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellites on a Vega-C rocket (flight VV30).