At 10:14 CET on 28 March, the first two satellites of ESA’s Celeste LEO-PNT in-orbit demonstration mission lifted off aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Māhia, New Zealand.

Celeste is Europe’s first initiative to bring satellite navigation into low Earth orbit (LEO). By testing next-generation technologies and new frequency bands, it will help shape the future of positioning, navigation and timing services.

Flying closer to Earth, Celeste will demonstrate how a complementary LEO layer can strengthen Europe’s Galileo system in medium Earth orbit — improving resilience, enhancing performance and enabling new services.

On 28 March, the European Space Agency (ESA) took a major step forward in strengthening Europe's ambition for more resilient satellite navigation, as the first two satellites of the Celeste in-orbit demonstration mission lifted off from New Zealand aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron. Their mission is to begin testing a complementary low Earth orbit layer for Galileo.

Members of ESA’s astronaut reserve have returned to the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, for the final block of their Astronaut Reserve Training (ART) programme. This phase marks the last step in preparing members of the European astronaut reserve with the broad technical, operational and scientific foundation required to support future human spaceflight opportunities.

Everyone knows what a hurricane is, but a lesser-known storm type – a medicane – recently made landfall in Libya. While the arrival of Medicane Jolina, a rare Mediterranean cyclone, brought extreme weather, it also provided scientists with a crucial test case.

Using different types of data from Earth-observing satellites, researchers are gaining new insights into how these storms form and evolve, and therefore, how their impacts can be predicted more accurately.

Week in images: 23-27 March 2026

Discover our week through the lens

The third satellite in the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) constellation, MTG-Imager2 (MTG-I2) has completed a series of tests that certify the satellite is ready to operate in the harsh conditions found in space – and on the way to space. These range from the strong vibrations during launch to the huge variations in temperature once in orbit, caused by moving between direct sunlight and Earth’s shadow.