Image: Heavy snowfall in the Alps has been recorded over the past weeks. The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission captured this image of the snow-covered Alps on 14 December.

Solar Orbiter is getting ready for the first of many gravity assist flybys of Venus on 27 December, to start bringing it closer to the Sun and tilting its orbit in order to observe our star from different perspectives. 

Today, the ESA Council appointed Dr Josef Aschbacher as the next Director General of ESA, for a period of four years. He will succeed Prof. Jan Wörner, whose term of office ends on 30 June 2021.

As the holiday season swiftly approaches, even our planetary neighbours are getting into the spirit – as shown by this perfect pair of festive silhouettes spotted by ESA’s Mars Express.

Climate data taken from Earth orbiting satellites, combined with machine learning techniques, are helping to better predict outbreaks of cholera and potentially save lives.

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Dec 16, 2020
A team of astronomers used the Keck I telescope to measure the distance to an ancient galaxy. They deduced the target galaxy GN-z11 is not only the oldest galaxy but also the most distant. It's so distant it defines the very boundary of the observable universe itself. The team hopes this study can shed light on a period of cosmological history when the universe was only a few hundred million yea