Commencing with ESA participation in the Paris Air Show, this has been a hectic summer for Europe in space, including historic first images returned from the forest-mapping Biomass and solar-corona-watching formation flying pair Proba-3 as well as – down on the ground – early test views from our asteroid-hunting Fly Eye telescope. ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski spent 21 days in space as part of the Axiom-3 mission to the International Space Station and the latest MetOp Second Generation and Meteosat Third Generation weather satellites were deployed in orbit, carrying with them the latest elements of Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel fleet. Estonia marked its first 10 years as an ESA Member State as ESA hosted the General Assembly on Defence, Space and Cybersecurity, discussing European responses to unprecedented geopolitical challenges. And preparing for next year’s launch, the exoplanet-tracking Plato spacecraft arrived at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands for testing.