First the European Space Agency's Hera asteroid mission separated from its launcher on 7 October 2024, next its lengthy ‘cruise phase’ began – the car-sized spacecraft’s journey through millions of kilometres of nothingness to converge on its rocky destination. 

Yesterday between 20:26 and 20:34 CEST, parts of the Iberian peninsula experienced a total solar eclipse. This animation, composed of images from the Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite (MTG-I1), caught the Moon’s dark shadow as it passed over Earth’s surface – converging with the advancing twilight shadow as dusk fell over Europe.

From its vantage point in geostationary orbit, MTG-I1 keeps its imaging instruments focused on Europe and northern Africa from a distance of 36 000 km above Earth’s surface. This enabled it to track the Moon’s shadow, called the path of totality, as it swept first

[English] Experience a musical simulation of the 12 August 2026 total solar eclipse as seen from the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (Spain). Click here for information about ESA’s live broadcast from this observatory, or visit esa.int/solareclipse for an overview of all ESA eclipse activities & resources. 

This is a ‘musification’ – an artistic interpretation of a set of data. In this case, the eclipse determines when and how much of each sound is heard. The music is simply the way those data are presented.

This musification is a collaboration ESA’s CESAR team and Rubén García Benito from the Instituto

When the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, it casts a shadow onto Earth's surface. For people in the darkest part of this shadow, the face of the Sun is totally blocked out, and its wispy atmosphere becomes visible.

On Wednesday 12 August, such a shadow will cross Greenland, Iceland, northeastern Portugal and Spain. With this being the first total eclipse visible from mainland Spain since 1905, the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to do something special.

ESA’s live broadcast from the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre will allow anyone to experience this rare phenomenon from anywhere

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will take part in her first-ever spacewalk during U.S. Spacewalk 97. Together with NASA astronaut Anil Menon, she will replace a Space-to-Ground antenna on the International Space Station, a critical communications system that enables high-speed data and voice links between Mission Control in Houston and the space station.

Watch it live on ESA WebTV and the ESA’s YouTube channel. Coverage begins at 13:00 CEST, with the spacewalk scheduled to begin at approximately 14:35 CEST.

Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have discovered that dust and water can form and survive surprisingly close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The observations reveal that the evolved star IRS 3 continues to enrich its surroundings with newly formed material despite the intense radiation environment around Sagittarius A*.

On 12 August 2026, parts of Europe will experience a total solar eclipse. With the Sun's bright disc covered, its surrounding atmosphere – the solar corona – will become visible to the naked eye. Unfortunately, total solar eclipses are rare and last at most a few minutes, giving scientists little time to study the Sun’s enigmatic halo.  

This is why ESA developed missions that create eclipses artificially, and why experts use computer models to create digital simulations. So how do we do it, and why is it important? 

Earth observation satellites help us monitor phenomena such as wildfires, drought and heatwaves from space. This page is updated on a regular basis with a selection of ESA’s most recent news-related images showing how the effects of climate change are impacting our world.

Observing across the starry “plains” of space, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has taken images of NGC 2392, nicknamed the Lion Nebula.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope previously viewed this planetary nebula in 2000, imaging the lion face-shaped target in visible light and revealing features such as the “mane” of hazy, comet-shaped objects. Now Webb has captured a clearer, more detailed view of the Lion Nebula due to its high-resolution imaging.

At first glance the nebula’s overall structure in Webb’s infrared images, both with the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), may look quite

On 3 July 2026, an invisible signal travelled across Europe. From Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, to Rome, Italy, the signal connected the Galileo Ground Control Centre to a Galileo Second Generation satellite for the first time, marking a major step forward in the programme’s marathon of compatibility tests.