On 25 March, the first two satellites of the Celeste LEO-PNT in-orbit demonstration mission will lift off aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Māhia Launch Complex in New Zealand.

Coverage will start 9:53 CET with live commentary. The rocket is scheduled for liftoff at 10:14, with a launch window of about an hour.

Image: Artemis II rocket back at its launchpad after a second rollout at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Week in images: 16-20 March 2026

Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:01:57

This video was published on social media by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot with the following caption:

Day 035, orbit 0541 – Three cargo vehicles departing the Station in just three weeks… and since I recorded this video, we also waved goodbye to a Progress!

The Northrop Grumman Cygnus NG23 was named S.S. William “Willie” McCool in honor of the NASA astronaut and naval aviator test pilot who perished in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident. Following a U.S. Navy tradition, Jack – who shares the same professional background – rang the Station bell to mark the spacecraft’s departure.

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The Smile mission is set to launch on a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Thursday 9 April at 08:29 CEST/07:29 BST/03:29 local time. Follow along as we communicate on the final preparations for launch. Journalists are invited to join online media briefings in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

Image: Ahead of the World Day for Glaciers, Copernicus Sentinel-2 captures the diverse landscape of western Norway with its jagged fjords, fertile valleys, mountain plateaus and Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in continental Europe.

NASA’s latest reboot of the Artemis Moon program comes with familiar language: “back to basics,” “muscle memory,” “step-by-step,” and an explicit nod to the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo playbook. The agency wants to fly more often, change hardware less, and build up capability incrementally, just like the 1960s. The problem is that Artemis is trying to cosplay Apollo […]

The post Apollo Cosplay on a 21st-Century Clock – Why Artemis Keeps Slipping Toward 2029 – Part 3 appeared first on Space Daily.

Reliable connectivity in areas suddenly hit by outages or low coverage, such as disaster zones or crowded events, is now within reach, thanks to a new purpose-built connectivity trailer that can be set up in minutes. The European Space Agency (ESA), UK-based and European tech companies Excelerate Technology, Eutelsat, and Livewire Digital, with support from the UK Space Agency, have teamed up to deliver NOMADLINK, an innovative project providing a rapid, resilient connectivity gateway. 

A month after an anomaly onboard the Proba-3 mission caused ground control to lose contact with the Coronagraph spacecraft, the mission team shares great news: the spacecraft has phoned home, re-establishing the lost connection. 

The European Space Agency, ESA, invites the industrial community to a series of events at which ESA directorates will present the follow-up to the Council Meeting at Ministerial Level 2025, CM25, held in November 2025 in Bremen, Germany.

These events will inform industry about planned activities, key thematic priorities, and industrial opportunities across ESA programmes, while also providing a platform for direct exchange on implementation.