In a bold vision to secure Europe's role in space exploration and so benefit from the many scientific, economic, and societal rewards, ESA is publicly releasing its new exploration roadmap after its presentation to its Council, the agency's highest ruling body.

Called Terrae Novae 2030+ (Latin for new worlds), the document lays the groundwork for Europe to ensure its leading role in space exploration for future prosperity.

"This new long-term roadmap for exploration is now available to guide decision-makers who will ultimately make the choices on how far to take Europe on the journey of deep-space exploration," says ESA's director of Human and Robotic Exploration, David Parker.

"Terrae Novae is not only literally about exploring new worlds, but by describing the limitless opportunities for discovery, economic growth and inspiration it also expresses our ambitions for Europe's future innovators, scientists and explorers.

"We hope that everyone can use this roadmap to make our three-part vision a reality: to continue a strong presence working in low-Earth orbit, to send the first European astronauts to explore the Moon throughout the 2030s, and to prepare Europe's role in the first historic human voyage to Mars.

The United States Government has declared that it will no longer be performing tests of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons. In a public statement during a visit to the Vandenberg Space Force Base, Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed that this policy has the primary purpose of setting an example to other countries. It represents an important step in the direction of establishing "space norms" for all countries to follow.

ASAT weapons go as far back as the early years of the Cold War. According to the Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems, ASAT weapons were designed for strategic and tactical military purposes. Satellites have long been used by the military for navigation, communication, and gathering intel on enemy movements and activities through sophisticated satellite imaging: Spy satellites.

Although ASAT weapons have never been used in actual warfare, China, India, Russia, and the U.S. have all demonstrated their capability. These weapons have so far only been used by these countries in tests against their own targets, such as decommissioned satellites.

A very small instrument has a big job ahead of it: measuring all Earth-directed energy coming from the sun and helping scientists understand how that energy influences our planet's severe weather, climate change and other global forces.

About the size of a shoebox or gaming console, the Compact Total Irradiance Monitor (CTIM) is the smallest satellite ever dispatched to observe the sum of all solar energy Earth receives from the sun—also known as "total solar irradiance."

Total solar irradiance is a major component of the Earth radiation budget, which tracks the balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy. Increased amounts of greenhouse gases emitted from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, trap increased amounts of solar energy within Earth's atmosphere.

"After Euclid's lifetime, it will just be floating in space. What if future beings found Euclid? How would they know anything about the humanity of the people?" says Tom Kitching, lead scientist of Euclid's VIS instrument.

The team behind ESA's Euclid mission has come together to create something special—a personal and collective galaxy-shaped fingerprint painting that has been attached to the spacecraft ready to launch into space. The collaborative nature of the artwork reflects the collaborative nature of the Euclid project overall; in both cases, people have come together to build something unique.

The Fingertip Galaxy was created by visual artist Lisa Pettibone and Euclid instrument scientist Tom Kitching. Since the very first fingerprint was pressed down in 2019, over 250 scientists and engineers have contributed to the piece of art.

So why a galaxy? Euclid is a galaxy-imaging machine that will observe billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years to make a 3D map of the Universe. The mission's ultimate aim is to explore dark matter and dark energy.

"Although Euclid has always been beautiful in concept and materials, it didn't really say anything about the people involved and humanity as a whole.

NASA has recently announced US$600,000 (£495,000) in funding for a study into the feasibility of sending swarms of miniature swimming robots (known as independent micro-swimmers) to explore oceans beneath the icy shells of our Solar System's many "ocean worlds". But don't imagine metal humanoids swimming frog-like underwater. They will probably be simple, triangular wedges.

Pluto is one example of a likely ocean world. But the worlds with oceans nearest to the surface, making them the most accessible, are Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

Life inside ocean worlds

These oceans are of interest to scientists not just because they contain so much liquid water (Europa's ocean probably has about twice as much water as the whole of Earth's oceans), but because chemical interactions between rock and the ocean water could support life. In fact, the environment in these oceans may be very similar to that on Earth at the time life began.