To land on the right foot on the Red Planet, European engineers have been dropping a skeleton of the four-legged ExoMars descent module at various speeds and heights on simulated martian surfaces.

Just as avalanches on snowy mountains start with the movement of a small quantity of snow, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft has discovered that a solar flare is triggered by initially weak disturbances that quickly become more violent. This rapidly evolving process creates a ‘sky’ of raining plasma blobs that continue to fall even after the flare subsides.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Weather Office is closely monitoring a notable space weather event, first detected 18:09 UTC on Sunday, 18 January 2026. We are collecting detailed information from our expert service centres.

Further details and updates will be provided here as they become available.

This page was last updated on 20 January 2026, at 14:00 CET.

The European Union’s Chemicals Regulation, REACH, is one of the most comprehensive legislative frameworks for chemical safety worldwide. Designed to protect human health and the environment from hazardous substances, REACH also poses unique challenges for the space sector where exemptions are rare and obsolescence risks are high.