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. 

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. 

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.

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.

Follow Sophie’s

Week in images: 16-20 March 2026

Discover our week through the lens

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.

Arctic rivers and runoff from the land pour vast volumes of freshwater into the Arctic Ocean, influencing seawater salinity, sea-ice formation and ocean circulation, thereby playing an important role in regulating Earth’s heat balance.

As northern monitoring networks decline, scientists have turned to satellite data to reconstruct two decades of river discharge and runoff, revealing a striking mosaic of regional change as warming temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns reshape the Arctic’s hydrological system in uneven and unexpected ways.

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

Celeste will play a pioneering role in elevating the future of Europe’s satellite navigation capabilities.

As ESA’s initiative for satellite navigation in low Earth orbit (LEO-PNT), the mission will be testing next-generation technologies and add new frequency bands for satellite navigation to inform the deployment of a future European operational navigation system in low Earth orbit. 

The mission will begin with two demonstrator satellites, IOD1-2, to secure and test the