ESA News

Exciting news for young space fans! PaniniPedia Space, the most complete and up-to-date sticker reference album about space, launches in France on 1 May 2024. Created by Panini in collaboration with ESA, PaniniPedia Space takes readers on a journey of discovery through our Solar System and beyond.

ESA ensures a ride into space for its Smile mission, with Arianespace signing up to launch the spacecraft on a Vega-C rocket

The European Galileo navigation system has two more satellites in orbit following their launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in the early morning of Sunday, 28 April, at 01:34 BST/02:34 CEST. With 30 satellites now in orbit, Galileo is expanding its constellation, increasing the reliability, robustness and, ultimately, the precision, benefiting billions of users worldwide.

Image: The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. The observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure.Read more about the new Webb observationsThis image showcases three views of the Horsehead Nebula, which resides in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, roughly 1300 light-years away.The first image (left), released in November 2023, features the Horsehead Nebula as seen by ESA’s Euclid telescope. Euclid captured this image of the Horsehead in about one hour, which showcases the mission's ability to very quickly image an unprecedented area of the sky in high detail. You can learn more about this image here.The second image (middle) shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s infrared view of the Horsehead Nebula, which was featured as the telescope’s 23rd anniversary image in 2013. This image captures plumes of gas in the infrared and reveals a beautiful, delicate structure that is normally obscured by dust. You can learn more about this image here.The third image (right) features a new view of the Horsehead Nebula from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument. It is the sharpest infrared image of the object to date, showing a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, and capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.[Image description: A collage of three images of the Horsehead Nebula. In the left image labelled “Euclid (Visible-Infrared)”, the Nebula is seen amongst its surroundings. A small box around it connects to the second image labelled “Hubble (Infrared)”, where the Nebula is zoomed in on. A portion of the Nebula’s head has another box, which leads with a callout to the third image, labelled “Webb (Infrared)”, of that area.]Read more

The first images captured by the innovative mission were presented at the 7th workshop of the Einstein Probe consortium in Beijing. They illustrate the satellite’s full potential and show that its novel optics, which mimic a lobster’s eyes, are ready to monitor the X-ray sky. The space X-ray telescope zoomed in on a few well-known celestial objects to give us a hint of what the mission is capable of.

Week in images: 22-26 April 2024 Discover our week through the lens

Ariane 6 media kit

EarthCARE: cloud and aerosol mission

In March, we announced that 2023 would see the publication of over 300 vacancies at ESA. New vacancies keep being published as we continue our search for talented and motivated professionals to join our teams across Europe and support our mission of the peaceful exploration of space for the benefit of everyone. Could ESA be the next step in your career? Read more to find out!