@cmundell.esa.int
Director of Science, @esa.int; Head of the European Space Astronomy Centre, Madrid. Astrophysicist, science diplomat, ex-Science Council President; ex-Chief Scientist Adviser & International Science Envoy, UK FCDO. She/her. My views.
#MediaInvitation: journalists are invited to join the media programme for the launch of #Smile on Vega‑C #VV29, launch window 8 April – 7 May.
🔗 esa.int/Newsroom/Press_Releases/Call_for_interest_media_programme_for_launch_of_Smile_mission_at_Europe_s_Spaceport
@science.esa.int @transport.esa.int
A shiny, golden spacecraft at the centre of the frame stretches out its two solar panels towards the top and bottom. The panels are not quite fully stretched, with two slight bends in each. In the background, we see Earth, with the horizon curving from left to right across the top third of the frame.
📣 Call for journalists: attend the Smile launch media event at Europe’s Spaceport!
Smile is a scientific collaboration between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Science. The mission will study how Earth responds to the solar wind.
Registration details 👉 www.esa.int/Newsroom/Pre... 1/2
🔭 🧪 ☀️
Annular solar eclipse seen from space
ESA’s 5G laboratory on wheels
Earth from Space: Ouarzazate, Morocco
The stellar lifecycle in a nearby spiral
📸 This was our #WeekInImages 16-20 February 2026.
🔗 esa.int/About_Us/Week_in_images/Week_in_images_16-20_February_2026
From a love of school physics and maths to a career in astrophysics and space science, this cosmic explosion ignited my future! Happy birthday SN1987A!
Envision this – launching a mission to Venus to understand why Earth's twin evolved so differently.
Teams at ESA have been working on making this vision a reality.
Discover more at esa.int/envision
🔭
🚢 Smile sets sail for Europe’s Spaceport.
With a launch window opening on 8 April for its Vega-C #VV29 flight, the joint ESA/CAS #Smile spacecraft is almost ready to embark on its mission to study how Earth responds to the solar wind.
@science.esa.int @cnes.fr @transport.esa.int
A field of space with a dozen white foreground stars and a number of small, yellow background galaxies. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Li (Utoronto), Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
At left, a field of space with a dozen white foreground stars and a number of small, yellow background galaxies. An unremarkable area at centre is outlined with a dashed circle surrounded by a white box. Lines extend from the box to a pullout at right containing faint, grainy white light surrounded by a circle labeled “Candidate dark galaxy – diffuse emission.” Four white dots are circled in blue and labeled globular clusters. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Li (Utoronto), Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
Hubble has joined forces with ESA's Euclid and NAOJ's Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to identify a galaxy that appears to be 99% dark matter!
Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭🧪
Ad for the ESA Graduate Trainee Programme detailing some of the conditions and benefits of the programme.
Kick start your space career! Until 28 February, you can apply to around 100 ESA Graduate Trainee positions if you've recently graduated or are in your final Master's year.
Check out all conditions here 👉 www.esa.int/About_Us/Car...
#ESArecruits
🔭🧪
View of Mars from orbit, showing a curved horizon against the blackness of space. The dusty tan surface is marked by scattered impact craters and rugged ridges. Along the horizon, a thin pale bluish atmospheric layer creates a misty glow, and a single distinct white cloud is visible near the upper layers of the atmosphere.
Mars - Cloud over Promethei Terra
Full size 5k image and more info: flic.kr/p/2rWMYkb 🔭🧪
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY
@esa.int Mars Express 2025-05-24
ID: HR000_0000 (ND+RED+GR+BL)
Seven women. Seven careers. Seven pieces of advice.
For #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience we’re celebrating the voices and wisdom of women shaping science and technology across Europe. #IDWGS #WomenInSTEM
www.youtube.com/shorts/BNk-b...
The discovery is published today in @science.org, in a paper titled ‘Gas-depleted planet formation occurred in the four-planet system around the red dwarf LHS 1903’ 👉 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
A planetary system with four planets circling around a star. In the foreground, a large reddish-brown rocky planet with craters is visible. Behind it, there are three smaller planets: one with blue and white colours, another with blue and brown bands, and the third with a rocky surface. In the top right corner of the image, a small but bright red star illuminates the scene, with space dust and distant stars visible in the background.
‘Save the best for last 😋’, a little rocky planet discovered by our #ESACheops might think – born later than its gaseous sibling-planets, it might flip our understanding of how planets form upside down.
Our full story 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭🧪
#exoplanets
#milkyway
#planetsci
Artist’s impression of two neutron stars spiralling towards each other just before merging. The collision of these dense, compact objects produces gravitational waves – fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime.
Gravitational waves constantly cross our Solar System.
They travel in the fabric of spacetime, and, until recently, they did so undetected.
But advances in technology have made measurements possible on the ground and, with our upcoming LISA mission, from space too 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭
Ad for the ESA Graduate Trainee Programme detailing some of the conditions and benefits of the programme.
Around 100 ESA Graduate Trainee positions are open for candidates in their final year of Master's or who have just graduated.
Check out all conditions here 👉 https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Careers_at_ESA/Apply_now_to_the_ESA_Graduate_Trainee_Programme
#ESArecruits
🔭🧪
SUCCESS✅ With the powerful roar of 4 boosters at liftoff, comes more than double the payload mass to orbit, setting Europe back on stage for launching all satellites to all orbits. Our rocket fleet is now complete. But we will not rest: upgrades are already in progress. #Ariane6 #VA267
Today's launch of the first four-booster version of Ariane 6, operated by Arianespace, took 32 satellites for Amazon LEO to low-Earth orbit. This success confirms Europe’s readiness in heavy-lift capability and is key to ensuring autonomous access to space for Europeans.
ESRO employees at work in the first ESTEC office in Delft, September 1964 (pic: ESA/R.Duhem)
Working back through the history of European space, we can trace the origins of today’s ESA Science programme to the original eight-year plan for Europe's first space organisation ESRO (and why the 'Blue Book' was blue!)
historicalarchives.esa.int/1961-blue-bo... @science.esa.int @cmundell.esa.int
🚨 Webb amplía los límites del universo observable más cerca del amanecer cósmico.
El telescopio espacial ha confirmado que la brillante galaxia MoM-z14 existía solo 280 millones de años después del Big Bang.
Leer más buff.ly/3OHWPr9
@science.esa.int
📺 #WatchLive tomorrow, follow #EuropeanSpaceConf on #ESAWebTV.
09:20 Keynote by DG Josef Aschbacher
09:40 Joint press statement with Commissioner Andrius Kubilius & ESA DG
10:40 Panel on Europe’s space competitiveness.
15:20 Access to Space discussion
👉 watch.esa.int/
No te pierdas nuestra semana del 19 al 23 de enero en imágenes
buff.ly/VEsCANZ
Some info on how #Artemis II might impact #JWST operations, from our @jwstobserver.bsky.social site. 🔭https://www.stsci.edu/contents/news/jwst/2026/artemis-ii's-possible-impact-on-jwst-science-operations.html
C’est avec tristesse que nous annonçons le décès de l’ancien Directeur des sciences de l’ESA, le Professeur Roger-Maurice Bonnet, survenu le 19 janvier 2026 à l’âge de 88 ans.
🔗 esa.int/About_Us/Cor...
@cmundell.esa.int @science.esa.int @josefaschbacher.esa.int
Roger Bonnet, ESA's Director of Scientific Programmes, seen holding a model of Rosetta
We’re sad to report the passing of former ESA Director of Science Prof. Roger-Maurice Bonnet on 19 January 2026, aged 88.
🔗 esa.int/About_Us/Cor...
@cmundell.esa.int @science.esa.int @josefaschbacher.esa.int
Illustration promoting the results of the Archival Research Visitor Programme. In the background, a model image of what our home galaxy, the Milky Way, might look like face-on. Milky Way illustration by ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar.
The list of the latest proposals accepted for our Archival Research Visitor Programme has been published.
Congratulations to the researchers who will join us to conduct science using data in our Space Science Archives 👉 www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/vis...
Plato passes vibe check ✅
The spacecraft was vigorously shaken to mimic the powerful jolts and vibrations that Plato will experience during launch.
The vibration tests are part of a series of tough exams that Plato has to pass to graduate for launch 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...
🔭 #exoplanets
Artist interpretation of the area surrounding the Huygens landing site based on images and data returned on 14 January 2005 (pic: ESA)
#OTD 14 January 2005, @esa.int's #Huygens probe landed on Saturn's moon #Titan; humankind's only landing (to date) in the outer Solar System, the farthest landing from Earth a spacecraft has ever made, and also the first landing on a moon other than our own 🧪🔭
www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
From the Smile mission launch and new data sets from Euclid, to Plato getting ready for launch, a total solar eclipse and BepiColombo's arrival at Mercury, 2026 is set to be a packed year for Science!
This mosaic shows a great view across the Imhotep region of Comet 67P, which includes the Cheops boulder on the larger of the two comet lobes. The smaller of the comet’s lobes is situated to the far left of the mosaic. The illumination conditions contribute to the interesting view of the features standing out against the shadowed foreground, close to the centre.
#OTD 3 January 2015, @esa.int's #Rosetta spacecraft took a series of pictures at a distance of 28.4 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko to make this awesome four-image mosaic 🧪🔭
www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... @science.esa.int @dlr-de.bsky.social @cnes.fr @spacerocksofficial.bsky.social
#HappyNewYear! Start 2026 on a radiant note with this breathtaking video of the Sun: our Solar Orbiter spacecraft captured a stunning plasma flare dancing above the solar surface 🔥🧪🔭
🔗 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...
The Sun’s inner corona appears greenish in this image taken on 23 May 2025 by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3, ESA’s formation-flying mission capable of creating artificial total solar eclipses in orbit. This image, captured in the visible light spectrum, shows the solar corona similarly to how a human eye would see it during an eclipse through a green filter.
#50YearsOfESA
#2025
OK, 51 years 😉 but we couldn't resist this. This March, @esa.int's Proba-3 achieved what no other mission has before – its two spacecraft flew 150 m apart in perfect formation without control from the ground, and created their first ‘artificial total solar eclipse’ in orbit.
