Learn how Ariane 6 and the ASTRIS orbital vehicle are changing Europe’s approach to space, speeding satellites from transfer orbits to target orbits, saving fuel and extending spacecraft lifetimes, and opening new opportunities for commercial missions, constellations, and exploration of the Moon, deep space, and future missions.
Find out how Europe’s spaceport in Kourou is assembling the most powerful version of Ariane 6, for the first time with four P120C boosters that double liftoff thrust. Mission VA267 should carry 32 satellites for Amazon’s constellation to low orbit, with key parts arriving on the ship Canopée under the oversight of ESA and Arianespace.
Find out how Martian winds, captured by ESA’s Mars Express with the HRSC camera, lifted grains of sand and turned them into a “cosmic sandblaster” that carves grooves and leaves yardangs near Eumenides Dorsum in the Medusae Fossae region. We also explain what can be seen in the image alongside a crater and a plate-like lava flow, and why dust matters for the Martian climate.
Learn how an astronaut from the International Space Station captured the Large Magellanic Cloud and Earth’s limb with multicolored airglow. We provide context on the galactic neighborhood, supernova 1987A, and newer discoveries about dust and black holes. A view from orbit shows why the LMC is an important laboratory for star formation.
Find out why Hubble’s deep imaging showed that Cloud-9, a neutral-hydrogen cloud near the galaxy Messier 94, has not a single star. Discovered in FAST’s radio survey and then confirmed by Hubble, the object is interpreted as a RELHIC – a dark-matter-dominated fossil from the era of reionization that changes the picture of how galaxies form.
Find out how ESA’s Space Rider, a reusable orbital laboratory with runway return, could service future platforms in low Earth orbit, deliver experiments, bring valuable samples back to Earth, and open a new phase of the European space economy by offering industry microgravity as a service for pharmaceuticals, biomedicine, and advanced materials.