A green glow in the martian night

When future astronauts explore Mars's polar regions, they will see a green glow lighting up the night sky. For the first time, a visible nightglow has been detected in the martian atmosphere by ESA's ExoMars mission.

Webb pinpoints a high-speed jet stream on Jupiter

Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) have discovered a high-speed jet stream sitting over Jupiter's equator, above the main cloud decks.

Hubble finds bizarre explosion in unexpected place

A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn't expected to be found.

Webb sees carbon-rich dust grains in the first billion years of cosmic time

This observation suggests exciting avenues of investigation into both the production of cosmic dust and the earliest stellar populations in our Universe, and was made possible by Webb’s unprecedented sensitivity.

Europe's mission to discover dark energy and dark matter launches

ESA's Euclid space telescope was launched for a six-year mission to shed light on dark energy and matter and chart the largest-ever map of the universe.

Unexpected ring around the dwarf planet found

The dwarf planet is known as Quaoar. The presence of a ring at a distance of almost seven and a half times the radius of Quaoar, opens up a mystery for astronomers to solve: why has this material not coalesced into a small moon?

The brightest, furthest pulsar in the Universe

ESA's XMM-Newton has found a pulsar - the spinning remains of a once-massive star - that is a thousand times brighter than previously thought possible.

James Webb Space Telescope finally on its way to discovery

A powerful European Ariane 5 rocket boosted NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope into space on Christmas Day, kicking off a great attempt to capture light from the first galaxies to form in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

Europe's largest Solar Telescope GREGOR

GREGOR, the largest solar telescope in Europe, has obtained unprecedented images of the fine-structure of the Sun. Now, the Sun can be observed at a higher resolution than before from Europe.

The Solar Orbiter On Its Journey to the Sun

The Solar Orbiter project, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, has begun a critical new stage of the mission after the probe's first close encounter with the Sun.

The Cheops space telescope is ready to study exoplanets

Cheops (Characterising Exoplanet Satellite), the satellite for the study of the exoplanets of the European Space Agency (Esa), has passed the exams and now it is ready to go to work. 

BepiColombo mission is heading to Mercury

Scientists are still preparing for the crucial fly-by of Earth by the joint European–Japanese BepiColombo mission to Mercury on 10 April, despite COVID-19 quarantine.

The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter launched

A NASA-supplied Atlas 5 rocket launched the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft 9 February, kicking off an innovative mission to study the Sun in unprecedented detail, complementing close-in observations by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.

ESA's CHEOPS mission Just Launched Successfully

CHEOPS stands for the Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite. It’s a partnership between ESA and Switzerland, with 10 other EU states contributing. Its mission is not to find more exoplanets, but to study the ones we already know of.

New Study Suggests The Universe Is a Closed Sphere

Years of observational data, cosmological models and physics suggest the Universe is flat. However, a recent study suggests that the Universe is actually curved and closed, like an inflating sphere.