ESA Top Multimedia

Seed-sized space chip

This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image captures the borders between North and South Dakota and Minnesota blanketed with snow and ice.

This video shows a panoramic view of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. The spiral disk galaxy is inclined to our view, making it look elliptical. Young blue stars are around the outer rim. Yellowish older stars are toward the center. The bright hub of the galaxy looks like the center of a fried egg. It took over 10 years to make this vast and colorful portrait of the galaxy, requiring over 600 Hubble snapshots. This stunning mosaic captures the glow of 200 million stars. The camera zooms into the central portion of the galaxy, resolving a sea of myriad older stars. The camera pans along the galaxy’s vast disk which is over 200,000 light-years across. The view is etched with dark dust clouds. The stellar population looks bluer as we move toward the galaxy’s outer rim, rich in bright blue star clusters.

Mars plays hide and seek with Wolf Moon

Ariane 6 Central Core being transferred from the launcher assembly building to the launch pad

This is a new artist’s animation of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope.

Gaia has changed our impression of the Milky Way. Even seemingly simple ideas about the nature of our galaxy’s central bar and the spiral arms have been overturned. Gaia has shown us that it has more than two spiral arms and that they are less prominent than we previously thought. In addition, Gaia has shown that its central bar is more inclined with respect to the Sun.

No spacecraft can travel beyond our galaxy, so we can’t take a selfie, but Gaia is giving us the best insight yet of what our home galaxy looks like. Once all of Gaia’s observations collected over the past decade are made available in two upcoming data releases, we can expect an even sharper view of the Milky Way.

Click here to download the still image of the Milky Way.

Little Red Dots (NIRCam Image)

Quasar J0742+2704

Land burned by Palisades wildfire

Five wildfires are still currently burning (as of 10 January) in areas of north Los Angeles. This image, captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on 9 January 2025, shows the Palisades and the Eaton fires, with smoke seen reaching Catalina Island and the Santa Barbara reserve.

Watch the replay of ESA's start-of-the-year press briefing looking ahead to 2025.

 

Download the presentation slides.

Members of the ESA Astronaut Reserve participate in a two-month intensive training experience at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. The programme aims to equip the members of ESA’s astronaut reserve with the essential skills required for future space exploration and scientific research. During the ESA astronaut reserve training, they cover key modules from ESA’s basic training programme, which typically prepares career astronauts for various missions. The training includes a mix of technical and operational skills, spacecraft systems, initial spacewalk training, and survival exercises in both water and winter conditions.

A few weeks before the inauguration of the LUNA facility, the robotics team in their laboratory at ESTEC, ESA's technical heart in the Netherlands, practise a carefully-planned choreography to demonstrate the capabilities of their cutting-edge machines, Interact and Spot. Known as the Moon on Earth, the LUNA facility was unveiled in September 2024 near the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. This groundbreaking simulated lunar environment is designed to prepare for humanity's return to the Moon. To celebrate its opening, ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer collaborated with the robotics team to showcase the potential of human-robot teamwork for space exploration.

Find out more about how the team prepared the show: https://blogs.esa.int/exploration/making-a-moon-robot-show-on-earth

In 1975, 10 European countries came together with a vision to collaborate on key space activities: science and astronomy, launch capabilities and space applications: the European Space Agency, ESA, was born.

In 2025, we mark half a century of joint European achievement – filled with firsts and breakthroughs in science, exploration and technology, and the space infrastructure and economy that power Europe today.

During the past five decades ESA has grown, developing ever bolder and bigger projects and adding more Member States, with Slovenia joining as the latest full Member State in January.

We’ll also celebrate the 50th anniversary of ESA’s Estrack network, 30 years of satellite navigation in Europe and 20 years since ESA launched the first demonstration satellite Giove-A which laid the foundation for the EU’s own satnav constellation Galileo. Other notable celebrations are the 20th anniversary of ESA’s Business Incubation Centres, or BICs, and the 30th year in space for SOHO, the joint ESA and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. 

Sadly though, 2025 will mean end of science operations for Integral and Gaia. Integral, ESA's gamma-ray observatory has exotic objects in space since 2002 and Gaia concludes a decade of mapping the stars. But as some space telescopes retire, another one provides its first full data release. Launched in 2023, we expect Euclid’s data release early in the new year.

Launch-wise, we’re looking forward to Copernicus Sentinel-4 and -5 (Sentinel-4 will fly on an MTG-sounder satellite and Sentinel-5 on the MetOp-SG-A1 satellite), Copernicus Sentinel-1D, Sentinel-6B and Biomass. We’ll also launch the SMILE mission, or Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, a joint mission with the Chinese academy of science.

The most powerful version of Europe’s new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, is set to fly operationally for the first time in 2025. With several European commercial launcher companies planning to conduct their first orbital launches in 2025 too, ESA is kicking off the European Launcher Challenge to support the further development of European space transportation industry.

In human spaceflight, Polish ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański will fly to the ISS on the commercial Axiom-4 mission. Artemis II will be launched with the second European Service Module, on the first crewed mission around the Moon since 1972.

The year that ESA looks back on a half century of European achievement will also be one of key decisions on our future. At the Ministerial Council towards the end of 2025, our Member States will convene to ensure that Europe's crucial needs, ambitions and the dreams that unite us in space become reality.

So, in 2025, we’ll celebrate the legacy of those who came before but also help establish a foundation for the next 50 years. Join us as we look forward to a year that honours ESA’s legacy and promises new milestones in space.