ESA Space Science

The European Space Agency (ESA) reacted promptly to the discovery of comet 3I/ATLAS on 1 July 2025. Soon after they were alerted to its existence by automated detection systems, ESA astronomers began using ground-based telescopes in Hawaii, Chile, and Australia to monitor its progress.

Since then, the comet has been observed by space telescopes close to Earth, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, XMM-Newton and XRISM. 

In October and November 2025, ESA turned interplanetary voyagers Mars Express, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) in the direction of the comet to make further observations from excellent vantage points. The data from Juice has recently arrived on Earth and scientists are busy analysing them to see what they reveal.

Follow the links below for more information.

Noticeable change on Mars often takes millions of years – but the European Space Agency’s Mars Express has captured a blanket of dark ash creeping across the planet in just decades.

Since July 2025, the European Space Agency’s pair of Proba-3 satellites has already created 57 artificial solar eclipses. So far, the mission has collected more than 250 hours of high-resolution videos of the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. That’s the same amount of observing time as about 5000 total solar eclipse campaigns carried out on Earth.  

But the science is even more exciting. For the first time we can carefully track how material from the Sun moves through the inner corona, where space weather is born. The first results, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that solar wind structures in the inner corona can travel three to four times faster than scientists thought. 

***Update 6 April 2026: launch postponed due to a technical issue occurred on a subsystem component production line after VV29 launcher integration, new launch date to be confirmed at a later date, more information from Avio***

ESA will be broadcasting live as the European-Chinese Smile mission launches at 07:29 BST/08:29 CEST (03:29 local time) on 9 April 2026.

Smile will launch on a European Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Times subject to change at short notice.

‘Extreme but not exotic,’ – a glimpse at Comet 3I/ATLAS through the eyes of the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice).

The European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are joining hands to uncover how Earth defends itself against dangerous particles and radiation from the Sun.

It’s the first time we will have images and videos of what happens when this solar wind crashes into our magnetic field. Smile will witness this interaction in action, using four onboard instruments to watch the drama unfold.

Life can only exist as we know it when nestled safe inside this giant magnetic bubble surrounding our planet. By imaging the bubble as a whole for the first time, Smile will help us build up the fundamental understanding that space weather forecasting will ultimately depend on.

Learn more about Smile.

What really happens when the Sun’s charged particles slam into Earth’s magnetic shield? 

Smile is about to reveal it for the first time.

This groundbreaking mission will observe Earth’s magnetosphere in X-rays while capturing the northern lights in ultraviolet, offering an entirely new way to see how our planet defends itself from solar storms.

A joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Smile will launch aboard a Vega-C rocket on 9 April.

Learn more about Smile.

Watch the replay of the Smile pre-launch media briefing. The briefing covered key details ahead of the mission’s launch aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Smile is a joint mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, designed to study how the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have joined forces to capture new views of Saturn, revealing the planet in strikingly different ways. Infrared and visible observations show layers and storms in the ringed planet’s atmosphere.

The journey of Juice

Video series covering Juice's journey to Jupiter