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Porth, Newquay, Cornwall. UK
Updated:  04/05/2026 11:30 
 


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04 May 2026 00:00
 
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ESA Top News

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
ESA Top News
ESA Top News

ESA Top News

January 21st, 2026 07:54:00 EST -0500 εpsilon
εpsilon website

εpsilon
May 4th, 2026 03:30:00 EDT -0400 Launch boosts European Earth monitoring and connectivity
Fourteen European satellites on the same rideshare launcher have successfully reached orbit

Thirteen European satellites on the same rideshare launcher have successfully reached orbit, bringing capabilities to Italian and Greek monitoring programmes as well as CubeSats that will test satellite connectivity.
May 1st, 2026 09:15:00 EDT -0400 Week in images: 27 April - 01 May 2026
Mekong River, Cambodia

Week in images: 27 April - 01 May 2026

Discover our week through the lens
May 1st, 2026 04:32:00 EDT -0400 Sentinel-1D goes live: a milestone for Europe’s radar mission
The Sentinel-1 mission

The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite, launched last November, is now fully operational after successfully completing its critical in-orbit commissioning phase.

With all four Sentinel-1 satellites having now been deployed, this achievement marks a major milestone for this flagship radar mission – a journey that began more than a decade ago and that has helped pave the way for the future of Earth observation.
May 1st, 2026 04:00:00 EDT -0400 Earth from Space: Netherlands in bloom
Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 21 April 2026, this image shows a double bloom in the Netherlands: an array of vibrant colours in the tulip fields as well as the blue-greenish swirls of phytoplankton in the North Sea. Image: Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 21 April 2026, this image shows a double bloom in the Netherlands: an array of vibrant colours in the tulip fields as well as the blue-greenish swirls of phytoplankton in the North Sea.
April 30th, 2026 10:00:00 EDT -0400 This Month at ESA: April 2026
 Video: 00:03:10

What did space deliver for Europe this month? From the Moon to low Earth orbit and beyond, here’s what the European Space Agency has been up to.
April 30th, 2026 08:00:00 EDT -0400 Another one: Ariane 6 flies with four boosters once more
Ariane 6 lifts off for flight VA268

Updated on 30 April 2026

On 30 April 2026, four P120C boosters ignited and lifted Ariane 6 to the skies, for the second time. Flight VA268 took 32 satellites for Amazon’s Leo constellation to low-Earth orbit. Liftoff occurred at 05:57 local time (09:57 BST/10:57 CET) from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, with separation of the last satellites after 114 minutes.

The upper stage was then fired a third time to ensure a safe deorbit and allowing Ariane 6 to adhere to the zero debris approach.
April 30th, 2026 07:30:00 EDT -0400 The great parachute bake-out
The great parachute bake-out Image: The great parachute bake-out
April 30th, 2026 05:29:00 EDT -0400 Baking a parachute for Mars
 Video: 00:02:02

Watch ESA’s Mars chief engineer Albert Haldemann explain the sterilisation process of one of the parachutes of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission and why it matters.  

Carefully wrapped inside a donut-shaped bag is a 35-m diameter parachute, about to be baked inside a specialised dry-heat steriliser oven. The parachute needs to be at least 10 000 times cleaner than your smartphone. 

To get rid of any microbes it might have picked up during its time on Earth, the parachute was heated up in a specialised oven at the European Space Agency’s Life Support and Physical Sciences Laboratory at ESTEC, the agency’s technical centre in the Netherlands. All air inside the cleanroom continuously passes through a two-stage filter, and everyone entering the chamber must gown up more rigorously than a surgeon before passing through an air shower to remove any contaminants. 

The 74 kg parachute, made mostly of nylon and Kevlar fabrics, will endure a six-minute dive into the thin martian atmosphere and slow down the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover for a safe landing on the Red Planet. This feat will make it the largest parachute ever to fly on the Red Planet, or anywhere else in the Solar System besides Earth.  

The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will launch in 2028 and spend over 25 months travelling to the Red Planet where it will search for signs of life beneath the martian surface. 

The potential existence of past and perhaps even present-day life on our closest planetary neighbour requires rigorous sterilisation, to make sure that no microbes piggyback their way there from Earth. Any terrestrial microbes hardy enough to survive the ride through space could interfere with the investigation by causing ‘forward contamination’ and triggering a false positive. 

Protecting the martian environment from ourselves, in accordance with international planetary protection measures, is as important as protecting the mission itself.