European Space Agency

Nine years after the Cassini spacecraft was deliberately destroyed in Saturn's atmosphere to avoid endangering potentially habitable moons, scientists continue to uncover treasures in the data it left behind. In 2025, new organic compounds were found to originate from Enceladus' subsurface ocean.

Cassini has disappeared from Saturn, but its discoveries still continue

  • No comments
Nine years after the Cassini spacecraft was deliberately destroyed in Saturn's atmosphere to avoid endangering potentially habitable moons, scientists continue to uncover treasures in the data it left behind. In 2025, compounds were found in
Asteroid Apophis approaches Earth in safe pass of 2029

Apophis will pass under the satellites – and become a natural experiment in planetary defense

  • No comments
On April 13, 2029, the large asteroid will pass within 32 miles of Earth. There is no risk of collision, but Earth's gravity may change its rotation, its orbit.
Saturn and the ten-sided decagon discovered at the south pole in Hubble Space Telescope images

Hubble Discovers Giant Decagon at Saturn's South Pole

  • No comments
Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a massive, ten-sided atmospheric wave circling Saturn's south pole. This is the first time a regular pattern has been discovered in the planet's southern hemisphere.
The Lion Nebula NGC 2392 has a bright core, pink rings, and a purple-blue envelope resembling a lion's mane.

Webb Telescope Reveals the Lion Nebula's Dust "Mane"

  • No comments
A new infrared image of NGC 2392 shows a bubble of ionized gas, rings, and comet-like dust clumps around the hot core of a dying star. The nebula is expected to dissipate within about 10,000 years.
1,200 Starlink satellites were used to map the density of the thermosphere

1,200 Starlink satellites were used to map the density of the thermosphere

  • No comments
A researcher at Kyoto University has calculated the atmospheric drag affecting Starlink satellites at an altitude of 482 kilometers, and reconstructed a two-dimensional map of the density of the upper atmosphere. The method could help predict orbits and avoid collisions, but the results are
A cross-section of the Earth showing the hot core and the magnetic field lines surrounding the planet.

The flow of iron in the Earth's outer core has changed direction beneath the Pacific Ocean

  • 2 תגובות
Researchers have reconstructed the movement of liquid iron in the Earth's outer core and found that in 2010 the direction of flow reversed over a large area beneath the Pacific Ocean. Data from Swarm satellites and other missions show that
Two galaxies collide in the Arp-Madore 2026-424 system, creating an appearance reminiscent of a face.

Face in Space: Hubble Captures Rare Head-On Collision Between Two Galaxies

  • No comments
The two bright cores appear like eyes, and a ring of young stars forms a face. Behind the eerie illusion lies a violent encounter between two galaxies of similar size, some 704 million light-years from Earth.
A wide, detailed mosaic of millions of stars in the dense central region of the Milky Way.

Euclid Space Telescope Maps 60 Million Stars in the Dense Heart of the Milky Way

  • No comments
A mosaic taken by the European Space Telescope over a period of about 26 hours is the largest and most detailed visible-light image of the center of the galaxy. The image is not intended to immediately discover new planets, but to provide a reference point
Simulation of an expanding mini-universe inside a gravity star forming a Gravastar

Theoretical model: A tiny universe may form inside a collapsing star

  • One response
Physicists have developed a dynamical solution to Einstein's equations in which an expanding region forms inside a collapsing star and stops the collapse. The result is a gravistar - a theoretical alternative to a black hole that has no singularity or event horizon
Webb has provided the first detailed 3D image of Uranus' upper atmosphere, revealing auroras, heat peaks thousands of kilometers high, and the strong influence of its tilted magnetic field. The data also confirms that the planet has been cooling for decades. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, P. Tiranti, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

James Webb Space Telescope maps Uranus' upper atmosphere in 3D for the first time

  • No comments
New research reveals the vertical structure of Uranus' ionosphere, discovers auroras influenced by the planet's unusual tilted magnetic field, and confirms that its upper atmosphere has been cooling since the 1990s.
Artist impression of the planetary system around the star LHS 1903. Illustration: ESA

Cheops discovers “inside-out” planetary system that challenges formation theories

  • No comments
New observations point to four planets in an unusual order, including a rocky outer planet that appears to have formed late, when the system was already gas-poor.
Cassiopeia A supernova. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Danny Milisavljevic (Purdue University), Tea Temim (Princeton University), Ilse De Looze (UGhent). Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).

James Webb Telescope reveals unprecedented details in supernova remnant Cassiopeia A

  • One response
Infrared image reveals complex structures, the "green monster," and a glimpse into the sources of cosmic dust – the building blocks of stars, planets, and life
The Proba-3 satellite successfully photographed the sun's corona using an artificial solar eclipse. Photo: ESA

Two satellites created an artificial solar eclipse in space and studied the sun's corona

  • 3 תגובות
The system consists of two satellites that fly in precise coordination at a distance of about 150 meters from each other. One satellite, which is round in shape, hides the bright center of the sun, thereby casting a shadow on the other satellite, which is equipped with
The European Space Agency's (ESA) planned NEOMIR space telescope will scan for asteroids approaching Earth while they are hidden by the glare of the sun. In doing so, it will fill a significant blind spot in modern asteroid warning systems. Credit: ESA / Pierre Caril

An asteroid tens of meters in diameter may hit the moon in 2032

  • No comments
This is the same asteroid that was suspected of potentially hitting Earth, but updated observations rule out the risk of hitting Earth, but leave the possibility of hitting the Moon. ESA presents: Innovative telescope that will detect threats even from the problematic direction
With LISA, ESA plans to capture gravitational waves from space, using a triangle of spacecraft separated by millions of kilometers – and unlock cosmic secrets we've never seen before. Credit: ESA

The European Space Agency is building a large antenna in space to listen for gravitational waves from the dark universe

  • No comments
LISA is a major mission to detect elusive ripples in space-time. From its vantage point in space, LISA will capture gravitational waves at lower frequencies than are possible on Earth, and detect events on a different scale -
Solar Orbiter focuses on the Sun's south pole. Photo: ESA

The Sun's South Pole Photographed for the First Time

  • No comments
The European Solar Orbiter spacecraft has tilted its orbit to view the Sun's south pole from an unprecedented angle – ushering in a new era in solar science and understanding the solar magnetic field.
Spiral galaxy NGC 7469 in Phis, bright core, colorful star arms, star formation.

This galaxy steals the show – but the real twist is just around the corner

  • No comments
The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the beauty of NGC 3507 in the constellation Leo – but it’s only half the story. Its companion NGC 3501 is hidden out of frame, and the collaboration between the two demonstrates the power of
A perfect cosmic circle captured by Webb shows a distant spiral galaxy twisted around a closer elliptical galaxy. This Einstein ring provides a glimpse into the warped nature of spacetime. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G.

Webb captures perfect Einstein ring that reveals hidden galaxy

  • No comments
A stunning new image from the James Webb Space Telescope reveals a cosmic illusion called an Einstein ring, where the light from a distant galaxy is distorted into a perfect circle by the gravity of a closer galaxy.
This illustration shows a reconstruction of what the Firefly Galaxy looked like about 600 million years after the Big Bang without the stretching and distortion caused by gravitational lensing. It is based on images and data from the web. Credit: ASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI), Lamiya Mowla (Wellesley College), Guillaume Desprez (Saint Mary's University)

Webb Telescope Discovers Milky Way's Ancient Twin Twinkling from Cosmic Dawn

  • One response
The "Firefly" galaxy, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope, existed just 600 million years after the Big Bang—with a mass similar to the young Milky Way. Gravitational lensing enabled a seamless observation
The European Space Agency's (ESA) groundbreaking Prova-3 mission has successfully begun its formation flight phase, with two satellites now maintaining a precise 150-metre separation in orbit. This precision will enable the creation of artificial solar eclipses, providing unprecedented views of the Sun's corona. Credit: ESA-P. Carril

The European Space Agency's Prova-3 probes have separated from each other to continue their historic mission

  • No comments
For the first time in history: Two probes will maintain a distance of 150 meters in orbit, creating artificial solar eclipses and enabling groundbreaking exploration of the solar corona
This image of the Sombrero galaxy, taken by Webb's Medium AA camera, is shown with compass arrows, a scale, and a color key. The image shows wavelengths of medium AA light translated into visible light colors. The color key shows the filters used when they collected the light. The color of each filter name is the color of the visible light used to represent the AA light passing through that filter. The north and east compass arrows show the direction of the image in the sky. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

The Webb Space Telescope photographs the Sombrero Galaxy in a new light

  • One response
A crew member works under the Roman instrument carrier during the coronagraph integration in a clean room at NASA Goddard Center in October 2024. Credit: NASA/Sydney Rohda

The 'Roman' space telescope received a device that will allow breaking new ground in the search for extraterrestrial worlds

  • One response
This all-sky view is a layering of the Gaia star map from its second data release in 2018 and the Planck dust map from 2014. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA/Planck Collaboration

Euclid's 'Dark Universe' telescope reveals stunning 208-gigapixel window into the cosmos

  • No comments
Using gravitational insolation, the Euclid mission looks into the dark world, maps the distribution of dark matter and studies the expansion of the universe by observing billions of galaxies
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia satellite reveals the Large Magellanic Cloud in spectacular detail, using radiation mapping instead of photography to show its bright, massive stars and prominent star-forming regions, such as Region 30 Degas. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC.

The Large Magellanic Cloud: Star mapping changes our view of a nearby galaxy

  • No comments
The European Space Agency's Gaia satellite creates a precise radiation map of the Large Magellanic Cloud, showing the massive stars and prominent star-forming regions
A satellite returns to Israel, hot and glowing, with illuminated fragments of space in its vicinity.

Goodbye Cluster: A ground-breaking mission ends in a spectacular fireball over the South Pacific

  • No comments
After 24 years of research, the Salsa satellite (Cluster 2) burned up in a controlled entry into the atmosphere, (thereby) marking the end of the mission and strengthening our understanding of the magnetosphere and space
This "Penguin Party" is a raucous affair. The twisted spiral galaxy in the center, known as the Penguin, and the compact elliptical galaxy to the left, known as the Egg, are in an active embrace. A new near- and mid-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope, taken to mark two years of science operations, shows their interaction marked by a subtle, inverted U-shaped blue glow. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

The Penguin and the Egg: A Living Portrait of Interacting Galaxies to Mark the Second Anniversary of the Webb Space Telescope

  • No comments
Researchers speculate that the penguin had the shape of a spiral. Today, its galactic center shines like an eye, its disordered arms now shaping as a beak, head, spine, and spread tail. The elliptical galaxy that looks like
Hubble's Advanced Surveying Camera captured this detailed image of the galaxy NGC 5253 using its High Resolution Channel, which operated between 2002 and 2007. The image highlights the active star formation regions of the galaxy. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, WD Vacca

Star show: Hubble's rare glimpse of star formation at the core of a distant galaxy

  • No comments
Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys captured this detailed image of the galaxy NGC 5253, highlighting regions of active star formation at the core of a distant galaxy.
Artist's impression of a protoplanetary disk. Credit: ESA

The Webb Space Telescope finds an abundance of carbon molecules around a young star

  • No comments
"It's amazing that we can detect and quantify the amount of molecules we know very well on Earth, like benzene, which is actually more than 600 light-years away," said one of the authors of the paper that appeared.
Perseus galaxy cluster. The image, taken by the Euclid satellite, shows the Perseus galaxy cluster illuminated by the soft blue light emitted by orphan stars. These stars are scattered throughout the cluster, and reach a distance of 2 million light years from its center. The cluster galaxies stand out in illuminated elliptical shapes against the dark space. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, Image processing: M. Montes (IAC) and J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay).

The Euclid mission reveals 1.5 trillion orphan stars cruising through space

  • One response
The Perseus cluster is among the most massive structures in the universe, containing thousands of galaxies and located about 240 million light years from Earth. Within this vast expanse, the Euclid satellite detected faint and ghostly lights - the orphan stars
Asteroid Apophis approaches Earth in safe pass of 2029

Approaching an asteroid: Exploring Apophis using advanced minisatellites

  • No comments
German researchers and the German Space Agency will try three strategies for the study of the asteroid that will approach in 2029 to a distance of 31 thousand km from the Earth
NGC 5468 — the host galaxy of Cepheid. Joint photograph of the Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes, NASA/ESA

The Webb and Hubble telescopes confirm the rate of expansion of the universe, the puzzle remains

  • 8 תגובות
Webb's measurements provide new light on a decade-long mystery known as the Hubble stress - the differences in the age of the universe between the Hubble observations and past observations that remain unexplained * Prof. Adam Rees, winner
Image of Jupiter taken by Juno in 2019, showing stormy areas in the northern hemisphere. Credit: Enhanced image by Kevin M. Gill (CC-BY) based on images provided courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Extrasolar Planet Hunter Targets Jupiter: A New Twist in the Space Exploration Plot

  • One response
For the first time, NASA activated a tool designed to discover planets many light years away on an object in the solar system, in a study of the winds of Jupiter
The LISA mission will be the first space-based observatory dedicated to detecting ripples in the fabric of space-time. Credit: ESA

Capturing the Ripples of Space-Time: The LISA Mission to Study Gravitational Waves

  • 7 תגובות
The European Space Agency gets the green light for the first space observatory of its kind, dedicated to revealing space-time vibrations.
Hubble Space Telescope image showing the spiral galaxies NGC 1356, LEDA 467699, LEDA 95415, and IC 1947. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, image credit : L. Shatz

The Great Galactic Illusion: Revealing the Real Distances in Space

  • 5 תגובות
The two-dimensional reflection of the galaxies in the night sky does not say much about the real distances between the galaxies and between them and the Earth
Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Niyadi in a sleep lab experiment on the International Space Station. NASA photo. The experiment was designed to improve the sleep quality and general health of the astronauts during long space missions

The Emirati astronaut marks half a year in space

  • No comments
A few weeks ago, the astronaut Sultan Al Nyadi participated in a sleep laboratory experiment on the space station
Astroscale's new hook will be equipped with a docking device that will allow connecting and 'towing' satellites and launchers and taking them off course

Astroscale unveiled a new satellite for "dead" satellite removal missions

  • No comments
It will be equipped with a docking device that will allow connecting and 'towing' satellites and launchers and taking them off course
Members of the space mission from the Weizmann Institute of Science (from right to left): Dr. Eli Galanti, Prof. Yochai Caspi and Maria Smirnova

By 2031 you will reach justice: Israeli technology on the way to deep space

A blue-and-white device that was created especially for an experiment by Weizmann Institute of Science scientists was launched to the planet Jupiter, as part of an international research mission of the European Space Agency
The launch of the JUICE spacecraft from the Coro Space Center in French Guiana. Screenshot from the European Space Agency and Ariane Space TV

The JUICE spacecraft was launched to the moons of Jupiter

  • 5 תגובות
The launch at Coro in French Guiana was postponed from yesterday due to weather conditions * The spacecraft is carrying ten instruments, some of which are also made in Israel * Will arrive in the Zedek system in July 2031
JUICE operation schedule. Infographic: European Space Agency

The European spacecraft JUICE is ready to explore the icy moons of Jupiter; Will be launched on 13/4

  • No comments
The purpose of the operation - to find out if the oceans hidden beneath the surface of Jupiter's icy moons have the potential to support extraterrestrial life
Exploring Jupiter and Ganymede using the JUICE spacecraft - artist impression. Figure: European Space Agency

The Israeli point of the JUICE spacecraft that will be launched to Tzedek this week

  • No comments
The European Space Agency ESA will launch on 13/4 the JUICE spacecraft on the historic mission to Jupiter, with technologies and scientific research funded by the Israel Space Agency at the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology
On October 25, the European Space Agency's Probe-2 spacecraft captured two partial solar eclipses. This picture depicts one of them. See the video below in a higher resolution. Photo: European Space Agency

The Proba-2 spacecraft experienced two partial solar eclipses in one day

  • No comments
On October 25, 2022, the European Space Agency's Probe-2 spacecraft recorded two partial solar eclipses. This picture depicts one of them. See the video below in a higher resolution. Photo: European Space Agency
ESA's Laser Ranging Station in Tenerife aims its green laser at the sky. Credit: ESA

A laser observation station will make it possible to identify dangers of satellite collisions and space debris

  • No comments
The European Space Agency station in Tenerife is a technology testing facility and an essential first step in making waste reduction widely accessible to all actors in space who have an impact on the future of our space environment *
The Solar Orbiter spacecraft. Imaging - European Space Agency

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched to circle the Sun to observe the poles

  • 3 תגובות
Underwater test of a possible sample of the ESPRIT airlock. Photo: Benjamin Schultz, for the European Space Agency

Floating ideas for an airlock for a spaceship that will attack the moon and serve as a transit station

  • No comments
The Phi-Colombo spacecraft near the planet Hema. Figure: European Space Agency ESA

Europe launched the space probe by Columbus to the planet Mercury

  • No comments
A futuristic water pipeline serving human settlement on Mars. Illustration: shutterstock

A vast reservoir of liquid water has been discovered beneath the surface of Mars

  • 4 תגובות
The spaceship Gaia. Figure: European Space Agency

"Gaia's data could enable breakthroughs in astronomy"

  • One response
From right to left - Deputy Ambassador of Italy to Israel, Director of the Italian Space Agency Prof. Roberto Battiston, Director General of the Ministry of Science Peretz Wezan, and Director of the Israeli Space Agency Avi Blasberger at the signing ceremony for the cooperation between the Italian and Israeli space agencies and Space Pharma, February 2018. Photo: Yossi Yamin

The Italian Space Agency will participate in the financing of Space Pharma's next satellite

  • 2 תגובות
HASP High-altitude pseudo satellites, image: European Space Agency

The European Space Agency is developing a hybrid of drones and satellites

  • 2 תגובות
Simulation of the TGO probe performing a rocket burn to enter orbit around Mars. Imaging: ESA.

Exo-Mars: The scientific instruments on the Mars rover TGO have been activated for testing

  • 5 תגובות
Science website logo
SEARCH