Space Science Image of the Week: NASA’s Galileo spacecraft shares a view of Jupiter’s moon Callisto, one of the worlds that will be explored by ESA’s Juice mission

Our week through the lens: 19-23 January 2015

Since 2002, ESA’s Integral spacecraft has been observing some of the most violent events in the Universe, including gamma-ray bursts and black holes. While it still has years of life ahead, its fuel will certainly run out one day.

Rapid ice loss in a remote Arctic ice cap has been detected by the Sentinel-1A and CryoSat satellites.

The spacecraft is revealing Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as having a remarkable array of surface features and with many processes contributing to its activity, painting a complex picture of its evolution.

A proposed helicopter could triple the distances that Mars rovers can drive in a Martian day and help pinpoint interesting targets for study.

A panorama from one of the highest elevations that NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached in its 11 years on Mars includes the U.S. flag at the summit.

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, scheduled for launch on Jan. 29, will measure the moisture in Earth’s soil with greater accuracy and higher resolution than any preceding mission, producing a global map of soil moisture e…

There has been a significant increase in the amount of water “pouring” out of the Rosetta mission’s comet.

Rosetta is revealing its host comet as having a remarkable array of surface features and with many processes contributing to its activity, painting a complex picture of its evolution.

Join us Friday, 23 January, at 10:00 CET for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. Discover the largest glacier in the Alps in this week’s programme

Until now, scientists have been unable to study both the bright and dim phases of a quasar in a single source.

Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration.

High-resolution images from ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft reveal an incredible array of surface features on the comet

These new images from the high-resolution stereo camera on ESA’s Mars Express show Nili Fossae, one of the most enticing regions on Mars. This ‘graben system’ lies northeast of the volcanic region of Syrtis Major on the northwestern edge of the large Isidis impact basin – and intriguing hints of methane have been seen here.

An instrument called SPIDER just landed after 16 days drifting in the wind above Antarctica, searching for signs of inflation in the earliest moments of the universe.

Protoplanet Vesta, visited by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from 2011 to 2013, was once thought to be completely dry, incapable of retaining water because of the low temperatures and pressures at its surface.

NASA and Microsoft have teamed up to develop software called OnSight, a new technology that will enable scientists to work virtually on Mars using wearable technology called Microsoft HoloLens.

Technology image of the week: a laser from ESA’s Optical Ground Station, illuminating the future of optical communications

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, which uses four telescopes working parallel to gather eight images of the Sun, cycles through 10 different wavelengths every 12 seconds.

The journey to find worlds ripe for life begins in part by following a trail of dust.

Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: ESA’s Kiruna station in the snow

Image gallery of ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet spacewalk training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center with veteran ESA spacewalker Luca Parmitano

This is the first in a series of images that will be taken for navigation purposes during the approach to Ceres.

This is the first in a series of images that will be taken for navigation purposes during the approach to Ceres.

An eight-minute film of the past, present and future of Moon exploration, from the lunar cataclysm to ESA’s vision of what lunar exploration could be

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft closes in on Ceres, new images show the dwarf planet at 27 pixels across, about three times better than the calibration images taken in early December.

An unusual package was delivered to a hotel in Beijing, China, in 1987 containing a batch of blue–green algae that would spend five days in space in a capsule. The ESA-led MELiSSA project was on its way.

Space Science Image of the Week: ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft snapped this image in 2007 of a rapidly shape-shifting vortex at Venus’ south pole

The spacecraft discovered and characterized 40 near-Earth objects in the first year after the mission was restarted.

The theories are now that the radio wave burst might be linked to a compact type of object — such as neutron stars or black holes — and the bursts could be connected to collisions or “star quakes.”

The 2015 Rossi Prize has been awarded to Fiona Harrison, the principal investigator of NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR.

The launch of NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in California is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 29.

The Beagle 2 Mars Lander, built by the United Kingdom, has been thought lost on Mars since 2003, but has now been found in images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Watch the replay of ESA DG’s traditional start-of-year media briefing on the activities for 2015, Friday 16 January.

Our week through the lens: 12-16 January 2015

The outermost planet orbits in the “Goldilocks” zone, a region where surface temperatures could be moderate enough for liquid water and perhaps life to exist.

The “optical navigation” campaign that starts January 25 will mark the first time pictures from the spacecraft will be used to help pinpoint Pluto’s location.

The UK-led Beagle-2 Mars lander, which hitched a ride on ESA’s Mars Express mission and was lost on Mars since 2003, has been found in images taken by a NASA orbiter at the Red Planet.

Aiming to study Earth’s ‘bow shock’ in the solar wind, the constellation of Cluster satellites is being rejigged to bring two of the four to within almost touching distance.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is entering the first of several approach phases, culminating July 14 with the first close-up flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto.

A NASA spacecraft using infrared imaging discovered 40 near-Earth objects in one year and observed many others, including a comet that has become this month’s brightest.

The 12 instruments of the Next-Generation Transit Survey will focus on discovering Neptune-sized and smaller planets from Paranal Observatory in Chile.

The flyby of 2004 BL86 will be the closest by any known space rock this large until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past Earth in 2027.

Watch ESA DG’s traditional start-of-year media briefing on the activities for 2015, Friday 16 January. Streaming starts at 09:00 CET

Technology image of the week: this one-piece instrument housing was produced using a 3D printed mould

This week, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is preparing to drill its second sample of Mount Sharp. An upgraded version of its onboard software is ready for installation next week.

Looking back at a tremendous international accomplishment: landing a robotic probe on a moon of Saturn.

On its first launch of the year, Europe’s Vega rocket will loft ESA’s unmanned spaceplane to test reentry technologies for future vehicles.

The January 26 flyby of asteroid 2004 BL86 will be the closest by any known space rock this large until an asteroid flies past Earth in 2027.

NASA instruments on a mountaintop show that Los Angeles’ annual methane emissions are 18 to 61 percent higher than the best previous estimates.

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the pioneering Huygens mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, the first successful landing on an outer Solar System world

Meltwater rivers flowing on Greenland’s frozen surface may contribute as much to global sea level rise as all other processes that drain water from the ice sheet combined.

JPL employees were deeply saddened by the death of Dr. Alberto Behar, who died in the crash of a small plane on Friday, Jan. 10, near Van Nuys Airport in the Los Angeles area.

New data from NASA’s NuSTAR mission determine which of two supermassive black holes is pouring out X-rays in a colliding pair of galaxies.

Signals from NASA’s Saturn-orbiting probe and the keen eyes of a continent-spanning telescope array yield greatly improved knowledge of the “true” center of the Saturn system.

A new NASA satellite that will peer into the topmost layer of Earth’s soils to measure the hidden waters that influence our climate is in final preparations for a Jan. 29 launch.

The same technology that suggests what movies you might like to watch is helping astronomers learn about stars.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, continuing to drive while engineers tackle a flash-memory issue, has reached a crater-rim high point on “Cape Tribulation.”

Scientists have found what appear to be two supermassive black holes in the final stages of a merger, a rare event never seen before.

Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are developing robots to explore volcanoes.

A new survey indicates that the Magellanic Clouds are bigger and more complex than previously thought.

Citizen scientists are busy sifting through images from the WISE mission, logging 1 million potential planetary habitats.

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has, to date, offered scientists more than 4,000 candidate planets — the 1,000th of which was recently verified.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has a new science-team chief who has already helped lead the mission for a decade.

NASA will hold a briefing at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) Thursday, Jan. 8, about the upcoming Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission.

It’s active. It’s passive. And it’s got a big, spinning lasso.