The three instruments on the Sentinel-3A satellite are now offering a tantalising glimpse of what’s in store for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring effort. The latest images, which feature Europe and Antarctica, come from the sensor that records Earth’s radiant energy.

With just days to go before the departure of ExoMars, mission teams are in the final stages of their months-long training that ensures everyone knows their job the moment the mission comes alive.

A future observatory in space, sensitive to gravitational waves with longer wavelengths than those detected on the ground, would be an essential tool to exploit gravitational astronomy.

Astronomy Senior Editor Richard Talcott shares his journey across Indonesia with Astronomy magazine readers ahead of the March 9 total solar eclipse.

Following a long series of tests, ESA’s LISA Pathfinder has started its science mission to prove key technologies and techniques needed to observe gravitational waves from space.

ESA and UK satellite operator Inmarsat are forging ahead with the development of air–ground communications via satellite as part of Europe’s plan to keep our skies safe as air traffic increases.

ESA business incubation has passed the milestone of 400 new companies. The initiative to profit from space technology and expertise to create new businesses and jobs in Europe also boosts local economies and Europe’s competitiveness.  

NASA’s Dawn mission commemorates the spacecraft’s first year at Ceres with new images of a mysterious mountain.

ESA’s Josef Aschbacher joins the Earth from Space video programme to discuss the past, present and future of the Copernicus programme and the Sentinel satellites

Among Ceres’ most enigmatic features is a tall mountain the Dawn team named Ahuna Mons.

Researchers have discovered about 80 young galaxies that existed in the early universe about 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang.

Space science image of the week: Intricate swirls of gas show us a glimpse of the Sun’s future

Our week through the lens: 29 February – 4 March 2016

Following the first impressive images from Sentinel-3A, this latest Copernicus satellite is now showing us how another of its instruments, an altimeter, will track sea-level change.

Cassini images show bright features that change over time.

Earth observation image of the week: a Sentinel-2A image of Utah in the US, also featured on the Earth from Space video programme

The CHIMERA instrument at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego is using hi-tech cameras to locate near-Earth asteroids and objects in the Kuiper Belt.

The ExoMars 2016 spacecraft are now sealed inside the rocket fairing ahead of launch on 14 March

Operations image of the week: After being offline for several months, the low-resolution webcam on Mars Express has delivered a new set of Red Planet images

Join us Friday, 4 March, at 10:00 CET for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week features a Sentinel-2A image of Salt Lake City in the United States

Relive the final stages of the launch campaign of the latest Copernicus Sentinel satellite with this three-minute timelapse video

Astronomers have been studying RCW 106 for some time, although it is not the crimson clouds that drew their attention, but rather the mysterious origin of the massive and powerful stars buried within.

This is the first time that the distance of an object so far away has been measured from its spectrum.

A new study finds atmospheric river storms are 2.5 times more likely than other types of winter storms to cause destructive rains that melt snow in California’s Sierra Nevada.

Just two weeks after launch, the latest Sentinel has offered a taster of what it will provide for the EU’s Copernicus programme

Technology image of the week: a giant sound horn feeding into ESA’s acoustic test chamber

Now is the perfect time to observe the solar system’s largest planet, which reaches peak brightness March 8.

Researchers find that a universe that contains some big objects and many small objects relieves gravitational tension faster than a uniform universe.

These “fast radio bursts” come from an extremely powerful object that occasionally produces multiple bursts in under a minute.

The SpaceDataHighway precursor has helped raw data travel from space to ground and be processed into an image of the Brazilian coast in a record-breaking 13 minutes

JPL congratulates NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on his safe return to terra firma after an American-record-breaking 340 days aboard the International Space Station.

Human spaceflight and robotic exploration image of the week: Spreading Orion’s wings – unfurling the solar array on the European Service Module

Media and social media representatives are invited to attend our ExoMars launch event at ESA in Darmstadt, Germany on 14 March

Astronomers suggest that future searches focus on that part of the sky in which distant observers can notice the yearly transit of Earth in front of the Sun.

Powerful future devices such as the James Webb Space Telescope may help astronomers look for life on a handful of faraway worlds by searching for, among other things, evidence of oxygen.

Pakistan water managers are using satellite data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment to more effectively monitor and manage the nation’s groundwater.

Anssi Pekkarinen from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization joins the Earth from Space video programme to discuss managing forests with satellite data

Space science image of the week: Tectonic activity and strong winds shape scenery on Mars

If Earth let all its extra quarter days add up, we’d quickly be celebrating the 4th of July when it’s snowing.

Stars may not accumulate their mass steadily but in a series of violent events that manifest as sharp stellar brightening.

Operators of UK transport networks are the first who are set to benefit from Live Land, a satellite-based land monitoring system developed through ESA. 

JPL Director Charles Elachi will be honored with a pair of prestigious awards over the next two months.

Use your mouse or mobile device to explore the site on the Red Planet where NASA’s first Mars rover mission, Pathfinder, landed in 1997.

ESA Euronews talks to ESA DG Jan Woerner on building a Moon Village

Our week through the lens: 22-26 February 2016

Once many planets are found orbiting in young star clusters, researchers can compare them to planets orbiting older stars and see how planets change with time.

Another pair of Galileo navigation satellites is scheduled for launch by Soyuz rocket in May, ahead of a quartet on an Ariane 5 in the autumn, bringing the Galileo system a step closer to operational use.

For the first time a team of scientists has tracked down the location of a fast radio burst (FRB), confirming that these short but spectacular flashes of radio waves originate in the distant universe.

Scientists have demonstrated how a NASA-developed airborne instrument can help monitor water quality in San Francisco Bay and potentially other water bodies.

NASA’s senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is working adeptly in some of the most challenging terrain of the vehicle’s 12 years on Mars, on a slope of about 30 degrees.

NASA airborne instruments and scientists, including some from JPL, are studying tropical forests in Gabon, Africa, with colleagues from space agencies in Gabon and Europe.

Operations image of the week: After 16 years, a recommissioned, low-resolution ‘webcam’ on a Cluster satellite has snapped a #selfie with Earth

Join us Friday, 26 February, at 10:00 CET for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week features a Sentinel-2A image of the Eastern Desert in Egypt

Each year, about a quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere ends up in the ocean, but how it happens is still not fully understood. The Sentinel-3A satellite is poised to play an important role in shedding new light on …

The observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that the powerful explosions produce an abundance of a heavy form of cobalt that gives the heat from nuclear decay an extra energy boost.

In order to power both the gravitational wave event and the gamma-ray burst, the twin black holes must have been born close together, with an initial separation of order the size of the Earth, and merged within minutes. – See more at: https://www.cfa.h…

Just as trail landmarks aid hikers, the International Terrestrial Reference Frame is a key navigation standard in science and daily life. NASA has key roles in updating it.

Monitoring a vast network of rapidly spinning pulsars is key to finding very-low-frequency gravitational waves, researchers say.

The current El Niño weather phenomenon is taking its toll on coral reefs, prompting a field campaign to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to explore how Europe’s Sentinel-2 satellite might be able to quantify the damage on a large scale.

Technology image of the week: a new kind of orbit using a solar sail to take up position above Earth’s polar regions

On Monday, the two cubes housed in the core of ESA’s LISA Pathfinder were left to move under the effect of gravity alone – another milestone towards demonstrating technologies to observe gravitational waves from space.

Researchers are studying the best way to use pulsars to detect signals from low-frequency gravitational waves, like those from colliding supermassive black holes.

Four CubeSat projects, including two from JPL, will be developed, built and launched into low-Earth orbit to test technologies that could enable improve our understanding of Earth.

The California Department of Water Resources has named three JPL scientists as recipients of its Remote Sensing and Drought Science Service award.

Save the date: media and social media accreditation details for our ExoMars 2016 launch event, to be held at ESA in Darmstadt, on 14 March are coming soon

A new sequence of maps shows varying surface temperatures on Saturn’s moon Titan at two-year intervals, from 2004 to 2016. The measurements were made by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) instrument on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

By studying rock glasses, Heidelberg researchers concluded that there were multiple cosmic impacts approximately 790,000 years ago.

Space Science Image of the Week: The ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter propellant tanks are filled for the launch in March

Scientists noticed long ago that galaxy NGC 4569 contained less gas than expected but they could not see where it had gone.

Europe’s railway network plays a vital role in keeping our continent on the move. A new ESA initiative is considering the ways that space can add value to the network as it enters its third century of operations.

Our week through the lens: 15-19 February 2016

With a view 100 times bigger than that of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, WFIRST will aid researchers in their efforts to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter and explore the evolution of the cosmos.

It’s possible that Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded.

A surprising view of Sentinel-3A darting through the aurora borealis on its way into orbit, captured from a hilltop in northern Finland

NASA is formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe — the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

President Obama Thursday named six NASA researchers, including one from JPL, as recipients of the 2016 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Learn how Rosetta-inspired technology was deployed to detect bed bugs inside hotel rooms in this TEDxESA talk by researcher and entrepreneur Geraint ‘Taff’ Morgan

Human spaceflight and robotic exploration image of the week: a salute to the bedrest participants who volunteer to spend 60 days in bed for science

Operations image of the week: The men and women now flying Sentinel-3A comprise a ‘team of teams’ who specialise in areas such as mission operations, flight dynamics and ground stations

Join us Friday, 19 February, at 10:00 CET for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week features a Sentinel-2A image of La Rochelle, France

The newly discovered system sets a record for both the longest duration stellar eclipse and the longest period between eclipses in a binary system.

The latest ground-based gravitational-wave detector will allow scientists to figure out where these ripples in space-time are coming from.

Water has left its mark in a variety of ways in this martian scene captured by ESA’s Mars Express.

Inner-city deliveries in Austria may soon be powered by pollution-free fuel cell technology that is also being explored by ESA for satellites and robotic missions to Mars.

The BOSS survey scanned the sky and measured the redshifts of more than 1 million galaxies. Now, an international team of astronomers has reproduced the observed galaxy clustering by generating thousands of simulated galaxy catalogs.

A new study finds that most asteroids and comets are destroyed in a drawn out, long hot fizzle, much farther from the Sun than previously thought.

How ExoMars 2016 will be launched on its seven-month cruise to the Red Planet

Technology image of the week: a close-up glimpse of a microchip designed to provide high-frequency radar for future space missions

How ESA is preparing astronauts for missions to the Moon

The third ESA-developed satellite carrying four Earth-observing instruments was launched today, ready to provide a ‘bigger picture’ for Europe’s Copernicus environment programme.

From ESA’s control centre, watch the replay of the 16 February event to celebrate the launch of the first satellite for the Sentinel-3

Watch the replay of the Sentinel-3A launch on a Rockot from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia

ESA’s LISA Pathfinder has released both of its gold–platinum cubes, and will shortly begin its demanding science mission, placing these test masses in the most precise freefall ever obtained to demonstrate technologies for observing gravitational waves from space.

The exoplanet 55 Cancri e has a dry atmosphere without any indications of water vapor.

ESA hopes its LISA Pathfinder mission will teach scientists how to observe the universe outside the electromagnetic spectrum.

For the first time, the two masses — a pair of identical gold-platinum cubes — in the heart of the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft are floating freely, linked only by laser beams.

The light detected from this jet was emitted when the universe was only 2.7 billion years old, a fifth of its present age.

Discover how Sentinel-3 will observe our oceans, helping us better understand the overall health of our planet

What promises to be one of the biggest Earth observation conferences in the world has opened its doors to registration

During this time, more than two hundred research papers related directly or indirectly to the 19-meter-wide Chelyabinsk superbolide have been published.