On 23 June, a Vega launcher will loft the first of ESA’s dual Sentinel-2 satellites into orbit from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou. For the mission control team, liftoff will mark the end of many months of careful preparations and the start …

Follow the Sentinel-2A launch live from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 23 June. Streaming begins at 01:30 GMT (03:30 CEST), with liftoff scheduled at 01:52 GMT (03:52 CEST)

Live from ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Germany: follow the event leading up to the launch of Sentinel-2A. Streaming begins at 01:00 GMT (03:00 CEST)

The instrument finally detected the long-sought radio emission coming from M32’s supermassive black hole.

Scientists analyzing Venus Express observations have detected multiple “hot spots” on the planet with temperatures changing from day to day.

Sealed from view and poised high: watch the timelapse of Sentinel-2A’s encapsulation and integration on the Vega rocket

A NASA aircraft joined a Norwegian oil spill cleanup exercise, testing a scientific instrument’s ability to recognize more and less damaging types of oil slicks.

The newest addition to a venerable line of ocean-monitoring satellites has arrived at its launch site in California to prepare for its launch in August.

The rugged landscape of Saturn’s fracture-faced moon Dione is revealed in images sent back by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft from its latest flyby.

ESA at the Paris Air &Space Show – the week in images

ESA’s Venus Express has found the best evidence yet for active volcanism on Earth’s neighbour planet.

Join us Friday, 19 June, at 10:00 CEST for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week we explore the San Francisco Bay Area in the US state of California

ESA’s business incubators hit a milestone this month: they have now fostered 300 start-up companies – and more are joining all the time.

Kepler-138b is less than a tenth of Earth’s mass and half its size.

Researchers determined that galaxy NGC 1097 harbors a black hole 140 million times more massive than our Sun.

Technology image of the week: VIP visitors to the ESA pavilion at Le Bourget peer into a ‘cloud chamber’, revealing otherwise invisible cosmic ray tracks

Replays of key media briefings at the Paris Air & Space Show, 15-17 June

Aquarius/SAC-D, an international Earth-observing mission that carries NASA’s Aquarius instrument, ended June 8 when an essential component of the spacecraft power and attitude control system stopped operating.

Europa is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of present-day life, and a new NASA mission to explore this potential is moving forward.

Saturn’s moon Titan is home to seas and lakes filled with liquid hydrocarbons, but what makes the depressions they lie in? A new study suggests that the moon’s surface dissolves in a similar process that creates sinkholes on Earth.

Watch the Rosetta mission press briefing held at Le Bourget on 17 June, including a status report on Philae lander

The discovery hints at the possibility that methane could be used as a food source by rudimentary forms of life beneath the martian surface.

A bright, distant galaxy shows evidence of harboring these massive, previously purely theoretical stars that were the creators of the elements necessary to forge the cosmos we see today.

With less than a week to liftoff, the next Sentinel satellite for the Copernicus environmental monitoring programme is now in position high up in the launch tower at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The world’s first spacecraft thruster with a platinum combustion chamber and nozzle made by 3D printing has passed its baptism of fire with a series of firings lasting more than an hour and 618 ignitions.

The photos show an increasingly complex surface with clear evidence of discrete equatorial bright and dark regions.

NASA has completed an intensive study of Louisiana Gulf Coast levees and wetlands, using three advanced instruments on two research aircraft.

UC Irvine studies using NASA GRACE data find a third of Earth’s largest groundwater basins are being rapidly depleted by human use, despite little data about how much water remains.

Replay of discussion at the Paris Air Show on the European Data Relay System and its future services and business opportunities

Replay of media briefing at the Paris Air Show on the first results from the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle

Watch a briefing from the Rosetta team at ESA’s pavilion at Le Bourget, including the latest results and what lies ahead. Streaming starts 09:30 CEST.

The February flight of ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle is yielding invaluable insights and results for future reentry craft.

Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: Engineers in the Rosetta control room on watch for Philae signals

A team of scientists used techniques to mimic stellar and planetary conditions to observe how noble gases behave in order to better understand the atmospheric and internal chemistry of these celestial objects.

Watch key events in ESA’s pavilion at the Paris airshow: today, ESA IXV results and EDRS roundtable. Streaming starts at 15:00 CEST

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will make a close flyby of Saturn’s moon Dione on June 16, coming within 321 miles (516 kilometers) of the moon’s surface.

Rosetta’s Philae lander wakes up from hibernation on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Asteroid Icarus will safely pass by Earth more than 21 times the distance of Earth to the moon on June 16.

Replay of the media briefing with ESA DG Jean-Jacques Dordain and his successor Johann-Dietrich Woerner at the Paris airshow on 15 June

The receipt of signals from Rosetta’s Philae lander on 13 June after 211 days of hibernation marked the start of intense activity. In coordination with its mission partners, ESA teams are working to juggle Rosetta’s flight plan to help with renewed lander science investigations. 

Space Science Image of the Week: Although NASA’s Messenger mission has ended, ESA’s BepiColombo will continue the quest to understand mysterious Mercury

Researchers theorize that some “warm Neptune” exoplanets could have helium-enriched atmospheres after their hydrogen boiled off.

Rosetta’s lander Philae wakes up from hibernation

Rosetta’s lander Philae has woken up after seven months in hibernation on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

It appears the lander also was awake once before on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko but couldn’t contact its team on Earth.

When NASA launches its next mission on the journey to Mars – a stationary lander in 2016 – the flight will include the first two CubeSats sent to deep space.

Our week through the lens: 8-12 June 2015

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti back on Earth after 199 days in space

ESA at 51st Paris Air and Space Show

The presence of a stratosphere can provide clues about the composition of a planet and how it formed.

These observations of the red giant star L2 Puppis also clearly show a close stellar companion.

Thanks to expertise garnered building space telescopes powerful enough to see exoplanets, large wind turbines are now generating clean power without making a racket. 

ESA’s Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA’s Terry Virts and Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov exit their Soyuz after landing safely in the Kazakh steppe

The wacky world of exoplanets continues to surprise astronomers.

ESA’s Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA’s Terry Virts and Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov exit their Soyuz after landing safely in the Kazakh steppe

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov landed safely today in the Kazakh steppe after a three-hour ride in their Soyuz spacecraft. They left the International Space Station a…

Join us Friday, 12 June, at 10:00 CEST for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week, Sentinel-1A takes us over Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo

The spots consist of many individual bright points of differing sizes with a central cluster, but scientists still don’t know an explanation for them.

The supermassive black hole in NGC 5813 has erupted at least three times, with the latest still occurring.

Tomorrow’s satellites must evolve – because the space they operate in is changing. New regulations on cutting space debris are influencing satellite design, and ESA is reaching out to satellite builders.

New images of dwarf planet Ceres, taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, show the cratered surface of this mysterious world in sharper detail than ever before.

Explore ESA’s Columbus space laboratory in a new interactive panorama of the International Space Station. More modules will follow soon

Technology image of the week: this aluminium plate was ripped inwards by a single sand grain-sized fleck of aluminium oxide

The video is based on observations of Ceres that were taken from Dawn’s first mapping orbit.

Researchers from the OSIRIS team believe that the increasing heating-up of Comet 67P is responsible for newly observed night activity.

The ape-like RoboSimian robot, developed at JPL, took fifth place in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals.

Engineers are poring over the data following the second experimental landing technology test of NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project.

As preparations for the launch of Sentinel-2A continue on track, the team at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana has said farewell to the satellite as it was sealed from view in the Vega rocket fairing. Liftoff is set for 23 June at 01:52 GMT (03:52 CEST; 22:52 local time on 22 June).

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA’s Terry Virts and commander Anton Shkaplerov return to Earth on 11 June, streaming starts at 13:00 GMT / 15:00 CEST

Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: Samantha, Terry and Anton’s Soyuz spacecraft will bring them home on Thursday morning after 200 days in space

Like they do on Earth, these deposits might provide a window into the possibility of past life on the Red Planet.

The new observations reveal star-forming clumps in the galaxy equivalent to giant versions of the Orion Nebula.

In two weeks’ time, Sentinel-2A will be launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Join ESA TV for an introduction to the ‘colour vision’ mission for Copernicus

A new animated video of dwarf planet Ceres, based on images taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, provides a unique perspective of this heavily cratered, mysterious world.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has detected deposits of glass within impact craters on Mars.

NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator project completed its second flight test when the saucer-shaped craft splashed down safely Monday in the ocean off the coast of Kauai.

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will return to Earth on 11 June, along with NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Soyuz commander Anton Shkaplerov, having spent 200 days in space on the International Space Station.

‘Food for curious minds’ is the theme of Ecsite 2015, taking place 9-13 June in Trento, Italy

Space Science image of the week: Herschel’s view of a gigantic stellar crib in the Taurus Molecular Cloud

Satellites help us monitor the state of our oceans, supporting ‘healthy oceans, healthy planet’ – the theme for this year’s World Oceans Day

Our week through the lens: 1-5 June 2015

The three proposals each offer the chance to tackle some of the major outstanding scientific questions about our place in the universe.

Using WISE, researchers have discovered more than 400 dust-shrouded nurseries of stars that have helped them trace the shape of our galaxy’s spiral arms.

Earth observation image of the week: a Sentinel-1A radar image of China’s Tianjin city, also featured on the Earth from Space video programme

Join us Friday, 5 June, at 10:00 CEST for the ‘Earth from Space’ video programme. This week features a Sentinel-1A image of the Chinese city of Tianjin

Simulations suggest that comet impacts can account for many of the features in the swirls.

A comprehensive analysis of all available Hubble Space Telescope data shows that Nix and Hydra are wobbling unpredictably.

Exoplanets, plasma physics and the X-ray Universe are the topics chosen by ESA to be considered for the fourth medium-class mission in its Cosmic Vision science programme, for launch in 2025.

Exoplanets, plasma physics and the X-ray Universe are the topics chosen by ESA to be considered for the fourth medium-class mission in its Cosmic Vision science programme, for launch in 2025 and like all the previously proposed Cosmic Visi…

The second satellite in Europe’s Copernicus programme is set for launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 23 June at 01:52 GMT (03:52 CEST 23 June; 22:52 local time 22 June).

In the first-ever demonstration of space-to-ground remote control with live video and force feedback, NASA astronaut Terry Virts orbiting Earth on the International Space Station shook hands with ESA telerobotics specialist André Schiele in the Netherlands today.

A balloon carrying a test vehicle for NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project is scheduled to lift off no earlier than 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT/ 7:30 a.m. HST) Monday, June 8, from Kauai, Hawaii.

Researchers fine-tune maps of our galaxy’s spiral arms using data from NASA’s WISE mission.

Revisit last week’s International Symposium on Climate Change in Rome, which reviewed the links between climate change and world development

Human spaceflight and operations image of the week: Vibrating mixtures in microgravity has revealed an unknown effect in liquids

This work provides a valuable key to understanding the early formation of the Sun and planets.

Hyperion is the largest of Saturn’s irregular moons and may be the remnant of a violent collision that shattered a larger object into pieces.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has returned images from its final close approach to Saturn’s oddball moon Hyperion, upholding the moon’s reputation as one of the most bizarre objects in the solar system.

NASA’s Alice instrument on Rosetta finds that electrons near its target comet cause rapid breakup of water and carbon dioxide molecules released from the comet’s nucleus.

Rosetta’s continued close study of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has revealed an unexpected process at work, causing the rapid breakup of water and carbon dioxide molecules spewing from the comet’s surface.