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ESA Top Multimedia

Earth from Space: East Kalimantan, Borneo

Copernicus Sentinel-1 captured this image over part of eastern Borneo, a tropical island in Southeast Asia.

Stirring the interstellar soup

334th ESA Council: Media information session

Watch the replay of the media information session where ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun (CH) brief journalists on the key decisions made during the ESA Council meeting held at ESA Headquarters in Paris on 11–12 June 2025.

Space boarding pass

SPICE sees the Sun's south pole

Solar Orbiter's world-first views of the Sun's south pole

Solar Orbiter gets world-first views of the Sun’s south pole

What if we could look at the Sun from a whole new angle, one we've never seen before?

From Earth, we always look towards the Sun's equator. This year, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission broke free of this ‘standard’ viewpoint by tilting its orbit to 17° – out of the ecliptic plane where the planets and all other Sun-watching spacecraft reside. Now for the first time ever, we can clearly see the Sun’s unexplored poles.

Using different instruments, Solar Orbiter can see what happens throughout the Sun's outer layers. The material in these layers never stays still, being pushed outward and (usually) falling back to the Sun.

Interestingly, it saw that the Sun's magnetic field has its north and south all tangled up, with patches of both magnetic polarities present right up to the Sun's south pole. This only happens once every 11 years, at the point in the solar cycle when the Sun's magnetic field flips.

Solar Orbiter will keep a close eye on the Sun – including its poles – for the years to come. Its unique viewing angle will change our understanding of the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar cycle and the workings of space weather.

Read the full story here.

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA.

PHI's pole-to-pole view of the Sun's magnetic field

Solar Orbiter's view of the Sun's south pole

SPICE sees movement at the Sun's south pole

Why Solar Orbiter is angling towards the Sun's poles

PHI sees mixed-up magnetism at the Sun's south pole

Since 2025, Solar Orbiter is the first Sun-watching spacecraft to ever get a clear look at the Sun's poles. It discovered that at the south pole, the Sun’s magnetic field is currently a mess.

This image shows a magnetic field map from Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument, centred on the Sun's south pole. Blue indicates positive magnetic field, pointing towards the spacecraft, and red indicates negative magnetic field.

There are clear blue and red patches visible right up to the Sun's south pole, indicating that there are different magnetic polarities present (north and south). This happens only for a short time during each solar cycle, at solar maximum, when the Sun’s magnetic field flips and is at its most active. After the field flip, a single magnetic polarity should slowly build up and take over the Sun’s poles.

Solar Orbiter will be watching the Sun throughout its calming-down phase. In 5–6 years from now, the Sun will reach its next solar minimum, during which its magnetic field is at its most orderly and the Sun has the lowest levels of activity.

Read the full story

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument is led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Germany.

[Image description: This image shows a magnetic map of the Sun's south pole filled with small red and blue dots scattered across a pale-yellow background. The red and blue colours represent opposite magnetic polarities on the Sun. A set of lines – indicating solar longitude – radiate outward from Sun's south pole near the centre of the image, like spokes on a wheel, dividing the circle into sections.]

14 Herculis c

Uranus and its four largest moons

Axiom 4 crew inside Dragon

Ignis mission: Ready for Lift-Off

ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski is heading to the International Space Station on his first mission as part of Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4). He is the second ESA project astronaut from a new generation of Europeans to fly on a commercial human spaceflight mission with Axiom Space.

Sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT), and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the mission—called Ignis—features an ambitious technological and scientific programme. It includes several experiments proposed by the Polish space industry and developed in cooperation with ESA, along with additional ESA-led experiments.

Follow Sławosz's journey on the Ignis mission website and discover more about the next mission patch to be hung on the walls of the Columbus Control Centre.

MetOp-SG-A1 and Sentinel-5 being loaded for their voyage to the launch site

Starry spectacle

Earth from Space: Saharan dust plume

A thick plume of sand and dust from the Sahara Desert is seen in these satellite images blowing from the west coast of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean.

Sombrero Galaxy (NIRCam image)

Visiting ESA's Flyeye telescope

ESA’s Ocean Training Course: the highlights

After an extraordinary six-week voyage from northern Norway, the iconic Norwegian tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl has docked in Nice, France, concluding ESA’s 2025 Advanced Ocean Training Course. Braving everything from wild storms to calm seas, students aboard mastered techniques for collecting ocean measurements and harnessed satellite data to unlock insights into our blue planet. Led by experts, this real-world expedition offered more than education – it sparked curiosity and a deeper commitment to understanding and protecting our oceans.

Read full story: Tall ship brings ESA ocean science training to Nice

ESA’s ocean training expedition arrives in Nice

Cebreros transmitting the Blue Danube Waltz

Shooting for a Mars landing

A miniature capsule shoots off at 4000 km per hour, mimicking the aerodynamics of a Mars atmospheric entry before crashing at supersonic speeds into a wall.

The tiny replica of the Entry, Descent and Landing Module (EDLM) blasts off from a smooth bore gun faster than a speeding bullet. This video has been slowed down 60 times – the actual flight lasted just half a second.

This activity is part of a series of free-flight experiments with a scaled-down version of the ExoMars landing module – measuring just 8 cm in diameter compared to the actual 3.8-metre spacecraft that will carry the Rosalind Franklin rover.

These tests provide critical data on how the spacecraft will behave during its entry into the martian atmosphere. Following a two-year journey to the Red Planet, the ExoMars descent module will approach Mars at a speed of 21 000 km per hour, relying on heat shields, parachutes and retro rockets to land safely.

The first set of tests took place in March at the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis(ISL), a front-line research centre with facilities for investigating the aerodynamics of vehicles like reentry capsules.

Engineers equipped the mini ExoMars landing capsule with internal electronics to monitor its 400-metre flight path. The test models were mounted in special sabots that detached from the capsules when fired from the smooth powder gun. Test speeds ranged from 1800 to 4300 kilometres per hour.

The team used 20 models during the tests. Each model carried several sensors to collect flight data. Teams used shadowgraph imaging, magnetometers, accelerometers, and radar to analyse the capsule's movement, trajectory and stability.

Columbus Control Centre prepares for Ignis

The European teams supporting ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from ground control are getting ready for the launch of the Ignis mission. The Columbus Control Centre keeps an eye on ESA astronauts in space and European experiments running on the International Space Station at all times. Located in Oberpfaffenhofen, not far from Munich, the centre is filled with an array of screens that teams use to constantly monitor activities and experiments in real time, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Its call sign is Col-CC.

Featured in this video are:

Joao Lousada, ISS operations service lead, ESA
Antonio Di Felice, Ax-4 deputy STRATOS flight controller, DLR
Adrian Belli, Ax-4 lead STRATOS flight controller, DLR

The Polish project astronaut is the second of a new generation of European astronauts to fly on a commercial human spaceflight opportunity with Axiom Space.

Sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT), and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA), the mission will include an ambitious technological and scientific programme with several experiments led by ESA and proposed by the Polish space industry.

Follow Sławosz's journey to space on the Ignis mission website and discover more about the next patch to be hung on the walls of the Columbus Control Centre.

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