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Circumstellar disc IRAS 23077+6707

On 17 December 2025, two new Galileo satellites lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. This was the 14th launch for Europe’s satellite navigation operational satellite programme, reinforcing Europe’s resilience and autonomy. The flight, VA266, was the first launch of Galileo satellites on Europe’s newest heavy-lift launcher Ariane 6. 

The satellites, designated SAT 33 and SAT 34, separated from the launcher after a flight of just under four hours. The launch was declared successful after acquisition of signal and the confirmation that both satellites are healthy with their solar arrays deployed. 

“With these new satellites, we strengthen Europe’s global navigation services - delivering greater precision, reliability and autonomy in space”, affirmed Andrius Kubilius, EU Commissioner for Defence and Space.  

“Galileo stands as the world’s most accurate global navigation satellite system – and today we have increased its reliability and robustness,” said Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s Director General.  

The European Space Agency was responsible for carrying out the Galileo launch with Arianespace on behalf of the European Commission. The Galileo satellites were manufactured by OHB, under contract with ESA. Now in orbit, the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) brings the satellites into service and oversees their operation. 

Follow the launch campaign. 

Access the related broadcast quality video material. 

This week Earth from Space features a wintery image: a red and white sphere that, if seen from a distance, resembles a festive decoration.

Galactic gas makes a getaway

Watch the replay of the media information session in which ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun (CH) update journalists on key decisions taken at the ESA Council meeting, held at ESA Headquarters in Paris on 17 and 18 December 2025.

Ever wondered how planetary systems like our own Solar System form? Thanks to the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, we're getting a unique peek behind the cosmic curtain into these dusty environments.

In this collage, we see the images of 31 baby star systems. Click on the white dots next to each system to find out more about them. The bar on the top right shows the scale of the image in Astronomical Units (AU).

The collage also shows our own Solar System for reference on the bottom right, as it is predicted to have looked at an age of 1 million years, with the Sun at its centre (not visible).

All of the systems are centred around very young stars that have recently collapsed from vast clouds of gas and dust.

After the clouds collapsed under their own gravity, they spun faster and flattened into discs with hot, dense centres. These centres became the stars, sometimes multiple stars were formed. The discs around them are called protoplanetary discs.

The 31 baby systems are shown here in orange-purple, as seen by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) ground-based telescope.

Astronomers expect the remaining material in protoplanetary discs to clump together to form planets, but until now it’s been very difficult to spot them because of all the dust and gas present in discs. To date, very few planets have been detected around forming stars.

Enter Gaia.

In 31 out of 98 young star systems, Gaia has detected subtle motions that suggest the presence of unseen companions. For seven of these systems, the observed motions are consistent with objects of planetary mass. In eight systems, the data best match the presence of brown dwarfs – objects larger than planets but smaller than stars. The remaining sixteen systems likely have additional stars around.

Gaia’s predicted locations of these companions in the systems are shown in cyan. In the reference image of our baby Solar System, Jupiter’s orbit is also shown in cyan.

Gaia discovered the companions in the baby star systems thanks to its unique ability to sense the gravitational tug or ‘wobble’ a planet or companion induces on a star. This technique had already been used to find companions around older stars. But now, for the first time, a team of astronomers led by Miguel Vioque of the European Southern Observatory, Germany, has used this Gaia technique to find planets and companions around stars that are still forming.

The all-sky, large-scale nature of the Gaia survey enabled the team to study hundreds of forming stars and identify companions across large samples for the first time. This in contrast to costly ground-based searches that can only target a few stars at a time.

This ability of Gaia is revolutionising the field of star and planet formation. The companions that the telescope has already found, can now be followed up by telescopes like the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space telescope that can study the inner discs of the baby systems in more detail.

With Gaia’s upcoming fourth data release, many more hidden planets are expected to be uncovered.

This new finding has been described in ‘Astrometric view of companions in the inner dust cavities of protoplanetary disks’ by M. Vioque et al., accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. 

Learn more

[Image description: A collage of 32 glowing discs on a black background. Each disc shows concentric rings in vivid colours: purple, orange, and yellow, with bright cyan centres. The discs vary in size and orientation, creating a striking pattern of circular and elliptical shapes.]

Galileo launch 14 liftoff

The ASPIICS coronagraph aboard ESA’s formation-flying Proba-3 mission is able to observe the Sun’s corona in the gap between the fields of view of solar extreme-ultraviolet imagers and conventional coronagraphs, making it uniquely suited for studies of the inner solar corona. 

This time-lapse animation captures a coronal mass ejection (CME) in the top right, combining observations made on 16 July over a period of one hour and a half by three different European instruments aboard different missions: the Sun’s disc and low corona (artificially coloured in yellow), as captured by an extreme-ultraviolet telescope (SWAP) aboard Proba-2; the outer corona (in red) observed by the LASCO C2 coronagraph aboard SOHO; and the inner corona (in green), imaged in detail by Proba-3’s ASPIICS coronagraph, filling the gap. 

Andrei Zhukov from the Royal Observatory of Belgium, Principal Investigator for the ASPIICS coronagraph on Proba-3, comments: “You can see the CME starting at the edge of the solar disc, captured by Proba-2. Then it extends into the inner coronal region, which is now visible to us thanks to Proba-3, before reaching the high corona observed by SOHO. The continuity with which we can now observe the CME structure extend outwards from the Sun is incredible.”  

Read more

On 17 December, two new Galileo satellites lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 6 rocket. This marked the 14th launch for Europe’s satellite navigation operational satellite programme, reinforcing Europe’s resilience and autonomy.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is responsible for carrying out the Galileo launch with Arianespace on behalf of the European Commission. The Galileo satellites were manufactured by OHB, under contract with ESA. Once in orbit, the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) will bring the satellites into service and oversee their operation.

The flight, designated VA266, was the first launch of Galileo satellites on Europe’s newest heavy-lift launcher Ariane 6.

Follow the launch campaign. 

Access the related broadcast quality video material. 

InCubed is the European Space Agency’s Earth observation programme for ‘Investing in Industrial Innovation’. It aims to foster commercial innovation, boost the European Earth observation economy and reinforce relationships with the private investor community. It achieves this by working with entrepreneurs to develop innovative and commercially viable products and services that generate or exploit the value of Earth observation imagery and datasets. As a commercially driven programme run by ESA Φ-lab, InCubed exemplifies ESA’s role as a partner to industry and a supporter of business and technology innovation.

Coronal mass ejection captured by Proba-2, Proba-3 and SOHO

2025 was a landmark year for Europe in space. From celebrating 50 years of ESA to new missions, scientific breakthroughs, the year reaffirmed Europe’s leadership in science, exploration, climate action and innovation.

Step inside astronaut training with ESA astronaut Pablo Álvarez Fernández as he shares his training journey from Cologne in Germany to Houston in the US. Discover what it’s like to wear a 145 kg spacesuit underwater, train for emergencies like fires and ammonia leaks and prepare for the ultimate astronaut dream: a spacewalk. Plus, Pablo talks about life in Houston, teamwork under pressure and what’s next on his path to the stars. 

This interview was recorded in December 2024. 

You can listen to this episode on all major podcast platforms. 

Keep exploring with ESA Explores!

Galileo satellite encapsulation