ESA Top Multimedia

Test-firing of a resonance igniter built by The Exploration Company in Bordeau France in November 2025. 

Building a working rocket engine is one thing, igniting the engine in a stable and repeatable way is an engineering feat in itself. Resonance ignition produces high‑frequency waves inside a shaped cavity. As the waves interact, they resonate and heat the propellants until they ignite. This type of ignition uses just the propellants themselves. 

Instead of relying on a spark, a pyrotechnic device or a plasma torch, the system creates self‑amplifying pressure waves that rapidly increase the temperature of propellant gases. 

Propellant mixtures are injected in gaseous form through a “resonance nozzle” into a cavity. If the shape of the nozzle and the cavity are exactly right, then the propellants bounce back and forth across the cavity and produce standing acoustic waves: one wave of gas moving in one direction meets the wave returning in the opposite direction. These waves break into each other at points called nodes, resulting in high pressure fluctuations and increasing the temperature of the gas.  

The Exploration Company is investigating this phenomenon as a novel technique to start their rocket engines, requiring no external ignition devices, just a resonance nozzle and cavity. An advantage of resonance igniters is that they can be used repeatedly, they use little electricity, there is no need for additional parts and they are therefore lightweight. Current technologies for rocket engines use spark plugs that require a high voltage, glow plugs that need time to warm up, or torch igniters. 

The first test campaign concluded in November and showed the technology works, allowing The Exploration Company to develop know-how on the device’s workings and better understand the geometry needed for successful, rapid and repeatable ignition.  

They tested different setups and analysed modes of ignition. The data from this test campaign will help develop another version of the device that will be included in the pre-combustors of The Exploration Company’s staged-combustion cycle high-thrust engine programme. 

The test was conducted within a €9 M contract from the European Space Agency as part of the Technologies for High-thrust Re-Usable Space Transportation initiative, THRUST! 

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot (FR) is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station in 2026. Her first mission to the International Space Station, εpsilon, is named after the fifth Greek letter and the fifth brightest star of the Leo constellation, following the French tradition to name human spaceflight missions after celestial bodies. It also pays tribute to the five career astronauts of ESA’s 2022 class. In mathematics, 'ε' represents something small. In the extensive collaborative effort of space exploration, involving thousands of participants, all roles, including the astronaut’s role, stay small, yet all are meaningful.

Just as the name reflects the power of small, yet impactful contributions and how multiple parts unite to create a whole, so does the idea behind the patch design. The hummingbird motif is central; though one of Earth’s smallest birds, it plays a crucial role in the jungle’s ecosystem, pollinating numerous plants. Around the edge is a ring of small dots, symbolising the many small contributions that together make great achievements possible. All these little actions that can be coordinated to form a circle and close the loop. At the top, three of these dots are coloured – blue, white and red – representing Sophie’s home country, France, and ESA’s exploration destinations: Earth, the Moon and Mars.

Three lines emerge from the 'i' of the εpsilon, shaping the tail of a shooting star, a poetic reminder that dreams keep us alive. Also featured are five stars, a tribute to the five career astronauts of ESA’s 2022 class. At the base of the patch is round blue shape, representing Earth’s surface and its natural beauty: mountains, forests and landscapes that Sophie enjoys exploring. It serves as a reminder of our motivation for spaceflight: to explore, learn and return with this knowledge to benefit life on Earth.

From an emotional perspective, the same message is conveyed. In life’s intricate tapestry, small threads contribute to create the most beautiful patterns. A kind word, a gentle smile, a moment of patience – these seemingly insignificant actions can transform lives and shape destinies. This patch invites each of us to embrace the potential of our smallest actions as they ripple outward, touching hearts and inspiring souls.

Satellite navigation is essential to everyday life, from tracking your morning jog to landing air ambulances. But as reliance on satellite navigation grows, so do the risks associated with its interruption, natural or intentional. To strengthen European resilience in navigation, the European Space Agency (ESA) takes part annually in Jammertest.

Organised on the remote island of Andøya, Norway, Jammertest is the world’s largest open air testing campaign for jamming and spoofing resilience. In September 2025, ESA engineers attended Jammertest with ESA’s mobile navigation lab to test how different systems respond to interference. After this, the data are analysed to check which technologies perform the best against jamming and spoofing. 

By bringing together academia, industry and governmental organisations, Jammertest helps make satellite navigation better for everyone and protects European assets. 

More on Jammertest: ESA - Navigating through interference at Jammertest

On 17 January, the Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft were rolled out from the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to Launch Pad 39B. The 6.5-km journey took around 12 hours and was carried out using NASA's crawler-transporter, which has been moving rockets to launch pads for over 50 years.

At the top of the rocket sits the Orion spacecraft, bearing the ESA and NASA logo and designed to carry four astronauts on a 10-day lunar flyby mission. Artemis II will be the first crewed flight of the Artemis programme and the first time humans have ventured towards the Moon in over 50 years.

Their journey depends on our European Service Module, built by industry from more than 10 countries across Europe. This powerhouse will take over once Orion separates from the rocket, supplying electricity from tis four seven-metre-long solar arrays, providing air and water for the crew, and performing key propulsion burns during the mission, including the critical trans-lunar injection that sends the spacecraft and its crew on their trajectory towards the Moon.

After being selected to join the ESA Academy Experiments programme, three student teams from universities across Europe were invited to carry out the experimental part of their research projects in ESA’s test facilities with support and guidance from experts.

For their experiments, the student teams made use of ESA’s ORBIT facility – a part of the Orbital Robotic Laboratory (ORL) located at ESTEC, the agency’s technical heart in the Netherlands. ORBIT consists of a 43 m² ultra-flat floor – the height difference between its lowest and highest points is less than a millimetre.

The Skywalker team from Aalborg University, Denmark, used the simulated two-dimensional microgravity environment to test the reinforcement learning algorithms they have developed for their robotic arm. Their project aims to demonstrate the concept of autonomous crawling in microgravity.

In the very first ORBIT facility experiment involving human participants, the V-STARS team from Birkbeck, University of London, and the University of Kent, UK, investigated the relationship between the human vestibular system (region of the inner ear responsible for body balance) and the perception of verticality in a microgravity environment.

The GRASP team from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, explored an innovative approach to performing manoeuvres with non-cooperative objects in space. The robotic arm they have developed themselves is sporting an adhesive gripper inspired by geckos.

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To land on the right foot on the Red Planet, European engineers have been dropping a skeleton of the four-legged ExoMars descent module at various speeds and heights on simulated martian surfaces.

Watch a quick sequence of some of the drops from different angles. For over a month, Thales Alenia Space and Airbus teams ran dozens of vertical drops using a full-scale model of the landing platform at the ALTEC facilities in Turin, Italy. 

This first series of tests involved dropping the model onto both hard and soft surfaces, the latter filled with powdery, Mars-like soil.  The team changed the speed and height of the falls by a few centimetres. 

During the test campaign, the four legs replicated the structure and dimensions of those that will fly to Mars. The lightweight, deployable legs are interconnected and equipped with shock absorbers to withstand the impact.

Another goal of the campaign was to verify the performance of the touchdown sensors. A system installed in all four legs detects when the spacecraft approaches the surface and triggers the shutdown of the descent engines after a soft landing.  

The landing legs are crucial gear for the safe touchdown of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission in 2030, alongside parachutes and engines that will slow the spacecraft’s descent onto Mars. 

While Thales Alenia Space is the industrial lead of the mission, Airbus provides the landing platform and ALTEC offers technical support.

Media representatives joined French ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, on Monday 5 January, for a hybrid press conference to learn more about her first mission to space.

This event, held at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Germany, was the final media event in Europe ahead of her launch to the International Space Station.

Sophie selected the name ‘εpsilon’ for her first mission, currently planned no earlier than 15 February, reflecting the power of small, yet impactful contributions, and how many parts come together to make a whole.

During εpsilon, Sophie will conduct a wide range of tasks on the International Space Station, including European-led scientific experiments, medical research, supporting Earth observation and contributing to operations and maintenance on the Station.