ESA Top Multimedia

Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot is preparing to launch to the International Space Station for her first space mission: εpsilon.

After years of intensive training — from emergency procedures to spacewalk simulations — the countdown has begun. Flying alongside astronauts from NASA and Roscosmos, Sophie will join an international crew living and working together in space.

Aboard the ISS, Sophie will live and work in microgravity, conducting scientific research and performing a range of European- and French-led experiments that advance knowledge for life on Earth and in space.

Join us live on YouTube to watch the launch of Sophie Adenot.

ESA’s Mars Express takes us on a journey across the southern highlands of Mars to Flaugergues Crater.  

The video begins by tracking along a swathe of ground enclosed by two steeply sloping and roughly parallel cliffs – or escarpments – named Scylla Scopulus and Charybdis Scopulus (to the left and right, respectively). This ’path’ of ground is called a graben, created as tectonic plates pulled apart. It measures about 75 km wide by 1 km deep. 

The prominent, 150-km-wide Bakhuysen Crater can be seen to the left.

The camera continues travelling northwards, approaching Flaugergues Crater in the distance. It moves along the crater’s eastern side before circling around to the left and ending at its western rim. 

Flaugergues Crater is a roughly 240-km-wide basin found in Mars’s southern highlands, where most of the rough terrain is densely covered in craters. Half of the crater floor is also rugged, with parts rising up to elevations of around 1 km. We see a valley crossing this rocky patch, which was likely shaped by flows of wind and lava. 

Enjoy the flight, and be sure to view the associated map of the area, which shows the route taken by the camera and highlights the key features seen throughout the journey. These features are also indicated in the voiceover. 

Want to continue your airborne adventures on the Red Planet? Other Mars Express flights across the martian surface can take you to Nili Fossae, Ares Vallis, Xanthe Terra, Noctis Labyrinthus, and Jezero Crater. 

How the video was made 

This video is not representative of how Mars Express flies over the surface of Mars.  

It was created using data from the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera Mars Chart (HMC20W), an image mosaic made from single orbit observations of the mission’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The mosaic image, centred at 20°S/17°E, is combined with topography information from the digital terrain model to generate a three-dimensional landscape.  

For every second of the video, 50 separate frames are rendered following a pre-defined camera path. The vertical exaggeration used for the animation is three-fold. Atmospheric effects, like clouds and haze, have been added to conceal the limits of the terrain model. The haze starts building up at a distance of 250 km.  

The HRSC camera on Mars Express is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The systematic processing of the camera data took place at the DLR Institute for Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof. The working group of Planetary Science and Remote Sensing at FU Berlin used the data to create the film. 

Access the related broadcast quality footage.

Timelapse video showing the central core for the Ariane 6 rocket arriving at the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The Ariane 6 rocket being assembled here will be the first to fly with four boosters, doubling liftoff thrust for the launcher, and see Ariane 6 take satellites for Amazon’s Leo constellation to orbit. 

Four automated vehicles transported the Ariane 6 central core from the launcher assembly building to the launch pad that is about 800 meters away on 21 January 2026. 

Once at the launch pad, choreographed movements by two of the automated vehicles and a crane equipped with a lifting beam, raised the central core to its vertical launch position and placed it on the launch table. It was then rotated so that the stages’ fluid connections were positioned opposite the launch pad umbilicals that will supply the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel for launch. 

The four boosters used on this flight were connected to the central core on the launch pad the next day. The booster structures are produced in Italy and then filled with solid propellant at Europe’s Spaceport at their booster finishing facility. Ariane 6 flight VA267 will be the first flight to use four boosters to get to orbit. Each P120C solid rocket booster is 13.5 m long and 3.4 m in diameter. Filled with about 142 tonnes of solid propellant, they provide around 4500 kN of maximum thrust. Working together the boosters will provide the majority of the thrust during Ariane 6’s launch to get it off the launch pad. 

Ariane 6 in its four-booster configuration doubles the rocket’s performance compared to the two-booster version that has flown five times including the inaugural flight in 2024. The P120C boosters used by Ariane 6 are one of the most powerful one-piece motors in production in the world. Flying with four boosters takes Ariane 6 to a whole new class of rockets. With the extra thrust from two more boosters Ariane 6 can take around 21.6 tonnes to low Earth orbit, more than double the 10.3 tonnes it could bring to orbit with just two boosters. The flight will demonstrate and prove the performance of four boosters working together with the main stage in real flight. 

Ariane 6 is Europe’s newest heavy-lift rocket, designed to provide great power and flexibility at a lower cost than its predecessors. The rocket provides Europe with greater efficiency and an ensures access to space for the benefits of humankind, allowing for all types of missions from exploration to navigation, science and communications.   

Columbus KA-band antenna installation

Space activities are unlike any others. They interact not just with Earth, but with three interconnected environments: Earth, Earth’s orbit, and the Moon and deep space. On Earth, we aim to reduce the space sector’s environmental impacts while maximising the societal and environmental benefits of our missions. In orbit, we manage space debris and collision risks to maintain safe and secure operations. For the Moon and deep space, we are laying the foundations to minimise the impact of our missions on and around other celestial bodies.

Guided by our core values, ESA is committed to making its activities more sustainable, redefining how space activities are conceived, executed and shared with the world. Our objective is clear: to address the most pressing challenges and implement ambitious changes, both in our own practices and in close collaboration with our partners.

Looking ahead, in support of Strategy 2040, ESA is determined to lead through ambition, action and collaboration, building a future where space is not only a domain of opportunity but also a model of sustainability, responsibility and global unity.

Spinning Ariane 6 rocket showing four boosters it can use to rocket to space.

Ariane 6 is a three-stage launch vehicle with the boosters, main stage and then upper stage expending their propellant to reach orbit. The number of boosters and length of the tip of the rocket, called the fairing, can be adapted per mission.

Ariane 6 in its four-booster configuration doubles the rocket’s performance compared to the two-booster version that flew first in 2024. The P120C boosters used by Ariane 6 are one of the most powerful one-piece motors in production in the world. Flying with four boosters takes Ariane 6 to a whole new class of rockets. With the extra thrust from two more boosters Ariane 6 can take around 21.6 tonnes to low Earth orbit, more than double the 10.3 tonnes it could bring to orbit with just two boosters. 

Technicians prepare Ariane 6 for flight VA267

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over part of the coastal area of Rudong County on China’s eastern seaboard.

A dentist at ESA’s European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT) in the UK controlling a robotic arm at the University of Glasgow’s SCENE facility at Loch Lomond.

COSMOS Field MoM-z14 Galaxy (NIRCam pullout)

Temperatures over Europe and northern Africa by MTG-Sounder

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.