Euopean Space Agency Space News

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  εpsilon

• Week in images: 07-11 Sep 2026

  

  Week in images: 07-11 Sep 2026

  Discover our week through the lens

• A team of teams like never before: rehearsing a unique launch at ESA mission control

  

  On 15 September, two spacecraft will leave Earth together aboard the same launcher from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou: FLEX, ESA’s photosynthesis mission, and Sentinel-3C, Copernicus’ newest satellite monitoring Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere.

  At ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), two independent mission teams are preparing to operate the spacecraft in parallel in a closely coordinated effort. As launch approaches, they are rehearsing side by side to prepare not only for their own missions, but also for the moments when the two operations intersect.

• Name our dino – ESA’s Hera asteroid mission mascot!

  

  The European Space Agency’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence has a cartoon dinosaur for its mascot – because dinos were made extinct after an asteroid impact, but while they didn't have a space agency, people do! Now we’re asking you to supply our dino with a name, to win a place at November’s Hera arrival celebration.

• MTM's selfie footage of BepiColombo's eight-year journey

  Video: 00:04:20

  Witness how over the last eight years, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has been travelling through the inner Solar System and aligning itself with Mercury's orbit. So far, it has travelled 9.9 billion km and completed nine 'planetary flybys' to help steer its way. In the video, you can see the spacecraft fly past Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury six times. 

  Since launching on 20 October 2018, BepiColombo has been travelling as a composite spacecraft made up of ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio), and the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) that carried the two orbiters to Mercury. 

  We've shared photos and videos before, taken by the spacecraft's three monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) on MTM. But this is the first time we've compiled them into a video of the mission's complete journey so far. 

  The monitoring cameras were designed to keep an eye on the spacecraft itself. In the foreground, you can see one of MTM's solar arrays (M-CAM 1, left), MPO's medium-gain antenna and magnetometer boom (M-CAM 2, middle), and MPO's high-gain antenna (M-CAM 3, right). The images have been positioned and oriented to approximately reflect the relative fields of view of the three M-CAMs. 

  As the M-CAMs have no shutter, many of the original images contain streaks due to light falling on the detectors during image read-out. These streaks have largely been removed for this video. 

  BepiColombo's arrival at Mercury began on 3 September 2026, with MTM separating from the spacecraft stack. The two stacked orbiters will enter orbit around Mercury in November, and separate from each other on 9–10 December 2026. From that moment on, BepiColombo will be the first mission with two spacecraft orbiting planet Mercury at the same time. 

  MTM has no computer to control itself, and lacks an antenna to communicate with Earth. Now that it has separated from the rest, it will circle the Sun indefinitely, letting the two science modules get to work. We expect MTM to pass by Mercury at a distance of around 130 000 km in late October. After that it will enter interplanetary space, and not get any closer to Mercury.

  For more about BepiColombo, click here.

  For the raw M-CAM images, click here.

• Watch: FLEX and Sentinel-3C launch on Vega-C

  

  The European Space Agency’s FLEX satellite and the Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite are scheduled to launch together aboard a Vega-C rocket on 15 September at 03:21 CEST (14 September at 22:21 local time). Watch the VV30 launch live from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, with coverage starting at 02:50 CEST.

• MTG-I2 reaches its final orbit

  

  Europe’s Meteosat Third Generation Imager 2 (MTG-I2) satellite has reached its designated orbit at 36 000 km from Earth and is ready to begin its commissioning phase, preparing it to provide years of service to improve weather forecasting over Europe and North Africa.

• Anak Krakatau eruption by Sentinel-3

  Image: Copernicus Sentinel-3 captured a plume from the eruption of Anak Krakatau on Saturday, 5 September.

• Week in images: 31 Aug - 04 Sep 2026

  

  Week in images: 31 Aug - 04 Sep 2026

  Discover our week through the lens