European Space Agency
Every Cosmic Herald story on European Space Agency — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
-
NASA & Agencies
ESA is building a telescope just for exoplanet atmospheres. Ariel will change what we know.
The European Space Agency's Ariel mission — the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey — is designed to systematically characterize the atmospheres of hundreds of exoplanets in a single mission. It's the first telescope built specifically to answer the question: what are other planets made of?
-
NASA & Agencies
ESA's next decade in space: gravitational wave detectors, exoplanet atmospheres, and Venus.
The European Space Agency's science program for the 2030s includes LISA (a space-based gravitational wave observatory), Ariel (systematic exoplanet atmosphere survey), and EnVision (a Venus orbiter). Together they address three of the biggest open questions in astrophysics.
-
NASA & Agencies
ESA's JUICE is threading five planetary flybys to reach the most interesting moons in the solar system
Launched in April 2023, JUICE — Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer — will arrive at Jupiter in 2031 after a gravity-assist marathon. Its destination is Ganymede, where it will become the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than our own.
-
NASA & Agencies
The orbital junkyard is getting dangerous — and the first cleanup missions are flying
Low Earth orbit is filling with dead satellites and shattered debris moving at bullet speeds. After years of warnings, the first missions designed to grab and de-orbit junk are now reaching space, led by Europe's ClearSpace and Japan's Astroscale.
-
NASA & Agencies
Mars Sample Return: the architecture, and the reckoning
Bringing Perseverance's cached samples to Earth would be the most complex robotic campaign ever flown. Its cost and schedule have forced NASA into a hard rethink — and, as of 2026, the agency is weighing competing architectures rather than committing to one.
-
NASA & Agencies
Who actually runs space? A field guide to the agencies
Spaceflight is now a multipolar, increasingly commercial enterprise, structured as much by alliances as by rockets. A guide to the major agencies — their specialities, their constraints, and the strategic fault lines forming between them.
