European Space Agency
Every Cosmic Herald story on European Space Agency — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Missions
The 'Metallic Waves' of Kaiser Crater Are an Optical Trick — Here's the Geology Underneath
Mars Express imaged a shimmering, metallic-looking dune field on the floor of Kaiser Crater. It's an illusion: bright winter hoarfrost draped over 100-meter dark basaltic dunes, with clays and gullies hinting at a wetter past.
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NASA & Agencies
Wildfires Force NASA to Evacuate Its Madrid Deep Space Station, Shifting Voyager Tracking to California
Wildfires near Madrid forced NASA to evacuate one of only three Deep Space Network complexes on Friday; all 90 workers got out safely and mission support, including the Voyager 1 downlink, shifted seamlessly to Goldstone in California.
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Science & Discovery
Venus Is Not Dead: New 3D Rift Models Say the Planet Is Still Pulling Itself Apart
ETH Zurich's first high-resolution 3D simulations of Venusian rifting, published in Nature Geoscience, use the broad ridges flanking Venus's 10,000-km rift valleys as a geological clock — and conclude some rifts are still spreading at 3-10 cm per year.
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Commercial
The 3D-Printed Washing Machine Taking On the Geostationary Giants
SWISSto12 raised $70 million on July 16 to scale HummingSat, a 3D-printed, washing-machine-sized GEO satellite — backed by $500M in contracts, $140M in 2025 revenue, orders from SES and Intelsat, and 73 million euros of ESA member-state money betting on European space sovereignty.
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Astronomy
How Astronomers Measure Cosmic Distances: The Distance Ladder
No single method measures the universe. Astronomers climb a ladder — parallax, then pulsing Cepheid stars, then exploding white dwarfs, then redshift — each rung calibrating the next, and a crack near the top is now cosmology's biggest open problem.
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Astronomy
Euclid Doubles the Known Sample of the Universe's Most Ancient Quasars
ESA's Euclid telescope has found 31 new quasars from the cosmic dawn, including two record-breakers at redshifts 7.77 and 7.69, more than doubling the known sample from that era.
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Commercial
A German Space Capsule Startup Just Planted Its Flag Next to NASA Johnson — With a Full-Scale Nyx Crew Mockup
The Exploration Company opened a Houston lab with a full-scale Nyx Crew mockup and formed TEC Federal to chase U.S. government contracts, backed by ESA's LEO Cargo Return funding.
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Astronomy
Gaia Data Just Killed the 'Universal' Stellar Initial Mass Function
A Gaia-based survey of 110 Milky Way star clusters finds the stellar initial mass function's 'break mass' shifts with cluster age, undermining decades of assuming one universal recipe for how stars of different sizes form.
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Astronomy
Euclid Space Telescope Uncovers the Universe's Most Ancient Quasars
ESA's Euclid mission has spotted 31 quasars from the universe's first billion years, including two record-holders shining with a trillion Suns' worth of light just 670 million years after the Big Bang.
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Astronomy
Euclid Space Telescope Uncovers 31 Ancient Quasars, Two From the Universe's First 5 Percent
ESA's Euclid telescope has spotted 31 quasars from the early universe, including two dating to just 670 million years after the Big Bang, deepening a puzzle over how supermassive black holes grew so fast.
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NASA & Agencies
Europe Sets the Media Call for MTG-I2: The Satellite That Will Watch 80% of Earth for Lightning
ESA and EUMETSAT have opened media accreditation for the late-August 2026 Ariane 6 launch of MTG-I2, a geostationary weather satellite whose Lightning Imager will watch storms form across 80% of the planet in real time.
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Commercial
Germany Bets on an Unproven Rocket: Planet and Isar Aerospace Sign All-German Launch Deal
Planet Labs Germany will fly a Pelican imaging satellite on Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket within a year — a milestone all-German mission riding on a launcher that has yet to reach orbit.
