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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Stargazing
Total Solar Eclipse and Peak Perseids Collide Over Europe on August 12
A total solar eclipse crosses Greenland, Iceland, and Spain on August 12, 2026, then the New Moon lets that same night's Perseid peak deliver up to 100 meteors an hour with zero lunar glare.
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Commercial
The First Air-Breathing Satellite Gets a Bus: Kreios Space Taps NanoAvionics to Fly an Engine That Eats the Atmosphere
Spanish startup Kreios Space will fly the first orbital demo of air-breathing electric propulsion on a Kongsberg NanoAvionics MP42 bus in 2028 — a ~200 kg satellite that scoops atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen for propellant, aiming to make 150-300 km orbits sustainable without carrying fuel.
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NASA & Agencies
ISRO and JAXA Lock Down the Handshake Between Chandrayaan-5's Lander and Its Japanese Rover
At a Bengaluru meeting in late July, Indian and Japanese engineers finalized how their lander and rover will talk to and power each other on the Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX mission to hunt for lunar water ice.
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NASA & Agencies
Two New Galileo Satellites Officially Join Europe's Navigation Constellation
SAT 33 and SAT 34 — the final pair of first-generation Galileo satellites — have officially entered service, with SAT 34 cleared on July 23, 2026, as Europe's aging satnav fleet heads toward a heavier, electric-propulsion successor.
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NASA & Agencies
ESA Opens Launch Campaign for FLEX, the First Satellite Built to Watch Plants Glow
ESA is preparing FLEX, the first satellite dedicated to measuring the faint fluorescence plants emit during photosynthesis, for a September 2026 Vega-C launch alongside Copernicus Sentinel-3C from Kourou.
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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.
