Save the date: Public presentations for next M-Class mission
As part of the selection process of the next Medium-class mission of the ESA Science Programme, the proposing teams are invited to give a Public Presentation on their respective missions. The missions - M-Matisse, Plasma Observatory and Theseus - have been under study since 2022, with the final down-selection to one mission scheduled to take place in June 2026.
Public Presentation will be held on 22 April 2026 at ESA Headquarters, Paris.
Registration is mandatory for all attendees and will open on 1 March 2026.
Cybersecurity incident prevents access to certain services in the Science Directorate
In December, the ESA Science Directorate suffered a cybersecurity incident involving servers located outside the ESA corporate network.
Directly impacted stakeholders were informed immediately, and all preventive measures have been taken. Unfortunately, certain services used by the broader science community have been temporarily paused while precautionary additional security measures are being implemented.
Our teams are working tirelessly to safely reestablish all services; we thank our science community for their understanding while this work is ongoing.
X-ray Universe conference announcement with deadline
The seventh conference in the "The X-ray Universe" series will take place on 8-11 June 2026 in Elche, Spain and is now open for abstract submission. Registration will open at the end of February.
The conference is aimed at encompassing a broad range of high-energy astrophysics topics, from Solar system studies to cosmology, and at providing a showcase for results and discoveries from XMM-Newton as well as from a variety of other current missions. The scientific potential of future mission projects and the evolution of the scientific analysis landscape will be further topics for discussion.
The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, 20 February 2026.
Save the Date: 8-10 Dec 2026 - Community Workshop on "The Mission to Enceladus - The ESA L4 Mission"
We are excited to announce that from 8 to 10 December 2026, we will be hosting a community workshop at ESTEC focused on "The Mission to Enceladus - The ESA L4 Mission".
The workshop will have a dual focus. Firstly, ESA will provide the community with updates on the study results conducted with the support of the L4 Expert Committee, the L4 Payload Working Group and industrial partners. Secondly, the community will have the opportunity to present their concepts and ideas for L4 payloads.
This workshop marks our transition into the next phase of the L4 preparation.
Call for the Leiden/ESA Astrophysics Programme for Summer Students (LEAPS)
The Leiden/ESA Astrophysics Programme for Summer Students (LEAPS) offers an opportunity for students with an interest in astronomy and astrophysics to perform a 10-week summer research project in collaboration with a research scientist from Leiden Observatory or ESA/ESTEC. The programme is open to all students not currently engaged in a PhD programme. The 2026 ESA projects are "Chasing Dissipation Signatures in Galilean Moons' Dynamics: The Key Role of the Laplace Resonance", "Unveiling X-ray Emission in AGN: Insights into Accretion Physics and Galaxy Evolution", and "Catching the solar wind in action!" and applicants must be enrolled for the entire duration of the programme at a university in one of the ESA Member States, Associate Member States, or (European) Cooperating States.
Results of the 10th call for the Archival Research Visitor Programme
The review of the proposals for the tenth cycle of the Archival Research Visitor Programme is complete. We are happy to welcome seven visiting scientists, who were selected by an independent committee and who will join ESA in spring and summer 2026 to pursue their scientific research using data in the ESA Space Science Archives. Topics of research include solar physics, the interaction of the solar wind with planets, testing cosmic isotropy, active galactic nuclei, and their ultra fast outflows.
The next deadline for applications is Wednesday 30 April 2026.
XRISM Guest Observers Cycle 3 Announcement of Opportunity
The 3rd ESA "Announcement of Opportunity" to submit Guest Observer proposals for observations to be performed with the JAXA/NASA/ESA X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) was published on 10 December 2025.
This Announcement solicits proposals for observations to be carried out between June 2026 and May 2027. According to the Memorandum-of-Understanding between JAXA and ESA, not less than 8% of the Guest Observer time shall be allocated by ESA to scientists affiliated in ESA Member States. Potential proposers are expected to prepare and submit proposals in electronic form by 27 February 2026.
The documentation, proposal submission and support software for this Announcement are available from the ESA XRISM website.
The XMM-Newton Twenty-fifth Announcement of Opportunity (AO-25) for observing proposals closed on the 10 October 2025. In total, 463 valid proposals were received. 375 different principal investigators from 42 countries submitted their proposal with ~1700 individual scientists involved when also considering co-investigators.
The AO-25 Observing Time Allocation Committee review finished by 21 November. 5 Large programmes were approved, with total exposure times of 3.8 and 0.9 Msec for grades A+B and C, respectively. In total, 150 proposals were approved; out of the 150, 24 are (anticipated) Target of Opportunity proposals. The total amount of exposure time approved is 8.6 Msec and 10.5 Msec for Grades A+B and C, respectively.
ESA's Directorate of Science will soon open, at ESAC in Spain, the Mission Manager position for Plato (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars), ESA's mission to discover and characterise Earth-like exoplanets - due to launch early 2027. The mission manager will be responsible for all operational aspects of the mission, as well as for the management of the Science Operations Centre at ESAC, from the completion of the In-Orbit Commissioning Review until the end of the post-operations phase. The mission manager will orchestrate the collaboration between all the mission stakeholders and industry to optimise the scientific return of the mission within the given programmatic and financial constraints. The official announcement will appear soon on ESA's career website.
The Ariel Mission Consortium and ESA Ariel Science Team are delighted to invite the international scientific community to attend and present at the Ariel Open Conference 2026, at the ESA Magali Vaissiere Conference Centre, UK. The conference will provide a summary of Ariel's science, instruments and operations and present the activities that the Ariel team has planned to engage the science community.
This is the latest in the series of ESA conferences, in collaboration with STScI, to highlight the scientific impact of the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. The conference will showcase the latest Hubble and Webb studies of chemical evolution and nucleosynthesis, from understanding the chemistry of nearby protoplanetary disks and planetary atmospheres, to early enrichment by the first galaxies and stars.
This conference is the seventh meeting in the "The X-ray Universe" series, aimed at encompassing a broad range of high-energy astrophysics topics, from solar system studies to cosmology. It will provide a showcase for results and discoveries from XMM-Newton and other missions, discussing as well the scientific potential of future missions and the evolution of the scientific analysis landscape.
European Space Agency, D/SCI Directorate of Science
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