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Registration open – ESA Directorate of Science Town Hall
Join ESA Director of Science Prof. Carole Mundell for a virtual Town Hall on 24 June, from 14:00 to 16:00 CEST, featuring updates on the Science Programme, future priorities, and opportunities for community engagement. The session includes a live Q&A and is open to all members of the scientific community.
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ESA adopts galactic archeology mission Arrakihs
ESA’s Science Programme Committee has adopted the Arrakihs mission, set for launch by the end of 2030. It will observe the faint light from nearby galaxy haloes, uncovering structures that are normally invisible. By revealing these structures, Arrakihs will shed new light on how galaxies like our own form and evolve.
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ESA extends 13 space science missions to boost discovery
Additionally, ESA’s Science Programme Committee has approved extensions for 13 space science missions, recognising their ongoing scientific value. The decision ensures continued observations across a wide range of fields, from planetary science to astrophysics. In particular, the extension of the ESA-led Solar Orbiter will allow scientists to view the Sun’s poles from new angles, enabling completely new discoveries.
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Smile spacecraft launched
The Smile spacecraft was launch successfully on board a Vega-C rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, on 19 May 2026 at 03:52 UT. The launch was perfect and the separation of the spacecraft with the launcher took place about one hour later. After deployment of the solar arrays, the Chinese Academy of Sciences spacecraft controllers confirmed the good health of the spacecraft. Six days later the first firing of the spacecraft main engine took place to raise the apogee by 700 km. Eleven more firings will take place up to 25 June 2026 to reach the nominal orbit of 5000 x 120000 km altitude, with the apogee over the North Pole. Then the spacecraft and instruments will be commissioned for two months, before starting the nominal mission.
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Cheops Running Call for Guest Observers (GO) to open soon
ESA’s Cheops mission is preparing a new Running Call for Guest Observer proposals, expected to open on 1 July 2026. The call will remain continuously open until December 2029, allowing the community to submit proposals at any time for observations with Cheops. The mission offers high-precision space photometry for exoplanets, stellar variability, eclipsing binaries and any other time-domain science. Proposals will be evaluated in monthly cycles with observations expected to start from October 2026. More details, policies and observing opportunities will be announced soon on the Cheops Guest Observer webpages.
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12th Call for ESA planners for the NASA IRIS mission
NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is a Small Explorer (SMEX) mission that allows scientists to trace the flow of solar energy and plasma up through its atmosphere from the visible surface into the dynamic corona. IRIS has simultaneous spectroscopy and imaging to investigate the radiation, dynamics and spatial structure of the Sun's atmosphere in detail.
ESA facilitates scientists working in its Member States to be trained and to act as science planners for IRIS, to learn the process of planning and to run their own experiments with the mission. ESA's 12th announcement of opportunity was issued on 19th May, and the heliophysics community is encouraged to submit their proposals.
Applications are due by 23 June 2026 at 12:00 (noon) CEST.
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Venus surface GIS
A Venus GIS database has been created within the ESA PRODEX activity VERATAC, and has been made publicly available. The database contains a multilayer Geographical Information System (GIS) of the surface geology of Venus, with GIS-ready geospatial (higher-order) data / analysis ready (higher-order) data (ARD). Venus GIS aims to facilitate geologic investigations of Venus and mission planning. It includes manually created catalogues of surface features and landforms from the scientific literature, as well as all United States Geological Survey (USGS) quadrangle maps in georeferenced raster or GIS format.
The Venus science community is welcome to provide suggestions, additions and corrections to the developer.
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Euclid Space Warps: help spot galaxies bending spacetime
As Euclid continues its survey, ESA and the Euclid Consortium need help from citizen scientists to identify strong gravitational lenses in a large data set. For this, the Space Warps team has launched a citizen science project based on new Euclid images, which will be part of the future Euclid Data Release 1. While these data is not public yet, by participating in this new citizen science project you can get an early glimpse of these new images of galaxies captured by the telescope. For this project, you will be inspecting new high quality imaging data from Euclid in which many previously unknown strong lenses are hiding. The team expects that this exquisite high-quality data will reveal more than 10000 new lenses.
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Recent science highlights:
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Upcoming ESA conferences:
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European Astronomical Society Annual Meeting 2026 - ESA mission session
29 June - 03 July 2026, Lausanne, Switzerland
Multiple Symposia and Special sessions at the EAS 2026 meeting are explicitly dedicated to ESA missions, including:
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European Astronomical Society Annual Meeting 2026 - Lunch Sessions LS2 and LS4: ESA Science Programme and ESA Archives
29 June - 03 July 2026, Lausanne, Switzerland
During two dedicated lunch sessions, ESA's Science Directorate will present an overview over its programme aimed at early career researches and update the European space science community on the services, tools, and assets offered by the ESA Space Science Archives.
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Europlanet Science Congress - TP18: BepiColombo nears Mercury
7 - 11 September 2026, The Hague, The Netherlands
A dedicated topical session at the EPSC2026 will focus on the BepiColombo mission and the exploration of Mercury, bringing together the community to discuss the mission’s latest results and scientific prospects as it prepares for orbital operations around the innermost planet. The session will highlight new insights into Mercury’s interior, surface, exosphere and magnetosphere, placing BepiColombo’s upcoming measurements on the front line of planetary research.
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ESLAB + Heliophysics in Europe #3
21 - 24 September 2026, ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
The aim of this meeting is to bring together the broad range of topics that make up the Heliophysics discipline, with a particular emphasis on the cross-cutting science that connects them. It will feature topical panels and open discussion sessions on topics including proposal writing, mission development, sustainability, data systems, models and tools, and also communication and community.
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INTEGRAL Legacy Conference 2026
19 - 23 October 2026, Orsay, France
INTEGRAL is crucial in our understanding of high energy astrophysical phenomena, permitting studies of bright transient events, which made it a cornerstone for multi-messenger astronomy, and of elusive signals from faint gamma-ray sources. This has fostered collaborations with other missions that will enhance INTEGRAL's legacy in supporting new missions and answering new astrophysical questions.
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The European Space Agency
