Following the most recent open call, we are pleased to announce the new members of the Astronomy Working Group (AWG), Solar System Exploration Working Group (SSWEG), and the Space Science Advisory Council (SSAC).
AWG welcomes Tereza Jerabkova (CZ), Davide Gerosa (IT), José A. Caballero (ES), and Hervé Bouy (FR).
SSWEG welcomes Konstantinos Dialynas (GR), Clementina Sasso (IT), and Daniel Verscharen (UK).
SSAC welcomes Martin Kunz (CH), Franck Montmessin (FR), Federico Tosi (IT), and Eva Villaver (ES).
Applicants not selected this year will remain in the pool for consideration in future annual selections and a new call for proposals will be issued by May this year.
The full list of members for each committee can be found on the pages of the individual committees.
All Science Directorate services back online after cybersecurity incident
In December, the ESA Science Directorate suffered a cybersecurity incident involving servers located outside the ESA corporate network, which impacted the availability of some of our services to the science community.
After the hard work from our teams to implement all necessary security strengthening measures, all our services have now been fully resumed. We thank our community for their patience and understanding during this period.
Plato’s Guest Observers Programme: AO-1 Call now open
ESA is looking forward to Plato (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars), scheduled for launch in under a year. Plato will monitor a wide field for several years, delivering imagettes and light curves for hundreds of thousands of stars. Its goals include detecting terrestrial planets in habitable zones and advancing asteroseismology, with most data becoming public shortly after validation.
ESA now invites Guest Observer proposals for complementary science. The First Announcement of Opportunity opened on 7 April and will close on 21 May, offering 8% telemetry for new targets, upgraded modes, and a proprietary access period. Proposers are encouraged to review the available material, join community initiatives, and submit their research ideas
A call for membership of the Envision EuroSAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) Science Team
A call for membership of the Envision EuroSAR Science Team was issued on 26 March. It solicits applications by scientists from ESA Member States to assist ESA and the Envision Science Working Team regarding Venus SAR imaging, altimetry and radiometry in support of the EuroSAR instrument definition. The team will comprise leading scientists specialising in Venus, planetary- and/or Earth SAR, altimetry, radiometry signal processing, retrieval, and data exploitation for the instrument application areas required by Envision's science objectives.
The deadline for applications is 30 April 2026, 12:00 CEST.
First version of the L4 Science Traceability Matrix
L4 - the mission to Enceladus has three main scientific themes derived from the Expert Committee report:
(A) Habitability and surface–interior interactions
(B) Relationships with Saturn and its environment
(C) Prebiotic chemistry and biosignature detection.
Based on these themes an independent science expert committee has developed a first version of a Science Traceability Matrix, deriving scientific questions for each theme and a set of scientific objectives for each question.
This Science Traceability Matrix guides the mission study and especially the assessment of strawman payload complements. The community is invited to use this as a guidance for the development of their own instrument ideas in preparation for the next phase of the L4 development.
Building a Roadmap for Hubble science into the 2030s
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope remains an indispensable resource for the astronomy and planetary science community as it approaches the end of its fourth decade in operations. The current dynamic landscape, with facilities with complementary and synergistic capabilities, and evolving funding constraints, motivates an examination of Hubble's science priorities to maximise the use of its unique capabilities and its science output into the 2030s.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is requesting community input in the form of white papers, to help focus Hubble's future science portfolio.
The deadline for submissions is Friday 22 May 2026.
The X-ray Universe 2026 8-11 June 2026, Elche, Spain
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.
PV 2026 - Ensuring Long-Term Preservation and Adding Value to Scientific and Technical Data 23-25 June 2026, ESAC, Villanueva de la Canada, Madrid, Spain and online PV 2026 bring together the community to present and discuss the experiences, feedback and prospects for efficient scientific and technical data management systems along a variety of themes including long-term data preservation, adding value to data and facilitation of data use, impact of AI and ML, governance, funding and policy for long term preservation, and metrics for data archives usage.
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.
European Space Agency, D/SCI Directorate of Science
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