Welcome to ESA SCIence Newsletter, the Newsletter of ESA's Directorate of Science.
The ESA Science Newsletter serves the scientific community and welcomes anyone interested in more programmatic and technical news from the Directorate of Science. Scheduled to appear roughly monthly, its primary aim is to inform scientists in ESA Member States and across the world about how to engage with the Directorate of Science. The newsletter contains calls for proposals, announcements of opportunity, news on developments of the Science Programme, research fellowship announcements, calls for memberships, job announcements, major mission updates, conference announcements, etc. It also succinctly informs about recent science highlights and upcoming conferences.
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Roman has launched: survey of European data requirements
Following the successful launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on 30 August, ESA is surveying the European scientific community to understand future needs for Roman data access, archive functionality, and computing resources. Responses will help define European scientific and computational requirements, including potential co-analysis with Euclid, Gaia, and PLATO. The survey takes around 10 minutes to complete, requires no Roman expertise and will remain open for two weeks; all responses will be treated confidentially.
The final two Cluster spacecraft, Cluster 3 and Cluster 4, re-entered Earth's atmosphere on 31 August and 1 September 2026, respectively. ESA's flight control, flight dynamics and space debris teams targeted the times and locations of both re-entries. An airborne observation campaign recorded images and spectra of the events with 29 instruments from a distance of approximately 200 km. Five stories featuring images and videos have been published at esa.int/cluster, alongside real-time coverage on ESA's Rocket Science blog: https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2026/08/30/final-cluster-reentries-live-blog/
Are you a planetary scientist looking to contribute to one of the most ambitious exploration missions ever flown to the outer Solar System? ESA is recruiting a Planetary Scientist to join the Office of Science Engagement and Oversight and support the JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) mission. Working closely with the JUICE Project Scientist, you will help maximise the scientific return of ESA's flagship mission to Jupiter and its icy moons, connecting mission operations, instrument teams, international partners, and the scientific community. Responsibilities include scientific operations support, publications, community engagement, conference representation, and research. The position is a 4-year fixed-term contract, extendable up to 8 years.
Advance notice: Call for JUICE Interdisciplinary Scientists and Guest Investigators
JUICE (JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer) is en route to the Jovian system, where it will conduct detailed investigations of Jupiter and its three ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. ESA will appoint up to 11 Guest Investigators and three Interdisciplinary Scientists to contribute to the mission's scientific return. Guest Investigators will exploit JUICE data in combination with observations from other missions, ground-based facilities, laboratory experiments, and modelling. The Interdisciplinary Scientists will join the Science Working Team, contributing to the mission's overarching science goals. An Announcement of Opportunity will be released soon, inviting members of the scientific community to submit proposals.
The L4 (Enceladus) Payload Working Group has released its final report, presenting strawman payload concepts for the orbiter and lander. The report is intended to support the next phase of ESA's study and help the community prepare for forthcoming payload calls.
JAXA has announced a call for proposals for the XRISM Key Program (KP), which is intended to establish the mission's long-term scientific legacy through strategically designed large observing programmes that address fundamental scientific questions and produce benchmark datasets. Approximately 3 Ms, corresponding to 20–25% of the annual Guest Observer allocation, will be made available to the KP in the first year. The programme is expected to be offered annually thereafter. Proposals are due by 3 December 2026. Scientists based in ESA Member States may apply as Principal Investigators without restrictions on the proportion of observing time available to them.
ESA's CHEOPS mission is accepting proposals through its continuously open Running Call for Guest Observers. Scientists may submit proposals for observations between January 2027 and December 2029, including large programmes of up to 500 CHEOPS orbits. A fast-track channel is also available to Principal Investigators of awarded HST or JWST Guest Observer proposals. CHEOPS provides high-precision space photometry for studies of exoplanets, stellar variability, eclipsing binaries and other time-domain phenomena. Further details, policies and observing opportunities can be found on the CHEOPS Guest Observer webpage.
PLATO's Guest Observer Programme: AO-1 selection announced
As ESA's PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) mission prepares for launch, scientists worldwide have been preparing for a broad range of complementary investigations. While PLATO's core objective is to discover and characterise terrestrial planets around nearby Sun-like stars and determine the properties and ages of their host stars, its observations will support a wealth of research across astronomy.
Through PLATO's first Announcement of Opportunity (AO-1), ESA invited proposals on topics ranging from Solar System Objects to Active Galactic Nuclei. Following technical assessment and scientific peer review, ESA has now selected the inaugural set of Guest Observer programmes, representing the breadth of science that can be pursued alongside the mission's core goals.
The new Solar Orbiter Archive (SOAR) is now publicly available within ESA's Heliophysics Archive (HPA). It provides a modern interface for accessing data from Solar Orbiter and other heliophysics missions while retaining all capabilities of the standalone SOAR. New features include an intuitive tree view of search results by instrument and data product, a quick-look tool showing the solar coverage of Solar Orbiter's high-resolution telescopes and imaging spectrometer throughout the mission, and faster searches by solar distance or Solar Orbiter Observing Plan. HPA v1.1.0 is available now and will replace the standalone SOAR in April 2027 after a six-month transition period. Existing programmatic access through TAP and SunPy remains unchanged.
Help us find new exoplanets with Planet Hunters CHEOPS
Planet Hunters CHEOPS is now live on Zooniverse. This citizen science project invites participants to examine high-precision light curves from ESA's CHEOPS space telescope and search for previously unnoticed exoplanet signals from background stars observed alongside the primary targets. By identifying small dips in stellar brightness, volunteers can flag possible planetary transits and unusual patterns that automated methods may miss. No astronomy experience is required, and every classification contributes to the analysis of more than five years of CHEOPS observations.
INTEGRAL Legacy Conference 19 - 23 October 2026, Paris, France
The INTEGRAL Legacy Conference will mark the end of the mission's post-operations phase by reviewing its wide-ranging scientific achievements. Registration remains open until the start of the conference; 93 participants have registered to date.
ESA Datalabs Euclid Hackathon 2026 23 - 26 November 2026, ESAC, Spain
The first two days will introduce the Euclid mission and its data, followed by a two-day hackathon focused on identifying rare and unusual objects in Euclid data. Participants will use anomaly-detection methods developed at ESA or during the workshop.
HWO 2026 30 November - 04 December 2026, Paris, France
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is NASA's next Great Observatory, with launch planned for the early 2040s. Its large telescope and suite of instruments will support research across astrophysics, from cosmology and galaxy evolution to the Solar System and the search for life on exoplanets. The conference will bring together the scientific community to discuss these themes and the observatory's future scientific programme.
The Origin and Habitability of the Galilean Moons II 23 - 25 March 2027, Tokyo, Japan
The second Workshop on the Origins and Habitability of the Galilean Moons will examine links between the present-day characteristics of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto and their formation conditions and habitability. With a focus on surface materials, geological processes and interior structures, the workshop will help prepare the scientific community for the arrival of ESA's JUICE and NASA's Europa Clipper missions in the Jovian system. Hosted by the Earth-Life Science Institute in Japan, it follows the first workshop in Marseille and is part of a series held at intervals of two to three years before the missions reach Jupiter.
NewAthena Science Conference 19 - 23 April 2027, Prague, Czech Republic
As NewAthena progresses towards mission adoption, this conference will bring together the international high-energy astrophysics community to discuss the mission's scientific goals, future observing programmes and synergies with current and upcoming facilities. It will provide an opportunity to refine the scientific case presented in the Definition Study Report following initial feedback from ESA's advisory structure, share recent results, strengthen collaborations and prepare for the mission's scientific return. Topics will include galaxy groups and clusters, supermassive black holes, compact objects, transient and multi-messenger phenomena, and links between high-energy observations and other major astronomical facilities.
XRISM 2027 01 - 04 June 2027, Detroit, MI, USA XRISM 2027 is the second international conference focused on results from the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission. Topics will include the formation of the Universe's largest structures; its chemical evolution; active galactic nuclei and their environments; the endpoints of stellar evolution; accretion and outflows in compact objects; new physics enabled by high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy; and XRISM's role in multi-wavelength and multi-messenger astronomy.
European Space Agency, D/SCI Directorate of Science
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