For the first time, two spacecraft in orbit were aligned in formation with millimetre precision and maintained their relative position for several hours without any control from the ground.

The activities to assemble the European Space Agency’s Plato mission are progressing well now that 24 of the spacecraft’s 26 cameras have been installed. Once in space, Plato will use its many eyes to survey a very large area of the sky and hunt for terrestrial planets. The spacecraft’s supporting element is also coming together in parallel.

Thanks largely to Copernicus Sentinel-1, scientists have discovered that a glacier in Antarctica is rapidly siphoning ice from neighbouring flows – at a pace never before seen. Until now, researchers believed that this process of ‘ice piracy’ in Antarctica took hundreds or even thousands of years, but these latest findings clearly demonstrate that this isn’t always the case.

Fresh from the cleanroom in Bremen, Germany, the second of the Meteosat Third Generation satellites and the first instrument for the Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission have arrived at Cape Canaveral harbour, in the US.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher emphasises the importance of cooperation in space activities

Video: 00:03:23 Astrophysicist and Nobel Prize Laureate Didier Queloz answers the who, what, where, when and why of exoplanets in this 3-part series. 

Week in images: 28 April - 02 May 2025 Discover our week through the lens

Image: The Ocean and Land Colour Instrument on Copernicus Sentinel-3 captured this image of Earth’s biggest iceberg, A23a, on 5 April 2025.

ESA's Strategy 2040 Read the Five Goals