The European Space Agency is moving "full steam ahead" with development of a robotic mission to Venus after NASA officials determined they were unlikely to fulfill a commitment to provide a US-built radar instrument for the spacecraft, the mission's project scientist said.
The European orbiter, named Envision, will map the Venusian surface at 10 times higher resolution than the last radar mission sent to Venus by NASA in the 1990s. The planet is enshrouded in a blanket of thick clouds of sulfuric acid, rendering its mysterious surface unseen by optical cameras in orbit. Radar is the most effective way to penetrate the clouds of Venus to reveal the terrain below, and scientists will use Envision to look for signs of active volcanism.
NASA and ESA signed a memorandum of understanding in 2024 outlining their partnership on Envision. NASA agreed to supply a US-made synthetic aperture radar instrument, Envision's primary means of mapping the surface of Venus, along with providing tracking and communications support through NASA's Deep Space Network. In exchange, ESA would include US researchers on Envision's science team. Europe would build the Envision spacecraft and the rest of its science instruments and provide the launch on an Ariane 6 rocket.
The European Space Agency is moving "full steam ahead" with development of a robotic mission to Venus after NASA officials determined they were unlikely to fulfill a commitment to provide a US-built radar instrument for the spacecraft, the mission's project scientist said.
The European orbiter, named Envision, will map the Venusian surface at 10 times higher resolution than the last radar mission sent to Venus by NASA in the 1990s. The planet is enshrouded in a blanket of thick clouds of sulfuric acid, rendering its mysterious surface unseen by optical cameras in orbit. Radar is the most effective way to penetrate the clouds of Venus to reveal the terrain below, and scientists will use Envision to look for signs of active volcanism.
NASA and ESA signed a memorandum of understanding in 2024 outlining their partnership on Envision. NASA agreed to supply a US-made synthetic aperture radar instrument, Envision's primary means of mapping the surface of Venus, along with providing tracking and communications support through NASA's Deep Space Network. In exchange, ESA would include US researchers on Envision's science team. Europe would build the Envision spacecraft and the rest of its science instruments and provide the launch on an Ariane 6 rocket.
Sixty years after television audiences first tuned in to see the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, an astronaut on board the International Space Station has paid tribute to Star Trek by flying the badge of the franchise's latest fictional captain.
Expedition 75 flight engineer Sophie Adenot with European Space Agency (ESA) donned the Delta badge originally worn by actor Anson Mount for a video recorded from aboard the space station. Mount portrays Christoper Pike in the Paramount+ streaming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Paramount and ESA both released the clip on their Instagram feeds.
"For 60 years, Star Trek has brought us stories of friendship and exploration. I'm wearing Captain Pike's badge aboard the ISS in celebration of continuing the real world work of science and exploration," said Adenot. "For me, exploration and science are about curiosity and cooperation daring to go a little farther together, learning from what we discover and build, and turning that knowledge into a better future for everyone."
Sixty years after television audiences first tuned in to see the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, an astronaut on board the International Space Station has paid tribute to Star Trek by flying the badge of the franchise's latest fictional captain.
Expedition 75 flight engineer Sophie Adenot with European Space Agency (ESA) donned the Delta badge originally worn by actor Anson Mount for a video recorded from aboard the space station. Mount portrays Christoper Pike in the Paramount+ streaming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Paramount and ESA both released the clip on their Instagram feeds.
"For 60 years, Star Trek has brought us stories of friendship and exploration. I'm wearing Captain Pike's badge aboard the ISS in celebration of continuing the real world work of science and exploration," said Adenot. "For me, exploration and science are about curiosity and cooperation daring to go a little farther together, learning from what we discover and build, and turning that knowledge into a better future for everyone."
Isar Aerospace, founded in 2018 by three students at a German university, successfully launched a privately developed rocket into low-Earth orbit Saturday from a Norwegian spaceport inside the Arctic Circle.
The two-stage rocket, named Spectrum, became the first fully commercial launch vehicle in Europe to reach orbit. With Saturday's success, Isar is the clear leader among a pack of several European launch startups vying to inject some competition into Europe's stagnant launch market.
Isar's 92-foot-tall (28-meter) Spectrum rocket lifted off at 4:12 pm EST (20:12 UTC) Saturday from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, where it was 10:12 pm local time and the final bluish hues of daylight faded from the late summer sky. Seven minutes later, the rocket was in orbit.
Isar Aerospace, founded in 2018 by three students at a German university, successfully launched a privately developed rocket into low-Earth orbit Saturday from a Norwegian spaceport inside the Arctic Circle.
The two-stage rocket, named Spectrum, became the first fully commercial launch vehicle in Europe to reach orbit. With Saturday's success, Isar is the clear leader among a pack of several European launch startups vying to inject some competition into Europe's stagnant launch market.
Isar's 92-foot-tall (28-meter) Spectrum rocket lifted off at 4:12 pm EST (20:12 UTC) Saturday from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, where it was 10:12 pm local time and the final bluish hues of daylight faded from the late summer sky. Seven minutes later, the rocket was in orbit.
Isar Aerospace, founded in 2018 by three students at a German university, successfully launched a privately developed rocket into low-Earth orbit Saturday from a Norwegian spaceport inside the Arctic Circle.
The two-stage rocket, named Spectrum, became the first fully commercial launch vehicle in Europe to reach orbit. With Saturday's success, Isar is the clear leader among a pack of several European launch startups vying to inject some competition into Europe's stagnant launch market.
Isar's 92-foot-tall (28-meter) Spectrum rocket lifted off at 4:12 pm EST (20:12 UTC) Saturday from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, where it was 10:12 pm local time and the final bluish hues of daylight faded from the late summer sky. Seven minutes later, the rocket was in orbit.
The BepiColombo mission cleared a major milestone this week in the final stretch of an eight-year interplanetary voyage to Mercury, the hard-to-reach, scorching hot iron world at the Solar System's innermost frontier.
The robotic science mission, with a price tag of nearly $2 billion, is led by the European Space Agency with contributions from Japan and the United States. Since its launch in 2018, BepiColombo has spiraled closer to the Sun using a combination of plasma propulsion and a series of flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury. The maneuvers changed the spacecraft's velocity and steered it toward a final encounter with Mercury later this year.
Next time it reaches Mercury, BepiColombo will be traveling at just the right speed for the planet's gravity to capture the spacecraft into orbit. Scientists working on interplanetary missions are accustomed to long waits for scientific payoffs. It took nearly 10 years for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft to travel from Earth to Pluto. It turns out traveling to fleet-footed Mercury and then entering orbit requires more energy, or delta-v, than sending a probe to fly by Pluto.
A massive chunk of Greenland’s Petermann Glacier has broken away, forming an iceberg the size of Manhattan in what scientists say is the most significant Arctic calving event recorded in years.
As the dramatic event unfolded, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission captured the breakup on August 4, as the 29-square-mile ice tongue detached from the eastern edge of Petermann Glacier.
The new “ice island,” also known as a tabular iceberg, is estimated to be close to 500 feet thick and was produced by an event that experts believe to represent the single largest loss of floating ice since 2012, and the most massive calving event anywhere in the Arctic since 2020.
Satellites Reveal a Rapid Iceberg Breakup
Evidence of an imminent calving event had begun showing months ago in the form of cracks in the glacier. On August 3, Sentinel-1 radar imagery revealed significant deterioration that was showing along the center of the glacier’s ice tongue.
The crewmembers aboard the nearby vessel weren’t the only ones armed with cameras who were observing the massive breakup. For many years, an international team of researchers has been monitoring conditions on Petermann Glacier using Sentinel-1 imagery. Since 2019, a series of tracking and expanding fractures and other clear signs of instability have gradually worsened.
Additionally, interferometric measurements collected earlier in 2026 showed signs that deformation and fractures were spreading through the ice tongue in advance of a likely break, allowing scientists both on-site and observing via satellites in orbit to plan for the event.
The ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 (Image Credit: ESA/Mlabspace).
Iceberg Break Antipated for Years
“Petermann Glacier has long been one of Greenland’s largest remaining ice tongues,” said University of Ottawa PhD student Adam Garbo, one of the many researchers involved in monitoring the glacier prior to the calving event.
“We’ve anticipated this break for years, and seeing it finally happen is remarkable,” Garbo said in a statement. “It’s a powerful reminder of how quickly these systems can change.”
This event was by no means the first time that the Petermann Glacier has undergone a major calving event. In 2008, 2010, and in 2012, similar significant ice losses were logged, although its floating ice tongue had remained mostly stable since that time.
The recent event signals the end of that period of relative stability. Additionally, researchers say two more sections—measuring around 97 and 87 square kilometers—are likely to detach as existing rifts continue to appear and gradually separate.
Sentinel-1 Spots a Massive Break Up Event
With the help of the ESA’s Sentinel-1C and the recently launched Sentinel-1D satellites, a remarkably detailed view of the calving event was made possible. During its commissioning period, Sentinel-1D and its predecessor satellite achieved one-day repeat synthetic aperture radar observations.
Above: Optical image of the Petermann glacier from Sentinel-2 (left) and an interferogram from Sentinel-1 (right), which reveals deformation and fractures within the ice tongue (Image Credit: ESA/contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO).
The resulting interferograms allowed scientists to examine how fractures propagated, and aalso how the floating ice responded to factors that include ocean water movement in the vicinity prior to the separation.
“The changes we observed on Petermann Glacier were occurring very rapidly in the lead-up to the iceberg calving event, so it was incredibly exciting to monitor the crack propagation with interferometry in near-real time,” said University of Leeds PhD student Molly Hammond in a statement.
Satellites like those with the Sentinel mission are especially useful for observations in polar regions since their radar systems allow researchers to observe the Earth’s surface even when cloud coverage or darkness would normally obscure visibility. This allows the ability to continuously monitor activity around these remote glaciers, and a chance to trek the new ice island as it continues to drift.
Ongoing Monitoring After a Rare Event
“This type of large tabular iceberg is relatively rare in the Arctic, making this calving event a unique opportunity to study how such a vast ice mass drifts, evolves and eventually breaks apart,” ESA researcher Martin Wearing said in a statement.
Although the iceberg currently poses no practical concerns, Environment and Climate Change Canada is currently monitoring the iceberg’s movement, and will provide assessments about whether it could pose any risk to Arctic shipping and offshore infrastructure in the months ahead.
Those monitoring efforts will likely continue into the foreseeable future, since massive ice islands as large as the newly formed iceberg can survive for many years before they eventually undergo fragmenting of their own, dispersing smaller pieces into the surrounding ocean. These smaller pieces can be much more difficult to track, and thereby could pose greater risks.
For now, scientists plan to continue watching the new ice island, which will offer new insights into Arctic glacier dynamics, as well as the changes that are impacting one of Greenland’s most closely watched glaciers.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached atmicah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
A rare total solar eclipse will sweep across parts of Europe on August 12, 2026, briefly turning daylight into darkness as the Moon completely covers the Sun. Europe is about to experience a total solar eclipse, and people around the world will be able to watch it live. The European Space Agency (ESA) will begin [...]
The wildfires afflicting communities across the world can now be tracked more easily by anyone using Europe’s free and open satellite imagery service—all thanks to a wildfire visualization script originating from nearly a decade ago.
The Copernicus Browser provides free access to the latest satellite imagery taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites for the European Union’s Earth observation program. The three satellites of the Sentinel-2 mission have proven especially useful for wildfire monitoring by providing multi-spectral imaging at resolutions as granular as 10 meters in visible light and near-infrared bands—and the Copernicus Browser previously offered 10 default visualization layers using different combinations of spectral bands.
Now Copernicus Browser has also added a straightforward “wildfires” visualization layer for Sentinel-2 imagery that went live on August 4. Anyone clicking on this layer while looking at a wildfire location can see active fires in white or yellow, burning vegetation in red, and burned landscapes in dark brown or black.
The wildfires afflicting communities across the world can now be tracked more easily by anyone using Europe’s free and open satellite imagery service—all thanks to a wildfire visualization script originating from nearly a decade ago.
The Copernicus Browser provides free access to the latest satellite imagery taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites for the European Union’s Earth observation program. The three satellites of the Sentinel-2 mission have proven especially useful for wildfire monitoring by providing multi-spectral imaging at resolutions as granular as 10 meters in visible light and near-infrared bands—and the Copernicus Browser previously offered 10 default visualization layers using different combinations of spectral bands.
Now Copernicus Browser has also added a straightforward “wildfires” visualization layer for Sentinel-2 imagery that went live on August 4. Anyone clicking on this layer while looking at a wildfire location can see active fires in white or yellow, burning vegetation in red, and burned landscapes in dark brown or black.
Isar Aerospace still commands top position among a new generation of European rocket startups, but the company's efforts to launch a critical test flight of its Spectrum rocket continue to encounter roadblocks.
The latest delay came Monday, when Isar scrubbed a launch attempt after "detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle's fluid systems," according to a social media post. "The teams are analyzing the new data to isolate the root cause."
The two-stage, 92-foot-tall (28-meter) Spectrum rocket was awaiting liftoff from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway. It was the fourth time in five months that Isar Aerospace, headquartered near Munich, Germany, had reached a target launch date for the second test flight of the Spectrum launch vehicle.
Isar Aerospace still commands top position among a new generation of European rocket startups, but the company's efforts to launch a critical test flight of its Spectrum rocket continue to encounter roadblocks.
The latest delay came Monday, when Isar scrubbed a launch attempt after "detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle's fluid systems," according to a social media post. "The teams are analyzing the new data to isolate the root cause."
The two-stage, 92-foot-tall (28-meter) Spectrum rocket was awaiting liftoff from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway. It was the fourth time in five months that Isar Aerospace, headquartered near Munich, Germany, had reached a target launch date for the second test flight of the Spectrum launch vehicle.
TAMPA, Fla. — Avanti Communications is moving to close a chapter on the debt-fueled geostationary expansion that once defined the British satellite operator, with plans to sell the youngest payload […]
NASA’s next mission in its effort to return humans to the moon will be led by an all-male crew. Three of them have extensive experience in space, while the other was a backup on Artemis II.
A spectacular spiral galaxy known as M88 is traveling toward the crowded heart of the Virgo Cluster, where powerful forces are already beginning to reshape its future. A striking new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope highlights Messier 88 (M88), a spiral galaxy that is in the midst of a cosmic journey spanning hundreds [...]
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