The first satellite of Europe’s Copernicus programme is set for launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 3 April at 21:02 GMT (23:02 CEST).

The European launch event is arranged in ESA's mission control centre in Germany (click title for more information)

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst of German nationality, will loft from the Baikonour Cosmodrome on 28 May (29 May, 02:31 am local time) as part of Expedition 40/41 

The last Automatic Transfer Vehicle,  ATV-5 Georges Lemaître, has a target launch date 24 July. It will be launched on an Ariane 5 operated by Arianespace at 22:41 local time from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana.

Orbital insertion upon arrival at the comet

Media are invited to a pre-launch press conference - audio only.

To join, email media@esa.int before end of business Monday, 18 August

The next satellites in Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system will be launched on 22 August, ushering in the system deployment phase and paving the way for the start of initial services.

Galileo SATs 5-6 are scheduled to lift off at 12:27 GMT (14:27 CEST, 09:27 local time) on 22 August from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on top of a Soyuz rocket. They are expected to become operational, after initial in-orbit testing, in autumn.

The landing site for Philae will be announced in a press conference in ESA HQ, Paris, on 15 November, at 11 am CEST.

Members of the press and public are invited to join Rosetta mission experts online on Friday, 7 November for an online media briefing ahead of the historic comet landing on 12 November.

More info to be published soon.

Following the postponement of the November launch, Arianespace has announced a new launch date on 11 February 2015

The undocking and reentry of ATVGeorges Lemaitrewill mark the end of the series of ESA vessels that has delivered cargo to the International Space Station, including food, drinking water, gases, research and maintenance equipment and around three tonnes of propellants each time. The versatile craft has also regularly boosted the Station’s orbit and occasionally manoeuvred the complex to avoid collisions with space debris. There will be no more ATVs but the technology will live on as part of the service module provided by ESA for NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

Two more satellites for Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system will be launched on 27 March as deployment of the 30-satellite network continues to ramp up. Media are invited to take part in an audio briefing at 13:00 GMT (14:00 CET) on launch day.

Galileo 7 & 8 are scheduled to lift off at 21:46 GMT (22:46 CET, 18:46 local time) on 27 March from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on top of a Soyuz rocket. They are expected to become operational by mid-year, after in-orbit testing.

After completing her six-month Futura mission on the International Space Station, Samantha Cristoforetti will land on the steppes of Kazakhstan. 

LISA Pathfinder is a technology mission aiming at testing the advanced measurement devices of low-frequency gravitational waves for the future LISA mission. It will be launched on a Vega rocket.

Tim Peake is assigned to fly on the International Space Station from December to May for Expeditions 46 and 47. The mission name is Principia.

The second in the series, Sentinel-1BA, carries an advanced radar to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface.

Launch on Soyuz from Europe's spaceport

The next pair of Galileo satellites are ready to launch from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana atop a Soyuz launcher.

Target launch day: Monday, 24 May at 05:48 Kourou time/ 08:48 UTC/ 10:48 CEST

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, of French nationality, will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Kazakhstan, on his long-duration mission of six months to the ISS.

ESA will bring astronauts and Mars together with artists and musicians for the Guggenheim's 20th birthday.

A high-level conference on the broad use of space technology in the future will gather well-known personalities from entrepreneurship, science and politics to review the chances offered by an increasing use of space techniques and show the way ahead.

On 12 December Alexander Gerst will answer questions from media representatives during a live call from the ISS.

Location: EAC in Cologne

More information and accreditation here.

Alexander Gerst is expected to arrive at the military area of Cologne/Bonn Airport at 20:15 CET on the evening of 20 December 2018. Media are invited to follow his arrival.
There are no opportunities for interviews with Alexander Gerst.

More info here.

In the morning of Saturday, 22 December 2018, media are invited to attend a press conference at ESA's European Astronaut Centre in Cologne. From 11:15 to 12:15 CET, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst is joined by ESA’s Director General Jan Wörner and Frank De Winne, Head of the European Astronaut Centre EAC and Lead ISS Operations, to answer questions. No individual interviews with Alexander Gerst will be possible at this time.

More information here.

On Wednesday, 16 January 2019, ESA Director General Jan Wörner will meet the media.

Location:  ESA’s headquarters in Paris.

More information and accreditation here

Media representatives are invited to an in-depth background briefing with ESA’s leading Space Safety managers on Monday, 21 January, at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. Journalists are also welcome to attend the opening panel as well as the technical sessions of the three-day international Near-Earth Object (NEO) and Debris Detection

Location:  ESOC, Germany

More information and accreditation here

The Cheops mission, ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of exoplanets, is scheduled to lift off on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, within the launch slot 15 October – 14 November 2019.

For more information and accreditation here

CHEOPS, die erste der Erforschung von Exoplaneten gewidmete Mission der ESA, soll innerhalb eines Startfensters zwischen dem 15. Oktober und dem 14. November dieses Jahres mit einem Sojus-Träger von Europas Raumflughafen in Kourou, Französisch-Guyana, gestartet werden. Vertreter der klassischen Medien und sozialer Netzwerke sind eingeladen, sich für die Besichtigung des Raumfahrzeugs in den Reinräumen von Airbus in Madrid am 29. März anzumelden; im Anschluss daran wird es im Hinblick auf seinen Transport nach Kourou im weiteren Jahresverlauf eingelagert.

La première mission de l’ESA consacrée à l’étude des exoplanètes, Cheops, quittera la Terre à bord d’un lanceur Soyouz au départ du port spatial de l’Europe à Kourou (Guyane française) entre le 15 octobre et le 14 novembre 2019. Les représentants des médias sont invités à solliciter une accréditation pour découvrir la mission lors d’un événement spécial organisé le 29 mars, au cours duquel ils pourront apercevoir le satellite dans les salles blanches d’Airbus à Madrid, avant son stockage et son expédition vers Kourou.

The first results from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will be presented at a dedicated press briefing at the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.

More information:
https://www.egu.eu/gamedia/2019/

Media visit at the OHB Italia Premises organised in coordination with ESA and ASI to discover the Flyeye Telscope. ESA’s Flyeye Telescope, the first of its kind, will permit to implement an innovative wide survey Earth protection service, allowing to check two thirds of the visible sky to be surveyed nightly, for detection of threatening asteroids dangerous for Earth. The Telescope will be located in Sicily (Italy), close to the top of Mufara Mountain (1865m). Once operative, it will automatically bring newly detected objects to the attention of ESA experts at the Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre (NEOCC).

Luca Parmitano will be going ‘Beyond’ when he returns in July to the International Space Station in 2019 as part of Expedition 60/61, alongside Andrew Morgan of NASA and Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos.  

Launch date:  20 July 2019

Location: Baikonur, Kazakhstan

Blog  here

The European Data Relay System (EDRS) is the most sophisticated laser communication network ever designed.

Dubbed the ‘SpaceDataHighway’, EDRS helps Earth-observing satellites to transmit large quantities of potentially life-saving data down to Europe in near-real time.

Launch date: 6 August 2019

Location: CSG, Europe’s Spaceport (French Guiana)

Website here

SMOS was launched on 2 November 2009 by a Rockot launch vehicle from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission is dedicated to making global observations of soil moisture over land and salinity over oceans.

More information here

XMM-Newton was launched the 10 December 1999,on the first Ariane-5 commercial mission, from ESA’s Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana.

ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory is the flagship of European X-ray astronomy. It is the most powerful X-ray telescope ever placed in orbit and is observing the 'hot' X-ray universe including objects like neutron stars, black holes and active galaxies.

More information here

CHEOPS - CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite - is the first mission dedicated to searching for exoplanetary transits by performing ultra-high precision photometry on bright stars already known to host planets.

Date of launch: mid-December 2019 tbc

Location: CSG, Europe’s Spaceport (French Guiana)

Website here

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut Christina Koch and cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos return to Earth aboard their Soyuz spacecraft, landing in Kazakhstan.

ESA and the European Commission have developed the RACE platform, which provides access to key environmental, economic and social indicators to measure the impact of the coronavirus lockdown and monitor post-lockdown recovery.

Access the livestreamed Press Conference:
www.euspace-programme.eu/RACE_Press_Conference

Over the last two decades, ESA has been performing detection and analysis of asteroids whose orbits bring them close to Earth, known as near-Earth objects (NEOs). 

During this year's digital event, Asteroid Day TV will stream through the month of June, in addition to Asteroid Day LIVE Digital from Luxembourg on 30 June 2020.

Follow #AsteroidDay on: https://asteroidday.org/ 

The SSMS - Small Spacecraft Mission Service - is a dispenser that will carry 53 satellites into orbit, all launched at once by Europe's Vega launch vehicle in a proof-of-concept mission.

Four ESA payloads are on board – the maritime microsatellite ESAIL, as well as a trio of ESA CubeSats: SIMBA (studying Earth’s radiation), Picasso (ozone-measuring) and FSSCat carrying the Phi-Sat-1 technology (artificial intelligence applied to Earth observation).

Launch date: 03 September 2020 (03:51 CEST)
Location: Europe's Spaceport, Kourou in French Guiana
Launch vehicle: Vega (VV16)
Follow the launch live on: esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/ESA_Web_TV

The Copernicus Sentinel-6 'Michael Freilich' satellite will be launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from California, US.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano touched down in the Kazakh Steppe at 09:12 GMT (10:12 CET), 6 February 2020 after his second six-month mission on the International Space Station.

The new Mars Year starts on 7 February. 

ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission lifted off on an Atlas V 411 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 05:03 CET on 10 February on its mission to study the Sun from new perspectives.

Our new web site for potential applicants, https://www.esa.int/YourWayToSpace, is now online and gives an insight into the role of an ESA astronaut, the selection requirements, astronaut training and what ESA does.

Both astronaut and parastronaut vacancies run from 31 March to 28 May 2021. ESA will only consider applications submitted to the ESA Careers website within those eight weeks.

More information about the 8th European Conference on Space Debris:
https://space-debris-conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/ 

More information on: 

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Asteroid_day 

https://www.un.org/en/observances/asteroid-day 

https://asteroidday.org/ 

Website: Thomas Pesquet

Location: Kennedy Space Center, Florida (USA)

Vehicle: SpaceX Crew-3

Website: Matthias Maurer

Location: Vandenberg Space Force Base in California

Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9 

More information: NASA press release 

Livestream

Location: Europe's Spaceport, Kourou in French Guiana

Launcher: Ariane 5

Website: JWST

Location: Toulouse, France

Date TBD

More information: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1

The next launch attempt of the Artemis I mission is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 14 with liftoff of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft planned during a 69-minute launch window that opens at 12:07 a.m. EST (06.07 am CEST).

More Information

More Information & Registration

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ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher Annual Press Conference (ESA HQ Paris & Virtual)

Visit to the clean room to see the European Service Modules ESM 3, 4 and 5