Our Biomass satellite has successfully launched, marking a major leap forward in understanding Earth’s forests and their vital role in the carbon cycle.
It lifted off on 29 April 2025 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana aboard Vega-C, and is already sending back its first signals. Over the next few days, our mission controllers will carefully deploy Biomass’ enormous 12-metre-wide reflector – the key to its unique abilities.
📹 European Space Agency (ESA) 📸 ESA/CNES/Arianespace
The first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 13 December at 21:30 CET.
From geostationary orbit, 36,000 km above the equator, this all-new weather satellite will provide state-of-the art observations of Earth’s atmosphere and realtime monitoring of lightning events, taking weather forecasting to the next level. The satellite carries two completely new instruments: Europe’s first Lightning Imager and a Flexible Combined Imager.
MTG-I1 is the first of six satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical data for weather forecasting over the next 20 years. In full operations, the mission will comprise two MTG-I satellites and one MTG Sounding (MTG-S) satellites working in tandem.
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Mercury is a planetary misfit, an oddball in the solar system, and this month the BepiColombo mission is setting off to study it in unprecedented detail.
The best images we have of Mercury are from NASA’s MESSENGER mission, which pictured its cratered surface and curious features earlier this decade.
Soon, the joint European and Japanese BepiColombo mission will head there to take an even closer look.
ESA is Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out http://www.esa.int/ESA to get up to speed on everything space related.
