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Before anything touches Mars, it has to be extremely clean 🧽
Our Mars chief engineer Albert Haldemann explains how one of the parachutes for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission is sterilised and why it matters more than you might think.
Carefully wrapped inside a donut-shaped bag, the 35-metre parachute was “baked” in a specialised dry-heat steriliser. The parachute needs to be at least 10 000 times cleaner than your smartphone.
Inside the cleanroom, air is constantly and everyone entering has to gown up more rigorously than in a hospital operating theatre, then pass through an air shower to remove any trace of contamination.
The 74 kg parachute, will one day deploy in the thin Martian atmosphere, slowing the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover during its descent. It will be the largest parachute ever flown to Mars, or anywhere else beyond Earth.
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission will launch in 2028 and spend over 25 months travelling to the Red Planet where it will search for signs of life beneath the martian surface.
The potential existence of past and perhaps even present-day life on Mars requires rigorous sterilisation, to make sure that no microbes piggyback their way there from Earth. Any terrestrial microbes hardy enough to survive the ride through space could interfere with the investigation by causing ‘forward contamination’ and triggering a false positive.
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🎞️ ESA
📸 ESA-SJM Photography
For decades, we assumed galaxies came first 🌌
Stars form, collapse, and slowly build black holes over billions of years. But just found a black hole so massive, so ancient, and so isolated that it couldn’t have grown that way. It was born big. And it may have predated the galaxy around it entirely.
The clue was in how the gas moves around it. Perfect, elegant Keplerian motion, the same way planets orbit our Sun, telling us that almost all the mass in that galaxy is concentrated in the black hole itself. In nearby galaxies, black holes make up a tiny fraction of the total mass. This one accounts for two thirds of it.
Scientists believe this might not be a rare exception. There could be thousands of these out there, quietly challenging everything we thought we knew about the beginning of the Universe.
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🎞️ , ESA, , L. Furtak (Ben-Gurion University), R. Maiolino (), F. D’Eugenio (Cambridge), I. Juodžbalis (Cambridge), H. Übler (MPE), C. Marconcini (), BY 4.0
Image processing: A. Pagan; NASA & ESA; NASA/ and ; ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser); ESA/NASA; ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser);
📸 NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Furtak (Ben-Gurion University), R. Maiolino (Cambridge), F. D’Eugenio (Cambridge), I. Juodžbalis (Cambridge), H. Übler (MPE), C. Marconcini (University of Florence); CC BY 4.0
Image processing: A. Pagan
06/06/2026
📸 This was our 01-05 June 2026.
🔗 https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Week_in_images/Week_in_images_01-05_Jun_2026
05/06/2026
World Environment Day 🌍
From the Absheron Peninsula of Azerbaijan jutting into the Caspian Sea, to the two arms of the Red Sea flanking the Sinai Peninsula, a scorching desert landscape somewhere in Africa, the vast salt flats of Salar de Uyuni, the dense forests of the Amazon basin, the dramatic Namibian desert landforms, the winding channels of the White Nile, the volcanic shield of Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion island, the jellyfish-shaped Betsiboka river mouth in Madagascar, the ancient Canadian Shield in Québec, the majestic Columbia Glacier in Alaska, Uluru rising from the Australian outback, and the English Channel seen from orbit: all these are examples of the astonishing diversity of environments that make our planet an interconnected system.
From glaciers to rainforests, from deserts to river deltas, we all depend on healthy ecosystems for our survival. Ecosystems are the complex web of interaction between living organisms (plants, animals, people) and their surroundings, from the most pristine wilderness to the farmlands that feed us.
5 June is World Environment Day, let’s celebrate and preserve the natural systems that sustain all life on Earth. Every image in this carousel is a reminder of how precious, fragile, and irreplaceable our planet is, and of the incredible power of Earth Observation to help us monitor, understand, and safeguard it.
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📸 image contains modified Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA; BY-SA 3.0 IGO
📸 ESA/NASA – T.Pesquet
📸 contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2017), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
📸 ESA/NASA - T.Pesquet
📸 contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
📸 ESA/NASA – T. Pesquet
📸 contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2024), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
📸 ESA/NASA – T. Pesquet
📸 ESA/
📸 ESA/NASA – T. Pesquet
📸 contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2024), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
📸 ESA/NASA – T. Pesquet
05/06/2026
Next Ariane 6 launch set for 17 June, in its most powerful configuration yet.
Flight will deploy 36 satellites for Amazon Leo's constellation.
CSG Centre spatial guyanais ArianeGroup
More info 👉 https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ariane/Date_is_set_for_bigger_booster_more_powerful_Ariane_6
04/06/2026
Your child’s drawing on a real rocket? 🤩
Kids up to 12 can create a space-inspired drawing for a chance to see it printed on the fairing of Ariane 6, for the launch of Plato next year.
✨ Submit by 1 July 2026!
More info 👉 https://www.esa.int/kids/en/things_to_do/Space_Gallery_Competition/Current/Join_Plato_s_Find-a-New-Earth_Art_Challenge
New research reveals vast clay deposits at our Rosalind Franklin rover landing site, pointing to a once water-rich Mars and strengthening the search for signs of past life.
Target launch: 2028
Read more: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/ExoMars_rover_targets_vast_bed_of_clay_in_search_for_life
Airbus Space Thales Alenia Space
🌞 A closer look at our star.
ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter captured its highest-resolution image of the Sun’s south pole during a close pass in March 2022, revealing bright magnetic loops and darker regions where solar wind escapes into space.
These polar regions hold key clues to the Sun’s magnetic cycle and future activity.
🔗 https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/The_Sun_as_you_ve_never_seen_it_before
NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration
02/06/2026
On this day in 2003, Mars Express began its journey to the Red Planet.
Since then, it has given us stunning views of Mars, traced the history of water across the planet, and provided the most complete map ever of the chemical composition of its atmosphere.
Today, Mars Express is still active and remains one of our most impactful and enduring missions.
🔗 https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Mars_Express_science_highlights
02/06/2026
🔬 Webb unveils the chemistry of 3I/ATLAS
For the first time in an interstellar object, methane has been directly detected, likely preserved beneath the surface until the comet’s close pass to the Sun released it.
The methane levels are unusually high, and the comet also shows an abundance of carbon dioxide compared to typical Solar System comets. These findings point to a very different origin and chemical history, offering a rare glimpse into planetary systems beyond our own.

🔗 https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/06/Webb_sniffs_methane_from_interstellar_Comet_3I_ATLAS
Canadian Space Agency NASA's James Webb Space Telescope James Webb Space Telescope Space Telescope Science Institute
(Pic: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Belyakov (Caltech), I. Wong (STScI), Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI))
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