Science

The Fluorescence Explorer will measure plant fluorescence to study vegetation activity and environmental stress. ESA targets global maps at 300-metre resolution from 814 km altitude.

Next: Early-orbit checks and commissioning, as set out in ESA’s 15 September launch announcement, followed by commissioning

last verified 15 Sept 2026 · Concept artwork: YFarmX / ChatGPT Image 2

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NASA activated the Wide Field Instrument, the 300-megapixel primary camera, on 11 September 2026. On 30 September NASA reported that the fine-guidance tests showed the observatory holding steadier than 1/100,000 of a degree for half an hour at a time for Wide Field Instrument observations, and for eight hours at a time for the Coronagraph. NASA reported on 14 September that the first trajectory correction used about 18 kg of fuel against a 200 kg allocation, which with savings expected at the next correction and orbital insertion allows at least 22 years of potential science operations. On 25 September NASA reported that Roman's three ground stations, NASA's Near Space Network at White Sands, an ESA station near New Norcia in Western Australia and JAXA's Misasa station in Japan, received its test data between 7 and 17 September at up to 500 megabits per second. Roman is expected to downlink about 1.4 terabytes a day, the highest rate of any NASA astrophysics mission so far.

Next: Continue camera and deformable-mirror calibration before the Coronagraph’s light-blocking demonstration; L2 arrival remains expected around early December

last verified 17 Oct 2026

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Webb continues routine science operations from its orbit around the second Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. NASA released anniversary images on 6 July 2026 to mark four years of science, and on 15 July 2026 announced the discovery of a giant exoplanet hidden in the Beta Pictoris system. On 15 September 2026 NASA published one of Webb's largest images to date, a NIRCam panorama of the IC 348 star-forming region in Perseus, where it found brown dwarfs with as little as twice Jupiter's mass, smaller than theory predicts. On 1 October 2026 NASA reported a Webb study, led by Kate Su of the Space Science Institute, of 21 extreme debris disks, the dust signatures of planet-scale collisions that roughly 1% of young stars show; 16 of the disks come from Webb and five from Spitzer's archive.

last verified 02 Oct 2026 · Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/Northrop Grumman, restyled

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Europa Clipper launched on 14 October 2024 and is travelling 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometres) to reach Jupiter in April 2030, having completed a Mars gravity assist in 2025. NASA states the next milestone is an Earth flyby on 3 December 2026, which gives the spacecraft its final push towards Jupiter. Once in orbit it will conduct 49 close flybys of Europa to assess whether the icy moon could support life.

Next: Earth gravity assist flyby on 3 December 2026

last verified 02 Oct 2026 · Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech, restyled

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JUICE launched on 14 April 2023 and has completed its lunar-Earth flyby (August 2024) and Venus flyby (August 2025), after the team resolved an anomaly on the Venus approach. ESA's stories from February to April 2026 describe the spacecraft's rare observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS made with its science and navigation cameras. On 28 September 2026 Juice flew 8,640 km above the Indian Ocean at 11:45 UTC; ESA reports that the flyby deflected it by 20° from its pre-flyby path and raised its velocity by 3.5 km/s, after operators needed a single small trim in the four weeks before. A final Earth flyby follows in January 2029 before arrival at Jupiter in July 2031 for 35 flybys of the icy moons.

Next: Final Earth flyby in January 2029, which puts Juice on its last track to Jupiter, with arrival in July 2031

last verified 02 Oct 2026 · Image: Don-vip, Wikimedia France, CC BY-SA 4.0, restyled

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BepiColombo, ESA's joint mission with JAXA, completed its sixth and final Mercury flyby on 8 January 2025 and shut down its solar electric propulsion on 24 June 2026, closing out the powered cruise. On 3 September 2026 the Mercury Transfer Module separated from the stack more than 200 million kilometres from Earth, after an eight-year journey of 9.9 billion kilometres. On 24 September the Mercury Planetary Orbiter tested its axial thrusters in this configuration for the first time, firing for 8 minutes 42 seconds for an 11.4 m/s correction. ESA describes arrival as a six-month sequence: orbit insertion on 21 November, Mio's separation on 9 to 10 December, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter reaching its final science orbit in March 2027, and science from both orbiters from April 2027. ESA’s 6 October update reports that all Mercury Planetary Orbiter science instruments were switched on on 15 September and were healthy. Mercury capture remains scheduled for 21 November, with orbiter separation on 9–10 December and science operations from April 2027.

Next: Mercury orbit insertion on 21 November 2026; Mio separates from the Mercury Planetary Orbiter on 9 to 10 December 2026, and the science phase begins in April 2027

last verified 08 Oct 2026 · Image: ESA, C. Carreau, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, restyled

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