“We’re no longer limited to extrapolating our understanding of the Sun's CMEs to other stars. It seems that intense space weather may be even more extreme around smaller stars – the primary hosts of potentially habitable exoplanets. This has important implications for how these planets keep hold of their atmospheres and possibly remain habitable over time.”

The finding also informs our understanding of space weather, something that’s long been a focus for ESA missions and is currently being explored by SOHO, the Proba missions, Swarm, and Solar Orbiter.

XMM-Newton, meanwhile, is a leading explorer of the hot and extreme Universe. Launched in 1999, the space telescope has gazed into the cores of galaxies, studied stars to understand how they evolve, investigated the environs of black holes, and spotted intense bursts of energetic radiation from distant stars and galaxies.

“XMM-Newton is now helping us discover how CMEs vary by star, something that’s not only interesting in our study of stars and our Sun, but also our hunt for habitable worlds around other stars,” says ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist Erik Kuulkers. “It also demonstrates the immense power of collaboration, which underpins all successful science. The discovery was a true team effort, and resolves the decades-long search for CMEs beyond the Sun.”