August was a busy month for ESA, between spectacular views, historic milestones and exciting new discoveries. 

From a total solar eclipse broadcast live from Spain and Sophie Adenot’s historic spacewalks, to the launch of MTG-I2 aboard Ariane 6, a breathtaking flight over Mars and a surprising discovery near our galaxy’s central black hole, here’s your monthly roundup from the European Space Agency. 

With thousands of emergency responders conducting search-and-rescue operations following the catastrophic flash flood that struck northern Nepal on 26 August, satellite imagery is helping to reveal the scale of the inundation and devastation across the affected region.

This timelapse was published by ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot on social media with the following caption:

Day 198 orbit 3070 — Let’s make it three!

A third spacewalk in 15 days is coming up this Tuesday 1 September... This time, it will be an all-woman spacewalk, and I'm looking forward to sharing the adventure with Jessica! (It will be her seventh!) ‍ ‍
A huge thank you to the teams once again supporting us throughout this weekend of preparation.

The Sunday Morning Science series will resume very soon, I promise!

– Getting ready for EVA-98 with Anil, with Jessica and

ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot will take part in her third spacewalk during U.S. Spacewalk 99 on Tuesday 1 September. NASA live coverage will begin at 13:00 CEST, with the spacewalk expected to start at approximately 14:30 CEST and last around six and a half hours.

Together with NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, she will replace a retroreflector on the International Space Station’s Harmony module, supporting spacecraft navigation during rendezvous and docking operations. The astronauts will also carry out several maintenance tasks, including installing data-relay system jumper cables, preparing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s radiator for future maintenance and replacing a

Week in images: 24-28 August 2026

Discover our week through the lens

The final two of ESA's pioneering Cluster spacecraft, Samba and Tango, will end their journeys as they burn up in our atmosphere on 31 August and 1 September respectively. Their targeted reentries mark the end of a mission that has transformed our understanding of Earth's magnetic environment. The final moments also offer a rare scientific opportunity for reentry observations from a plane.

Homer’s The Odyssey chronicles Odysseus’s journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. A distance of approximately 530 km as the crow flies, yet it takes Odysseus ten years and countless adventures to arrive—without his crew or his boat. What could Odysseus’s journey have looked like if he had modern-day satellite navigation systems, such as Galileo, at his disposal?

The second Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite (MTG-I2) has been launched on board Ariane 6, flight VA270, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. It will complete the first family of MTG satellites, delivering data for weather forecasting over Europe and northern Africa with unprecedented quality, quantity and frequency.

In this episode, SpaceNews’ Mike Gruss interviews Jeff Janicik, founder and chairman of Innoflight.