ESA

If there are two things that are essential to human life, they're water and oxygen – neither of which are easily available on the moon. Thanks to a new technique, though, astronauts may someday be able to harvest those elements from lunar soil.

The BepiColombo orbiter probe passed within 552 km (343 miles) of Venus as it completed one of nine flybys on its way to Mercury. Shortly after the encounter, the ESA/JAXA mission snapped a picture of Venus at a distance of 1,573 km (977 miles).

Two deep-space probes will make flybys of Venus within 30 hours of each other on their way to the inner reaches of the solar system next week. On August 9, the Solar Orbiter will pass by the planet, followed by the BepiColombo orbiter on August 10.

On June 26, ESA's OPS-SAT space lab went into Earth orbit with a computer running the European Ground System – Common Core (EGS-CC) "space brain" software that will be common to all European space missions from 2025.

The ISS is about to receive its third robotic arm, which will be capable of "walking" around the Russian segment of the orbital outpost all by itself. It will do so hand-over-hand thanks to the flexibility afforded by its seven motorized joints.

A team of NASA scientists may have resolved a mystery surrounding disappearing methane on Mars, that may hint at the presence of life. The gas was detectable by NASA’s Curiosity rover, but absent in readings taken by an orbiting ESA spacecraft.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have undertaken three spacewalks over a 10-day period in order to install and power up a new set of roll-out solar arrays to the exterior hull of the orbital outpost.

By studying the logs of computer malfunctions caused by high-energy particles striking their circuitry, ESA scientists have used "housekeeping" data from the Rosetta and Mars Express deep-space probes to shed new light on cosmic rays in the solar system.

ESA has awarded a contract to Milrem Robotics for a series of projects to provide planetary rovers with a higher degree of autonomy by using the capabilities that Milrem developed for its line of modular military robots.

A first-of-a-kind spacecraft is set to make history later this year, but will do so using materials you could find at your local hardware store. The world's first wooden satellite is set to enter orbit as a box made largely of birch plywood.

ESA has selected EnVision as its next Venus orbiter. Scheduled to launch between 2031 and 2033, the robotic deep-space probe will carry out a comprehensive survey of Earth's sibling planet to learn why the two turned out so very different.

ESA is working on ways to make sharing unwashed underwear used in spacesuits a bit less horrible. The Austrian Space Forum will work with the Vienna Textile Lab to test textiles with improved anti-bacterial properties for suits used on long missions.