Space science: everything starts here

How did it all begin what are the origins of our planet to understand our place in the universe we need to explore space let's look at some of the missions we are using to do this ESA's planck satellite has mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background a picture of the universe just after its birth 13.8 billion years ago the tiny color differences in the image represents seeds that later formed galaxies and galaxy clusters thanks to plank we've confirmed that our universe today is dominated by dark energy there's also a good share of dark matter only 4.8% is ordinary matter out of which the Stars the planets and we humans are made but we're still a long way from understanding how this dark universe works Euclid will observe billions of faraway galaxies it will reveal how dark matter acts as scaffolding around which galaxies are built and how dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe we happen to live on a planet orbiting a pretty ordinary star in a pretty ordinary galaxy but how exactly is our galaxy the Milky Way laid out Gaia will tell us ESA's Gaia space telescope is cataloguing more than a billion stars to create the most precise map of the Milky Way showing us not just the positions of the stars in it but importantly their motions through it from this we can understand how it was put together but where did the stars and planets come from this is one of the key questions examined by Herschel carrying the largest telescope ever flown in space and observing at far infrared and submillimetre wavelengths esa's herschel mission observed the cool universe it surveyed vast star forming complexes containing thousands of new suns coming back to our own solar system a trail of water will guide ESA's juice spacecraft to Jupiter and it's icy moons Ganymede Callisto and Europa have vast oceans of water beneath their icy crusts somewherein these oceans the conditions to support life may exist our search for life also leads us to Mars ESA's Mars Express has found evidence that there was once liquid water on the planet while methane in the atmosphere today could be linked to microbial life under the surface ESA's EXO Mars program is now underway to continue the hunt launched in March 2016 a new orbiter will track the methane in much more detail and new landing technologies will be tested and a few years later a Rover will drill into the Martian terrain in search of signs of life past or present the Soho spacecraft is able to determine what's happening deep inside our Sun it can warn us of eruptions leading to solar storms three days before they reach the sun's surface its successor ESA's solar orbiter will take pictures of the polar regions of the Sun for the first time and study the origin of the fast solar wind and now to mercury Pepe Colombo will orbit the nearest planet to the Sun to unlock the origin and history of this mysterious planet special insulation and solar cell technology are needed to withstand soaring temperatures of more than 400 degrees Celsius.