What happened this month at the European Space Agency? (September 2026)

ESA’s September 2026 roundup highlights a month of milestones and discoveries across European spaceflight and astronomy. FLEX launched aboard Vega-C alongside Sentinel-3C, and Spectrum became the first rocket to reach orbit from continental Europe.

In human and planetary exploration, Sophie Adenot completed her third and final spacewalk, leading the mission as EV-1. BepiColombo also separated from its Mercury Transfer Module, taking another step toward Mercury.

On the astronomy side, the James Webb Space Telescope found tiny brown dwarfs that could harbor the building blocks of planets.