ESA at the 77th International Astronautical Congress

The European Space Agency will participate in the 77th International Astronautical Congress, which opens on Monday 5 October and runs until Friday 9 October in Antalya, Türkiye. The institutional report frames the development in practical terms and ties it to the broader mission or observing effort.

This matters because astronomy does not advance on single detections. The field builds confidence by accumulating independent observations across different wavelengths, instruments and epochs until isolated signals become defensible conclusions. What looks convincing in one dataset can dissolve when a second instrument looks at the same target, and what looks marginal can solidify when follow-up campaigns confirm the original reading. The current standard requires that a result survive this triangulation before the community treats it as settled. The European Space Agency (ESA) will participate in the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which opens on Monday 5 October and runs until Friday 9 October in. ESA will be present throughout the event in Hall 1, booth 1B-02, with an exhibition showcasing the agency’s latest mission results, achievements and future ambitions.

IAC offers a unique platform to connect with key players across the space sector, from ESA Member States and international partners to industry, and to strengthen global space. Our presence at IAC aims to reinforce ESA’s role as a global space leader and trusted international partner,” says Anne-Sophie Bradelle, Head of ESA Communication Department.

The exhibition, titled ‘European Space Agency: Elevating the Future of Europe’, highlights the five goals of ESA Strategy 2040: protecting our planet and climate. Building on the outcomes of ESA’s Council at Ministerial level in 2025 and the International Space Summit in Paris last September, the exhibition will highlight the fundamental.

The exhibition takes visitors on a journey from Earth to the Moon and Mars, highlighting how international cooperation is helping to expand Europe’s capabilities in space. Major achievements with international partners are showcased, including BepiColombo, the first ESA - JAXA mission to Mercury, launched in 2018 for a 8-years journey.

What gives the story weight is not just the object itself, but the way the measurement trims the range of plausible physical explanations. Astronomy has accumulated enough cases to know that the most interesting results are rarely the ones that confirm expectations cleanly; they are the ones that confirm some expectations while complicating others, or that open a parameter space that previous instruments could not reach. The scientific community evaluates these contributions by asking whether the new data constrain a model in a way that older data could not, and whether those constraints survive systematic review.

SMILE, the joint ESA - Chinese Academy of Sciences mission studying the interaction between the solar wind and Earth. And future missions such as Ramses, an ESA - JAXA mission planned to rendezvous with asteroid Apophis in 2029.

Because the account originates with ESA Space News, it functions best as a primary institutional report that is close to the data and operations, not as independent scientific validation. Institutional communications are produced by organizations with legitimate interests in presenting their work in a favorable light, which does not make them unreliable but does make them partial. Details that complicate the narrative, including instrument limitations, unexpected failures and results below projections, tend to be minimized relative to progress messages. Technical documentation and peer-reviewed publications, where they exist, provide the complementary layer that institutional releases cannot substitute.

The next step is to see whether other instruments and other wavelengths tell the same story. Campaigns with JWST, the VLT, the forthcoming Extremely Large Telescopes and radio arrays will provide the spectral coverage and spatial resolution needed to move from detection to physical characterization. The timeline for that kind of confirmation is typically measured in years, not months, which is worth keeping in mind when reading the current result.

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