Heavy rainfall has triggered flooding in southern Iran, particularly in the Sistan and Baluchestan, Hormozgan and Kerman provinces. The downpour has led to blocked roads and destroyed bridges, crops and houses – displacing thousands of people.

ESA's Aeolus satellite has been returning profiles of Earth's winds since 3 September 2018, just after it was launched – and after months of careful testing these measurements are considered so good that the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is now using them in their forecasts.

Ferocious bushfires have been sweeping across Australia since September, fuelled by record-breaking temperatures, drought and wind. The country has always experienced fires, but this season has been horrific.

Ferocious bushfires have been sweeping across Australia since September, fuelled by record-breaking temperatures, drought and wind.

Launched on 22 October 2001 and originally designed as a two-year mission, Proba-1 continues to provide valuable hyperspectral data to the scientific community, alongside priceless insight of long-lived missions—all while having travelled 4,329,416,712 kilometres to date.

Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite revealed that an explosion in a natural gas well in Ohio in February 2018 released more than 50 000 tons of methane into the atmosphere.

Devised by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), together with the Italian Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Italian space industry, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research (MUR) and the Italian Ministry of Defence (MOD), the first COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) satellite is ready to join the other four COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) satellites already in orbit.

Spare a thought this Christmas for researchers hunkered down on their Polarstern icebreaker, adrift in the frozen Arctic Ocean. Subjected to temperatures as low as -45°C and the perpetual darkness of the polar winter, they are willing participants in MOSAiC – the world's largest and longest polar research expedition. Despite the darkness, however, the researchers and crew remain aware of what is happening close by. How? With the help of radar imaging satellites.

It is now almost 10 years since ESA's CryoSat was launched. Throughout its decade in orbit, this novel satellite, which carries a radar altimeter to measure changes in the height of the world's ice, has returned a wealth of information about how ice sheets, sea ice and glaciers are responding to climate change. One of the most recent findings from this extraordinary mission shows how it can be used to map changes in the seaward edges of Antarctic ice shelves.

On 6 December, representatives from ESA, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Italian Space Agency met at the States General for Space, Security and Defence event in Naples, Italy, to discuss upcoming challenges for European industry.