The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
This artist’s impression depicts thermal plumes venting from the southern polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The moon’s icy shell is thought to overlay a global ocean.
Titan is depicted above, the only moon in the Solar System that has a substantial atmosphere, hydrocarbon seas at the surface, and a subsurface salty ocean.
‘Moons of the Giant Planets’ is one of the science themes for the Large-class missions in ESA’s Voyage 2050 plan.
A mission to one or more of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter would allow us to explore farther the habitability of ocean worlds. Such a mission would search for biosignatures, and study the connection of moon interiors with their near-surface environments, and the implications for the exchange of mass and energy into the overall moon-planet system. This would follow the breakthrough science from the international Cassini-Huygens mission and expected scientific return from ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) launching in 2022.