We would like to thank you very much for your support and cooperation during this past year. We wish you happy holidays and a healthy and successful New Year 2026.
During its flyby of the Sun at the end of March this year, the Solar Orbiter space probe had its first clear view of our star's poles. Solar Orbiter's trajectory has recently been tilted 17 degrees relative to the Sun's equator, allowing measurements from this unique perspective for the first time. As the new observations impressively show, the magnetic field at the poles is currently in a state of turmoil.
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In addition to the images of the sun's south pole taken by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, the past year has brought us many other highlights: exciting scientific results and important awards. Read more here:
On April 13, 2029, the near-Earth asteroid Apophis will fly past Earth at a distance of just under 32,000 kilometers. ESA’s Ministerial Council has decided to accompany the flyby with a space mission. Ramses will study the asteroid at close range for six months and witness it racing past Earth. The MPS is sending a particle spectrometer along for the ride.
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The ESA Ministerial Council has decided on the further roadmap for the Vigil space mission. The space probe is expected to detect and potentially forecast hazardous space weather from 2031 onwards. Vigil observes the Sun from a previously unused observation position. This extends the warning time for solar storms by up to five days. Vigil's Photospheric Field Imager (PMI) is being developed and built under the leadership of the MPS.
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New research suggests that the body that collided with Earth 4.5 billion years ago, creating the Moon, originated in the inner Solar System. In the journal Science, researchers led by MPS determine the possible composition of Theia. The impactor’s composition allows conclusions about its place of origin. It is located in the inner Solar System, likely closer to the Sun than Earth.
The Solar System School, the joint graduate school of the MPS, the University of Göttingen, and the Technische Universität Braunschweig, is now a permanent fixture in doctoral training in Göttingen and Braunschweig. The Max Planck Society will continue the graduate program for an indefinite period. The doctoral program offers students from all over the world the opportunity to obtain a doctorate in the field of solar system research as part of a structured graduate program.
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MPS researcher Christian Renggli receives one of the coveted ERC Starting Grants. The European Research Council will thus fund the ELMO research group with €1.5 million over the next five years. The Göttingen-based researcher is investigating the interaction between early magma oceans and their atmospheres. At the beginning of their development, many planets are so hot that their rock melts. This is when the first atmospheres are formed. This phase of planetary evolution can be studied in the lab.
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The European exoplanet mission PLATO, which will be launched into space at the end of next year, has reached an important milestone. The optical bench with its 26 cameras has now been assembled in the clean rooms of the aerospace company OHB System AG in Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany). A key part of the mission's scientific ground segment, the PLATO Data Center, is currently being set up at the MPS.
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Tiny plasma jets on the Sun drive both the fast and the slow solar wind, as can be seen from data collected by ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft. A team of researchers led by the MPS has succeeded in relating images of tiny plasma jets in coronal holes, dark regions in the solar atmosphere, to in situ measurements of the solar wind. The jets are approximately 100 kilometers wide, last for approximately a minute and hurl charged particles into space at speeds of about 100 kilometers per second. more
How do planets form from the disks of gas and dust that orbit around young stars? At the MPS, Joanna Drążkowska is investigating this question within the framework of a Lise Meitner Group of the Max Planck Society. The researcher's goal is to describe the entire development, spanning billions of years, from the smallest dust grains to the largest planets, in a unified model and to simulate it on the computer.
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Keep reading. All press releases of the year can be found here.
