NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (or Roman for short), an observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics, is planned to be launched in 2027. A research group focused on supernovae, in which researcher Lluís Galbany, from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) participates,  has been awarded $11 million to develop the tools needed to utilise as cosmological probes the thousands of supernovae (exploding stars) that Roman will discover, and constrain the true nature of the mysterious dark energy that permeates our Universe.

Con el inicio del curso académico, el Instituto de Ciencias del Espacio (ICE-CSIC) celebra una observación solar abierta al público general en el campus de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB), en colaboración con la asociación de astronomía de la universidad AstroUAB.

After almost eight years officially serving as director of the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), Diego F. Torres is stepping down as ICE-CSIC Director, effective on 11 September 2023. While a new director is appointed, ICE-CSIC Deputy Director Aldo Serenelli will serve as Acting Director.

An international team of astronomers, including researchers Francesco Coti Zelati  and Diego F. Torres from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), has uncovered the strange behaviour of a pulsar, a super-fast-spinning dead star, that switches between two brightness modes almost constantly.

Last Friday, 25th August, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) in collaboration with the Castelldefels Astronomical Group (Astrofels) organised an outreach activity about astronomy within the Amanar project for Saharawi children who spend the summer with host families in different locations in Spain thanks to the 'Vacaciones en Paz' programme.

Euclid’s two instruments have captured their first test images. The mesmerising results indicate that the space telescope will achieve the scientific goals that it has been designed for – and possibly much more.

On Wednesday 26 July, the first Consortium meeting of the ESA ARRAKIHS mission kicked off at the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC). For three days, over 30 participants discussed the status of the preparation of the mission, including technical, operational and scientific challenges.

An international team with the participation of the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), led by astronomers from Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has discovered a new type of stellar object that challenges our understanding of the physics of neutron stars. The finding is published today in the journal Nature.

L'investigador Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez  (ICE-CSIC, IEEC) ha guanyat el premi Joan Lluís Vives a l'edició universitària al millor llibre de ciència i tecnologia per La Terra en perill. L’impacte d’asteroides i cometes.

From July 3rd to 13th, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) celebrates its sixth edition of the Summer School, whose theme is The Life Cycle of Dust. This is the second year the centre holds a 2-week long Summer School. 

The European Space Agency (ESA) Euclid mission will launch into space on Saturday, July 1st, with an alternative date of July 2nd, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Station in Florida, USA. The Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), together with the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and the Institute of High Energy Physics (IFAE), have worked for more than 11 years on this mission.

Black holes, some of the most captivating entities in the cosmos, possess an immense gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape. The groundbreaking detection of gravitational waves in 2015, caused by the coalescence of two black holes, opened a new window into the universe.

The Amanar Project, created in 2019 with the aim of inspiring girls and boys from the Sahrawi refugee camps near the city of Tindouf (Algeria) through astronomy, returns in summer 2023.Tthe Amanar team, thanks to the support and coordination of local institutions and associations, will carry out educational activities with young people.

The universe is big, and it’s getting bigger. To study dark energy, the mysterious force behind the accelerating expansion of our universe, scientists are using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to map more than 40 million galaxies, quasars, and stars. Today, the collaboration publicly released its first batch of data, with nearly 2 million objects for researchers to explore.

Could there be life on Mars? What are gravitational waves? What are the alternative theories to the Big Bang? How can we measure the rate of expansion of the universe? These and many other questions give life to La veu còsmica, an audiovisual podcast in Catalan that combines science, music and poetry. The first episode premieres today.

The outburst of the recurrent nova  RS Ophiuchi (RS Oph) in 2021 confirms the predictions made in 2006 by researcher Margarita Hernanz, from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and the Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), about its emission of very high-energy gamma rays related to particle acceleration.

An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Southampton and with the participation of the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), have uncovered the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed in an article published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The ICE-CSIC Annual Report 2022 is now available. It presents a summary of ICE-CSIC’s many activities throughout the year. 2022 has been a great year for the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and the first year that we enjoyed the Maria de Maeztu seal of Excellence, which has uplifted our work in different ways.

La setmana vinent, el 27 d’abril, se celebrarà una nova edició de la fira tecnològica de referència de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), MEMEnginy. Aquest congrés tecnològic reuneix cada any alumnat i empreses a l'Escola d'Enginyeria de la UAB per fomentar l'ocupació entre els més joves al sector tech.

The accelerated expansion of the universe would not need dark energy, according to a study published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. The author of the paper is ICE-CSIC and IEEC researcher Enrique Gaztañaga. His research, of a theoretical nature, shows that the cosmic expansion can be derived simply from the fact that our universe has a very large, but finite, mass.

On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) held an internal event on March 7th in collaboration with the institute’s Equity Committee. The event joined the International Women's Day 2023 campaign theme: #EmbraceEquity.

On 27 September 2022, NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission collided with its target, the asteroid Dimorphos, changing its orbit. This was the first planetary defense test mission designed to alter the course of an asteroid. Its success was followed by an intensive analysis of the collision, which includes the study of the tons of asteroidal rocks that were displaced and thrown into space.

On Monday 27th February, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) welcomed a Chinese delegation of the space mission eXTP (enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission) composed by senior officers from NSSC-CAS, IHEP-CAS to meet with ICE-CSIC researchers and engineers working on the mission and discuss latest advancements. Members of the HERD project at IHEP-CAS were present as well.  

The CARMENES project has just published data from about 20,000 observations taken between 2016 and 2020 for a sample of 362 nearby cool stars. The project, financed by Spanish and German funds, uses an instrument at Calar Alto Observatory with the purpose of finding Earth-like exoplanets (rocky and temperate), with the possibility of harbouring liquid water on their surface if they are located in the so-called "habitable zone" of their star.

¿Cómo se formó el universo? ¿Por qué las estrellas, las galaxias y los agujeros negros se comportan como lo hacen? Estas son solo algunas de las preguntas que aborda Territorio Gravedad, una serie de divulgación producida por el Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) y Lipssync Medialab que ahora se estrena en televisión. 

The Institute of Space Sciences Summer School is back in 2023 as a face-to-face event that will welcome around 40 international students to the Institute of Space Sciences on July 3rd-14th to broaden their knowledge on the Life Cycle of Dust. 

On the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) brings back an outreach initiative presenting some of the female researchers at the centre aiming at awaking scientific calling. That way, you’ll get to know better them, their work and their models.

An international team with the participation of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has discovered supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies when the Universe was much younger than it is today, 6,000 million years after the Big Bang. This is a very unusual finding since until now very few cases have been discovered in the local Universe – the Universe today (13.6 gigayears after the Big Bang). The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Institute of Space Sciences will start the new year ahead with a strategy retreat in Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey from January 24th to 26th. This will be the first retreat to be held after the pandemic! The centre celebrated its first strategy retreat in 2017 aiming at create an interactive, pleasurable atmosphere for team building, to help the whole institute get aligned, look into the future and take a big picture view.