The total solar eclipse that will cross Spain on 12 August 2026 can also be experienced through sound thanks to the Eclipse Inclusivo project led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC). Around 55 public eclipse-viewing events across the country will include dedicated eclipse sonification spaces as part of the project, which aims to ensure that people with visual impairments can fully experience this remarkable astronomical phenomenon. 

From July 6th to 14th, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) held its ninth edition of the Summer School, whose theme this year has been Multimessenger Astrophysics. For the fifth year in a row, the centre holds a 2-week long Summer School.

The XVII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA) will be held from July 13th to 17th and it will bring together more than 560 astronomy professionals in Tarragona. As one of the country's leading scientific meetings, it will foster collaboration, the exchange of knowledge and discussions on the latest advances in astronomy and astrophysics. The event has been co-organised by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), which plays a leading role alongside other Catalan research institutions.

Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the ten-year survey is NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory signature campaign, has officially begun, marking the start of a new era for astronomy and astrophysics. The observatory has started mapping the cosmos in unprecedented detail, transforming the way we study the dynamic Universe.

NewAthena is a new X-ray observatory that promises to revolutionise cosmos observation. Led by the European Space Agency (ESA), it is expected to be adopted in 2027 and launched around 2036-2037. From 2 to 5 June, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) held a conference around one of the science working groups of the mission specifically aimed at early career researchers. 

A study led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)—an agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities—with the participation of the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), shows, for the first time conclusively, that a planet can directly influence the behaviour of its star. This finding, published in the journal Science, provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of a magnetic field on an exoplanet.

The ICE-CSIC Annual Report 2025 is now available. It presents a summary of ICE-CSIC’s research, activities and highlights throughout the year. The year started with the celebration of ICE-CSIC's 25th anniversary conference in February. Under the theme “25 Years of Discovery and Innovation”, members of the institute gathered for three days in Barcelona to reflect on the past, present and future of the centre. It provided an opportunity to review the institute’s evolution, its current research and discuss future directions in astrophysics and space sciences.

The star Gliese 710 (GJ 710) will enter the Oort cloud, the most distant region of our solar system, in approximately 1.3 million years. The Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) is leading a study on close stellar encounters in the vicinity of the solar system, which places the upcoming encounter of Gliese 710 in a broader context and determines, with the greatest precision obtained to date, the speed at which it is traveling. The findings are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved the development of Arrakihs, the first mission in its Science Programme led by Spain through the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) and the Spanish Space Agency (AEE). Coordinated by Rafael Guzmán, a researcher at the Institute of Physics of Cantabria (IFCA), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Cantabria (UC), the mission is scheduled to reach space in 2030 to study galaxy formation and the nature of dark matter. 

An international team led by the University of Sydney, with the participation of the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), has uncovered the clearest evidence yet for the origin of an unusual class of cosmic signals. In doing so, the team has identified a rare stellar system that is providing scientists with a natural laboratory to study extreme physics. The findings are published in Nature Astronomy.

Currently, most space missions rely on Earth-based guidance and tracking systems, which involves human intervention and limitations related to communication delays. Autonomous navigation systems aim to reduce this dependence, especially in interplanetary or deep-space missions, where technologies like GPS become ineffective. A study led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and Politecnico di Milano, published in the journal  Acta Astronautica, confirms the viability of X-ray pulsar-based space navigation (XNAV) in deep space.

Stars and planets form when dense clouds of molecular gas and dust collapse. A team of astronomers led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) has found that magnetic fields can  help funnel gas along the accretion streamer that feed the growth of a young protostellar system, a newly forming star and its surroundings. The findings have been published in a study in the journal Science Advances.

An international team, in which the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) participates, studied data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and concluded the mission detected a rare, unusually luminous supernova. The team say it likely received its power-up from a supermagnetized neutron star born in the stellar collapse that triggered the explosion. The findings are described in a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

On 14 and 15 April, the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) held the workshop 'Advances in Precision Temperature Sensing for Space Missions' that gathered an international audience of 45 participants from industry, universities, research centers and agencies working on high precision thermal measurement technologies and their application to current and future space missions.

L'Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (ICE-CSIC) participarà en la dinovena edició de la Festa de la Ciència, que acollirà activitats de divulgació per a tots els públics, que tindrà lloc els dies 18 i 19 d’abril al Born Centro de Cultura i Memòria i a la plaça Comercial.

Black holes that formed before the Big Bang could still exist today as ‘cosmic fossils’, potentially helping to explain the mysterious dark matter that shapes galaxies across the Universe, according to new research by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC).

The LISA mission has reached a key milestone in its development. The European Space Agency (ESA) has determined that the preliminary design of one of its subsystems—the Science Diagnostics Subsystem (SDS)—meets all mission requirements. This meansESA has given the green light to proceed to the detailed design phase, which will involve testing the system’s first prototypes.

An international collaboration of astronomers has achieved the most precise direct measurement to date of the current expansion rate of the Universe, known as the Hubble constant. The Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) participates in the work of the collaboration H0 Distance Network (H0DN), published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Last 27 March, a team of researchers from the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) and members of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) visited the area around the Gaià River and its surrounding vineyard agricultural land to work alongside 5th-year primary school students from Bernardí Tolrà School (Vila-rodona).

The ”la Caixa” Foundation has awarded 100 new doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships to outstanding researchers so that they can carry out their projects at universities and research centres in Spain and Portugal. Five of them are hosted by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC): Aaron Jeremia Maas and Francesco Brandoli as PhD students, and Maria Edvige Ravasio, Matteo Zennaro and David Izquierdo Villalba as postdoctoral researchers. 

Durant les setmanes vinents, l’Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (ICE-CSIC) participarà en diferents fires universitàries per apropar-se al públic estudiantil, donar a conèixer la seva investigació i captar el talent de les noves generacions. El calendari de fires arranca el 18 de març al Saló de l’Ensenyament, el dimecres 25 de març a la XX Fira d’Empreses de la Universitat de Barcelona i el dijous 26 de març tancarà el cicle en MEMEnginy, la fira tecnològica organitzada per la UAB.

A striking new image captures the central region of our Milky Way, unveiling a complex network of filaments of cosmic gas in unprecedented detail. Obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), this rich dataset will allow astronomers to probe the lives of stars in the most extreme region of our galaxy, next to the supermassive black hole at its centre.

An international scientific team has discovered an unusual feature in the planetary system around a star called LHS 1903. The order of its planets challenges current planet formation theories. Scientists believe that the most distant outer planet in the system might be rocky—instead of gaseous, as would normally be expected—and was formed later and in a different environment than the other planets around the star.

Over the past four years, a new class of signals from the Universe has captured astronomers’ attention. These events originate from galactic objects known as long-period transients (LPTs), whose nature remains unknown. They appear as repeating bright radio pulses with unusually long periods. So far, around 12 such sources have been discovered, but their origin and the mechanisms that generate their emission are still unclear. 

Arp 220 is an ultraluminous infrared galaxy made up of two spiral galaxies in the final stages of merging. Because Arp 220 is the nearest galaxy of its kind, it serves as a powerful time machine: what happens here today likely mirrors what happened in the first generations of massive, dusty galaxies more than 10 billion years ago.

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration is releasing results that, for the first time, combine all six years of data from weak lensing and galaxy clustering probes. In the paper, which represents a summary of 18 supporting papers, they also present their first results found by combining all four probes — baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), type-Ia supernovae, galaxy clusters, and weak gravitational lensing — as proposed at the inception of DES 25 years ago.

Gas and dust flowing from stars can, under the right conditions, clash with a star’s surroundings and create a shock wave. An international team of astronomers in which the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) participate, have imaged a beautiful shock wave around a dead star using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT). According to all known mechanisms, the small, dead star RXJ0528+2838 should not have such structure around it.