Once explorers, always explorers

The European Space Agency's science and exploration missions have been much in the news over the last few years, with the first results from its Gaia Milky Way surveyor and its LISA Pathfinder gravitational wave detection technology testbed, the arrival of its ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter at the Red Planet, the launch of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury, and the decade-long saga of the Rosetta comet-chasing spacecraft.

I'll give you an insight into some of these missions, their challenges, and their successes (as well as the almost-successes), and tell you what's coming next in ESA science and exploration, including new missions to study the Sun, the Moon, Mars, and the wider Universe.