Researchers Julia de León and Javier Licandro of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) are participating in the Hera mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) , successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA) on 7th October at 14:52 UTC. This is the first European mission for planetary defence which together with NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid redirection Test) will study the effects of a technique for diverting asteroids called “ kinetic impactor”. The DART probe crashed into the smaller ( Dimorphos) of the two asteroids which form the binary system Didymos, on September

An international team, in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias participates, has succeeded in mapping for the first time the three-dimensional structure of the atmosphere of an exoplanet, that is a planet beyond the Solar System. This research, published today in Nature , has been able to discover very strong winds that carry chemical elements such as iron and titanium, which create certain weather patterns through the planet's atmosphere. This mapping opens the door to more comprehensive and detailed studies of the chemical composition and climate of other planets. Enric Pallé

The single star nearest to the Sun is called Barnard’s star. A team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has recently detected a ‘sub-Earth’ orbiting it. This exoplanet, called Barnard b has at least half the mass of Venus and orbits rapidly around its star, so that its year lasts only a little over three Earth days. This new exoplanet is sixteen times nearer to Barnard’d star than Mercury is to the Sun, and has a surface temperature close to 125oC, so it does not have liquid water on its surface. This discovery, led by the IAC in collaboration with a number