In this issue, we look at 'ExoMars, ESA's next step in Mars exploration'. Establishing if life ever existed on Mars is one of the outstanding scientific questions of our time. To do this, ESA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos have signed an agreement to work in partnership to develop and launch two ExoMars missions, in 2016 and 2018.

We also look to later this year, when 'ESA’s billion-star surveyor', Gaia, will be launched. Gaia has already completed its final preparations in Europe and is departing as we write for its launch site in French Guiana, set to embark

on a five-year mission to map the stars with unprecedented precision.

Then we look back in time, literally, with a summary of the latest results from ESA's Planck mission. Planck is designed to measure and analyse, with the highest accuracy ever achieved, the remnants of the radiation that filled the Universe immediately

after the Big Bang – 13.8 billion years ago – looking back to the dawn of time. The Planck results are certain to move cosmology in interesting and possibly new directions.