London, United Kingdom. London lockdown 20210116. Londoners photographed this afternoon, alongside the Millennium Bridge, as the third lockdown continues. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. London lockdown 20210116. General view of the Southwark Bridge and the City of London, taken this afternoon, as the third lockdown continues. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. London lockdown 20210116. Londoners photographed this afternoon, alongside the Queen?s Walk in South Bank, as the third lockdown continues. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. London lockdown 20210116. Londoners photographed this afternoon at Borough Market, as the third lockdown continues. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. London lockdown 20210116. Londoners photographed this afternoon, alongside the Queen?s Walk in South Bank, as the third lockdown continues. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. London lockdown 20210116. Londoners photographed this afternoon, alongside the Queen?s Walk in South Bank, as the third lockdown continues. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. London lockdown 20210116. London ambulances parked outside the London Ambulance Service?s premises in South Bank, photographed this afternoon, as the third lockdown continues. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

London, United Kingdom. Vegetables shortage. Some fruits and Vegetables can be seen running low on shelves at Tesco Extra in Surrey Quays, this afternoon. New Brexit rules causes delays for lorries bringing goods in, generating complains for some customers. Picture by Gustavo Valiente / Parsons Media / eyevine

Cosmic neon lights. This image shows a new type of star that has never been seen before in X-ray light. This strange star formed after two white dwarfs ? remnants of stars like our Sun ? collided and merged. But instead of destroying each other in the event, the white dwarfs formed a new object that shines bright in X-ray light. A team of astronomers led by Lidia Oskinova of the University of Potsdam, Germany, used ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray telescope to study the object that was originally discovered in 2019. Back then, astronomers already reported that the object has very high wind speeds and is too bright, and therefore too massive, to be an ordinary white dwarf. They suggested that the object is a new type of star that survived the merger of two white dwarfs. Based on new information from XMM-Newton, Lidia and her team now suggest that what we see in the image is a new type of X-ray source powered by the merger of two white dwarfs. The remnant of the clash ? the nebula ? is also visible in this image, and is mostly made out of the element neon (shown in green). The star is very unstable and will likely collapse into a neutron star within 10 000 years.Credit: ESA / eyevine

Featured in this Hubble image is an expanding, gaseous corpse N a supernova remnant N known as 1E 0102.2-7219. It is the remnant of a star that exploded long ago in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way located roughly 200 000 light-years away.E Because the gaseous knots in this supernova remnant are moving at different speeds and directions from the supernova explosion, those moving toward Earth are colored blue in this composition and the ones moving away are shown in red. This new Hubble image shows these ribbons of gas speeding away from the explosion site at an average speed of 3.2 million kilometers per hour. At that speed, you could travel to the Moon and back in 15 minutes.ECredit: ESA / eyevine

(210115) -- RAMALLAH, Jan. 15, 2021 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) meets with Hana Nasser, chairman of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission (PCEC), in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on Jan. 15, 2021. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree on Friday that called for holding the legislative elections in the Palestinian territories on May 22 and the presidential elections on July 31. (Palestinian President Office/Handout via Xinhua) Xinhua News Agency / eyevine

(210115) -- RAMALLAH, Jan. 15, 2021 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) meets with Hana Nasser, chairman of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission (PCEC), in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on Jan. 15, 2021. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a presidential decree on Friday that called for holding the legislative elections in the Palestinian territories on May 22 and the presidential elections on July 31. (Palestinian President Office/Handout via Xinhua) Xinhua News Agency / eyevine

14/01/2021. London, United Kingdom. Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks with the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourle and his team. 10 Downing Street. Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street. / eyevine

14/01/2021. London, United Kingdom. Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks with the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourle and his team. 10 Downing Street. Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street. / eyevine

Spain's chilly blanket. The heavy snowfall that hit Spain a few days ago still lies heavy across much of the country as this Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite image shows. While the idea of snuggling under a blanket in the cold winter months is very appealing, the blanket that covers half of Spain is not remotely comforting. This satellite image, captured on 12 January at 11:40 CET, shows how much of the country is still facing hazardous conditions following the snow that fell at the weekend ? the heaviest snowfall the country has had in five decades. Storm Filomena hit Spain over the weekend, covering a large part of the country in thick snow. Madrid one of the worst affected areas (see satellite image), was brought to a standstill with the airport having to be closed, trains cancelled and roads blocked. People in central Spain are struggling as a deep freeze follows the heavy snow. Yesterday, the temperature plunged to ?25AC in Molina de Arag?n and Teruel, in mountains east of Madrid ? Spain's coldest night for at least 20 years. Copernicus Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a suite of cutting-edge instruments to measure systematically Earth's oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics. For example, with a swath width of 1270 km, the ocean and land colour instrument, which acquired the two tiles for this image, provides global coverage every two days.Credit: ESA / eyevine

First discovered in 1798 by German-English astronomer William Hershel, NGC 613 is a galaxy which lies in the southern constellation of SculptorE 67 million light-years away.E Featured here in a new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 613 is a lovely example of a barred spiral galaxy. It is easily distinguishable as such because of its well defined central bar and long arms, which spiral loosely around its nucleus. As revealed by surveys, about two thirds of spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, contain a bar.E Recent studies have shown that bars are more common in galaxies now than they were in the past, which gives us important clues about galaxy formation and evolution.Credit: ESA / eyevine

Asteroids vs. microbes. Inside one of the containers of this 40-cm-across miniature laboratory in orbit, a battle is set to start between asteroid-like fragments and rock-hungry microbes, to probe their use for space mining in the future. The University of Edinburgh's ?BioAsteroid' payload is one of multiple experiments running simultaneously aboard ESA's Kubik ? Russian for cube ? facility aboard Europe's Columbus module of the International Space Station. It found its way to orbit via the new commercial Bioreactor Express Service. The experimenters want to see how BioAsteroid's combination of bacteria and fungi interact with the rock in reduced gravity, including to observe whether characteristic ?biofilms' will be grown on rock surfaces, comparable to dental plaque on teeth. The microbes could in the future be cultivated to help mine resources. So-called bio-mining has potential on Earth and in space exploration to recover economically useful elements from rock, as well as creating fertile soil from lunar dust.Credit: ESA / eyevine

Pool preps. Prepping for a spacewalk typically means diving underwater to rehearse and fine-tune operations. In 2016, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst performed such an underwater rehearsal for the Colka high speed radio, the brown box imaged above, that will be installed this month on the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover will integrate the small fridge-sized device outside the European Columbus module during a spacewalk scheduled this year. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will be at NASA's mission control directing the spacewalkers as Capcom. The Columbus Ka-band terminal, nicknamed ?Colka', will enable faster communication with Europe. Orbiting the planet every 90 minutes means the Space Station is constantly making and breaking short links with ground stations on Earth as it passes over them at a height of 400 km. With Colka, a European telecommunications satellite in geostationary orbit can pick up data sent from the Columbus module. This satellite is part of the European Data Relay System and will be able to directly relay the signals from Columbus to European soil via a ground station in Harwell, in the UK. The current data relay system routes via USA, which results in longer data transfer times. The Colka upgrade will ensure faster communications between Columbus and Europe, speeds of up to 50 Mbit/s for downlink and up to 2 Mbit/s for uplink. This will allow astronauts and researchers to benefit from a direct link with Europe at home broadband speeds ? delivering a whole family's worth of video streaming and data for science and communications. Colka will be installed just weeks after the announcement that Europe will start building a communications module in support of the Gateway, the next spaceship to be assembled and operated in the vicinity of the Moon by International Space Station partners. The ESPRCredit: ESA / eyevine Contact eyevine for more information about using this image: T: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709 E