The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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An Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) image of an optical filter for ESA's Sentinel-2 mission, revealing the position of individual atoms across its surface. The AFM – whose inventor won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1986 – works in principle in the same way as an old-fashioned stylus across a record player, except the ‘profilometer’ in question has been sharpened to a nanometre-wide tip using techniques borrowed from the semiconductor industry, measuring roughly a single atom per second. The AFM can be used directly to gather height data or indirectly measuring material characteristics such as hardness, magnetism, intermolecular forces, electrical potential and thermal properties on the nano-scale.