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
Go to topicUnder the Innovation Triangle Initiative pilot phase, Alcatel Space ran a study with the French research institute INRIA Sophia Antipolis to develop an active deployable structure for space instrumentation. The main goal was to validate the concept of supporting an instrument with a very light but unstable deployable structure, the positioning errors being corrected by mechanical actuators and the optimal image quality being reached by active optics. Several technologies were examined to make the structure deployment reliable, cheap and compatible with space environment. A promising solution is the tape-spring mechanisms developed by IWF at the Technical University of Braunschweig and used in the six legs of a deployable hexapod as seen in the picture.