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 22 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 topicThis sketch shows a typical COROT image spot. The analysis of the 3-colour light curves that COROT will gather (thanks to a dispersion device - a prism - mounted in front of the exoplanet channel camera detectors, or CCD’s), will make it possible to distinguish among the different families of detected events (transits, stellar activity, eclipsing binaries).
In fact, planetary transits are achromatic events, while stellar activity – even though still badly known – are expected to be highly chromatic due to temperature variations.