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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Simulations of observations of the CMB show the dramatic improvement that can be achieved by increasing the angular resolution and sensitivity of an experiment from the level of WMAP (right panel) to the level of Planck (left panel). The quantity shown on these plots (called the angular power spectrum) encodes the amount of cosmologically relevant information available in the maps, reflected in the bumps and wiggles of the red curve. The blue bars show that Planck will be able to recover about 15 times as much relevant information as WMAP.