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 topicFor the first time, observations coordinated by ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme have led to the discovery of a previously unknown near-Earth object, asteroid 2011 SF108. The space rock was discovered by amateur astronomer Rainer Kracht and colleagues. The discovery was made by the volunteer Teide Observatory Tenerife Asteroid Survey (TOTAS) team during their SSA-sponsored observation slot in September 2011. The 4-night survey used the 1m telescope at ESA's Optical Ground Station (OGS) at Teide, Tenerife.
In the animation above, the newly discovered asteroid is the white blob moving left-to-right in the upper centre of the image. The white blob moving left-to-right at the lower centre is a known asteroid and the single pixle jumping at upper-centre-left is a digital artefact.