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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Testing inside the DTU-ESA Spherical Near-Field Antenna Test Facility (SNFTF) at the Technical University of Denmark. This is one of ESA’s external laboratories, specialist centres of excellence located across Europe, supplementing the Agency’s in-house facilities. The SNFTF can sample an antenna’s surrounding electrical field in close-up on a highly accurate basis in all directions, then extrapolate these values to its far-off performance.
This photo, taken around the end of 2005, shows testing to part of the MIRAS antenna, flown in space in 2009 aboard ESA's SMOS mission. Associate Professor Sergey N. Pivnenko, manager of the DTU-ESA Facility, is seen in the foreground, with Jerzy Lemanczyk, ESA’s then technical officer for the SMOS antenna, directing down the light upon it.