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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ESA’s Navigation for Planetary Approach and Landing (NPAL) navigation camera was tested for use with the Asteroid Impact Mission at GMV in Madrid, Spain, during autumn 2015. The camera took images for the processing software to first select landmark ‘feature points’ within the field of view and then to follow them from frame to frame. The camera itself has a detector that acquires the images, a ‘frame store’ for their intermediate storage and an image-processing chip to perform the feature tracking, before providing the information to AIM’s guidance and navigation computer. Changing tracks of the various feature points over time are checked against the onward and rotational motion of the spacecraft to determine its position and orientation.