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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On 10 August 2016, ESA’s tracking station at New Norcia, Western Australia, hosting a 35 m-diameter, 630-tonne deep-space antenna, received signals transmitted by NASA’s Cassini orbiter at Saturn, through 1.44 billion km of space.
“This was the farthest-ever reception for an ESA station, and the radio signals – travelling at the speed of light – took 80 minutes to cover this vast distance,” says Daniel Firre, responsible for supporting Cassini radio science at ESOC, ESA’s operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
The signal reception was part of a series of tests to prepare several ESA stations to support Cassini’s radio science investigations, planned to begin later in 2016.
This image shows New Norcia station as seen in 2014 by Dylan O’Donnell, an amateur photographer based in Byron Bay, Australia (the blob of light apparently hovering above the antenna is a light artefact, ‘lens flare’).
More information
New Norcia station
Estrack ground station network
Cassini-Huygens