'Spacer corner' artwork beside CATR

The winner of ESA’s ‘Graffiti without Gravity’ street art competition has left a permanent mark on the Agency’s technical heart, with this mural on the wall next to ESA’s Compact Antenna Test Range.

Irish street artist Shane Sutton won the Graffiti without Gravity competition in May. Jointly organised by ESA and the Hague Street Art, 10 top street artists from across Europe competed together against the clock to create artworks across 2x2 m canvases.

Then, as a result, ESA’s antenna testing team invited Shane to decorate the entrance to their Compact Antenna Test Range (CATR), used to test satellite antennas in space-like conditions.

The corner-wall mural shows an astronaut in contact with ESA’s Rosetta mission like someone holding a puppet on string, representing the use of antennas – essential to link space missions with their home world. Its background shows the ‘anechoic’ foam spikes that line the walls of the CATR, serving to absorb radio signals and reproduce the boundless void of space.

It took Shane two and a half days to finish – and you can watch the entire process here in this time-lapse video.