IZN-1: ESA's laser focus on the sky

ESA's IZN-1 laser ranging station on top of the Izaña mountain in Tenerife, Spain, has recently undergone months of testing and commissioning, passing its final tests with flying colours. As it reached ‘station acceptance’, it was handed over to ESA from the German company contracted to build it, DiGOS. The station is a technology test bed and a vital first step in making debris mitigation widely accessible to all space actors with a say in the future of our space environment.

ESA’s newest addition to the Space Safety family, Izana-1 provides support for vital collision avoidance and provides a testbed for new sustainable technologies like laser momentum transfer, or coordination of space traffic.

Such satellite and debris tracking capability in Europe could contribute to building and accessing a European catalogue of space objects.