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 proposed GENESIS satellite targets a global reference system accuracy of around 1 mm with a long-term stability of 0.1 mm/y, so as to be able to detect the smallest variations in the Earth system components.
To do this, GENESIS will combine for the first time ever all four space-geodetic techniques (satellite laser ranging, Doppler-based ‘DORIS’ radio positioning, Very Long Baseline Interferometry VLBI, as well as satnav) that are used to fix the position of GNSS stations around the globe onto a single space-based platform. This will result in a unique, dynamic space geodetic observatory, which combined with the measurements of geodetic collocation techniques stations on Earth, shall allow resolving the inherent errors and biases of each method can be identified and accounted for, overcoming one of the main limitations of the current International Terrestrial Reference Frame state of the art accuracy.