About ESA
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.
Highlights
Latest
Space in Member States
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Spain
Estonia
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Czechia
Romania
United Kingdom
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
Science & Exploration
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicAstronauts
Latest
Enabling & Support
Making space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicLatest
Laser light sabre
What looks like a light sabre is actually a laser beam guided in its path through a hair-thin jet of water, in the same manner as conventional fibre optics.
This water jet provides a large ‘processing depth’, allowing parallel cutting of larger samples. Its water also serves to continually cool the cutting zone and efficiently remove cut material.
This Laser Microjet machine from Synova SA in Switzerland is being employed by cosine in the Netherlands to slice novel X-ray optics for ESA’s NewAthena space observatory to survey the hot, energetic Universe.
Energetic X-rays don’t behave like typical light waves: they don’t reflect in a standard mirror. Instead they can only be reflected at shallow angles, like stones skimming along water. So multiple mirrors must be stacked together to focus them. NewAthena will therefore employ ‘silicon pore optics’, based on the precisely-aligned stacking together of tens of thousands of mirror plates made from industrial silicon wafers, which are normally used to manufacture silicon chips.
This technology – developed by ESA, cosine and other partners – will enable the building of a 2.6 m diameter X-ray lens for NewAthena’s telescope. Production of these mirror modules has reached the demonstration stage and their mass production is now being prepared, to ready NewAthena for launch in 2037 as one of ESA’s major ‘Large class’ missions.
