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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This animation depicts the rendezvous and docking of a pair of 6-unit CubeSat (10x20x30 cm each) nanosatellites. First supported through ESA’s General Support Technology Programme, Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has been studying CubeSat-based in-orbit demonstration mission to test out new technologies required for planned active space debris removal missions, such as ESA’s own e.Deorbit. Since then, ESA has been supporting PhD research through the Networking/Partnering Initiative with EPFL to develop novel guidance, navigation, and control algorithms to rendezvous and dock nanosatellites. The ability to autonomously rendezvous and dock CubeSats could enable in-orbit assembly of larger structures that simply would not be possible in any other way. The challenge is that CubeSats are faced with tight mass, propellant and power constraints. The control accuracy necessary for docking would be on the order of a single centimetre.