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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Opto-electronics engineer Clemens Hesse recounts ESA’s progress in optical communications. Europe’s EDRS ‘Space Highway’ is set to return environmental data gathered by the Sentinel satellites to users on the ground. As a next step, in 2020 ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission will carry its own optical communications terminal, to return precious scientific results from the Didymos binary asteroids, shining a laser back to Earth across a maximum 75 million km of empty space.
To learn more, read his interview here