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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The pressure is on to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere – but the race is also on to support the monitoring that shows if targets are being met. Being developed by ESA on behalf of the EU, the new Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring mission, or CO2M for short, is destined to be Europe’s prime mission for monitoring and tracking carbon dioxide emissions from human activity. CO2M is currently planned as a two-satellite mission, each of which will carry a near-infrared and shortwave-infrared spectrometer to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide at high spatial resolution. Engineers at Thales SESO in France explain how the development of some of the mission’s precision measuring and optical components is going.