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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Proposed design for the International X-ray Observatory (IXO), a joint ESA-NASA-JAXA candidate mission being considered for launch around 2020. The partner space agencies have agreed that the new mission will have a 20-fold increase in collecting area compared to the current XMM-Newton while also having a threefold increase in resolution. To achieve this within the mission’s stringent mass restrictions requires new techniques to achieve stiff but lightweight mirrors. The two technologies under investigation are NASA’s ‘slumped glass’ technique and ESA’s ‘silicon pore optics’.