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 'dropship' quadcopter and mockup rover used for testing ESA's latest StarTiger project, Dropter. The dropship steers itself to lower a rover gently onto a safe patch of the rocky martian surface. Starting from scratch for the eight-month project, the Dropter team was challenged to produce vision-based navigation and hazard detection and avoidance for the dropship. It has to identify a safe landing site and height before winching down its passenger rover on a set of cables. Flying to a maximum height of 17 m, the dropship comes gently down to 10 m above the ground, where it begins lowering the rover on a 5 m-long bridle, coming lower until the rover touches down. Then it returns to a safe altitude.
The test platform is about 1 m by 1 m in size, with 41 cm diameter rotors. Its total lift-off mass is about 16.8 kg, with the dropship weighing 13.2 kg and the rover 3.6 kg. Maximum flight time is limited to about 15 minutes due to battery capacity.