ESA’s new asteroid hunter opens its eyes

This expansive view of the Andromeda galaxy was the first light of ESA’s Flyeye asteroid hunting telescope from its factory in Matera, Italy. Inspired by an insect’s compound eye, it can capture a region of the sky more than 200 times as large as the full Moon in a single exposure to perform a wide-view search for incoming asteroids. 

As part of the global effort to detect potentially hazardous asteroids and comets, ESA is developing a series of automated telescopes to scan the sky every night.