Tenerife.- The European Space Agency (ESA), installed a laser observatory at the station Mount Teide on the island of Spain, Tenerife, as part of an ambitious project that will help in the future to identify space debris and eliminate it.
According to what was mentioned by the ESA, the new measuring station Izaña laser 1 developed and operated by the space agency is a test bed for the development of future technologies and it was installed in mid-2021.
During this first stage, on station, the telescope and laser have been tested by pointing a beam of concentrated light skyward to actively detect, track and observe active satellites.
Although Izaña 1 works at 150 mW, the ESA mentioned that it will soon be upgraded to another frequency so that it can also track debris objects with a much more powerful and powerful infrared laser.
“Currently, only satellites equipped with retroreflectors can be tracked from ESA’s Izaña station, which represents only a proportion of the total population,” explains Clemens Heese, Director of Optical Technologies.
The researcher mentioned that in the next few years with the upgrade, the laser is expected to be able to detect uncooperative objects, such as vital debris and old satellites without reflective patches.
The European Space Agency highlighted that although there are a dozen laser tracking stations throughout the continent, the Izaña station makes it the first that in the future, through a robotic system, will be able to function autonomously.
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This new technology represents a new era, as the station can track previously invisible missing objects that lurk above blue skies during the day.
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