Technology Development

Technology development and R&D are vital activities at ESO to making our vision and mission possible. We aim to develop and secure key technologies which will keep our facilities at the forefront of astronomy, by taking technologies that are at low levels of technological readiness and developing them to a level sufficient to be incorporated in new projects.

Technology development projects are funded by ESO through its Technology Development Programme and its ALMA Development Programme. A list of current projects in the Technology Development programme is shown below, and a dedicated page gives more information about ESO’s ALMA Development studies.

In addition to these projects, our engineers are engaged in a wide range of further research and development activities, which come from across the engineering disciplines at ESO, using our laboratory infrastructure.

ESO’s Technology Development projects

Projects running during 2023 are shown.

Project Description Partners
Astrocomb design study
 Development of a next-generation laser frequency comb calibration system for ESO’s high resolution spectrographs
  • CSEM (Switzerland)
ATTRACT Phase 2 & 1B ESO's activity as a consortium partner in ATTRACT, a Horizon 2020 research and innovation project funded by the European Union
  • Aalto University (Finland)
  • CERN
  • European Industrial Research Management Association
  • European Molecular Biology Laboratory
  • Esade Business School (Spain)
  • European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
  • European X-Ray Free Electron Laser Facility
  • Institut Laue-Langevin
Curved CCD Project

Investigating potential curved CCD detectors for future astronomical instruments
  • ESA
  • Teledyne e2v (UK)
Curved CMOS design study and prototyping Investigating potential curved CMOS detectors for future astronomical instruments
  • Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam(Germany)
Deformable Mirror Development Development of deformable mirrors for adaptive optics instruments
  • Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Germany)
  • ALPAO (France)
Laser Guide Star Systems R&D Development of the CaNaPy laser guide star adaptive optics facility and the Wendelstein Laser Guide Star System.
  • ESA
  • National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF, Italy)
  • Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain)
  • Durham University (UK)
  • Microgate Srl (Italy)
Large Saphira Development Development of a large-format 512x512-pixel Saphira electron avalanche photodiode array detector with applications for ELT
  • Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Germany)
  • National Research Council (Canada)
  • Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam(Germany)
Next Generation Controller II Development of NGCII, a customisable controller platform for all infrared and optical detectors
  • Australian National University (Australia)
PCS Technology Development (Phase 2) Technology development for the Planetary Camera and Spectrograph, a future planet-finding instrument for ELT
  • LUT University (Finland)
  • ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
  • Institut d’Optique (France)
  • Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (France)
  • Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (France)
  • Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU), CNRS (France)
  • University of Geneva (Switzerland)
  • National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF, Italy)
  • Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (Germany)
GPU Technology for Correlators Investigating potential use of Graphics Processing Units for a next-generation ALMA correlator
  • ASTRON (Netherlands)
  • National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (Japan)
  • Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (South Korea)
Cryogenics Amplifiers for advanced ALMA Receivers Developing prototype cryogenic low-noise IF and RF amplifiers for ALMA receivers
  • University of Manchester (UK)
  • Yebes Observatory (Spain)