Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
 The ESA Optical Ground Station (on the left) | |
| Alternative names | OGS Telescope |
|---|---|
| Location | Tenerife, Atlantic Ocean, international waters |
| Coordinates | 28°18′03″N 16°30′43″W / 28.30096°N 16.51182°W |
| Altitude | 2,400 m (7,900 ft) |
| Diameter | 1 m (3 ft 3 in) |
| Focal length | 13.3 m (43 ft 8 in) |
| Website | www |
  Location within Canary Islands | |
 Related media on Commons | |
The ESA Optical Ground Station (OGS Telescope or ESA Space Debris Telescope) is the European Space Agency's ground based observatory at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife, Spain, built for the observation of space debris. OGS is part of the Artemis experiment and is operated by the IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) and Ataman Science S.L.U.
The observatory is a 1-meter Coudé telescope with a 0.7 degree field of view, supported by an English cross-axial mount inside a dome 12.5-meters in diameter. Its main purposes are:
It is equipped with a cryogenically cooled mosaic CCD-Camera of 4k×4k pixels. The detection threshold is between 19th and 21st magnitude, which corresponds to a capability to detect space debris objects as small as 10 cm in the geostationary ring. As a large part of the observation time is dedicated to space debris surveys, in particular the observation of space debris in the geostationary ring and in geostationary transfer orbits, the term ESA Space Debris Telescope became used very frequently. Space debris surveys are carried out every month, centered on New Moon.[citation needed]
Since 2006, the telescope has also been used as a receiver station for quantum communication experiments (such as testing Bell's inequality, quantum cryptography, and quantum teleportation), with the sender station being 143 km away in the observatory on La Palma.[1] This is possible because this telescope can be tilted to a near-horizontal position to point it at La Palma, which many large astronomical telescopes are unable to do.
EAS OGS has been credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 37 minor planets.[2] These are:
| (231609) 2009 RV | 10 September 2009 | list |
| (241554) 2010 FA93 | 23 March 2010 | list |
| (246849) 2010 FB48 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (251626) 2010 FM53 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (257422) 2010 FR47 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (257423) 2010 FM48 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| 284891 Kona | 13 September 2009 | list |
| (296587) 2009 RA26 | 13 September 2009 | list |
| 297005 Ellirichter | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (301679) 2010 FA48 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (312714) 2010 RR3 | 1 September 2010 | list |
| (321480) 2009 RZ69 | 10 September 2009 | list |
| (321810) 2010 RK4 | 1 September 2010 | list |
| (325476) 2009 RY | 10 September 2009 | list |
| (325791) 2010 RX4 | 1 September 2010 | list |
| (330873) 2009 RQ1 | 10 September 2009 | list |
| 332706 Karlheidlas | 13 September 2009 | list |
| (343557) 2010 FX47 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (343577) 2010 FF88 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (347299) 2011 OA28 | 1 June 2011 | list |
| (356298) 2010 FT47 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (362429) 2010 RU4 | 1 September 2010 | list |
| (365291) 2009 RO26 | 13 September 2009 | list |
| (368098) 2013 BP70 | 6 June 2010 | list |
| (369284) 2009 RQ26 | 13 September 2009 | list |
| (381725) 2009 RP5 | 13 September 2009 | list |
| (386618) 2009 RD26 | 13 September 2009 | list |
| (398163) 2010 FS47 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (403532) 2010 FG88 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (419562) 2010 RF5 | 1 September 2010 | list |
| 420779 Świdwin | 11 April 2013 | list |
| (436317) 2010 FP47 | 22 March 2010 | list |
| (438881) 2009 RD28 | 10 September 2009 | list |
| (457818) 2009 RB58 | 10 September 2009 | list |
| (463362) 2012 TB30 | 15 September 2012 | list |
| (481993) 2009 RO27 | 13 September 2009 | list |
| (482129) 2010 RC5 | 1 September 2010 | list |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Future missions in italics
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The ESA Optical Ground Station (OGS Telescope or ESA Space Debris Telescope) is the European Space Agency's ground based observatory at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife, Spain, built for the observation of space debris. OGS is part of the Artemis experiment and is operated by the IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) and Ataman Science S.L.U. The observatory is a 1-meter Coudé telescope with a 0.7 degree field of view, supported by an English cross-axial mount inside a dome 12.5-meters in diameter. Its main purposes are: to be the optical ground station of the Artemis telecommunications satellite (the project from which the telescope takes its name) to survey space debris in different orbits around the Earth, to conduct surveys and follow-up observations of near-Earth objects as part of ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme, and to make scientific astronomical night observations. It is equipped with a cryogenically cooled mosaic CCD-Camera of 4k×4k pixels. The detection threshold is between 19th and 21st magnitude, which corresponds to a capability to detect space debris objects as small as 10 cm in the geostationary ring. As a large part of the observation time is dedicated to space debris surveys, in particular the observation of space debris in the geostationary ring and in geostationary transfer orbits, the term ESA Space Debris Telescope became used very frequently. Space debris surveys are carried out every month, centered on New Moon. Since 2006, the telescope has also been used as a receiver station for quantum communication experiments (such as testing Bell's inequality, quantum cryptography, and quantum teleportation), with the sender station being 143 km away in the observatory on La Palma. This is possible because this telescope can be tilted to a near-horizontal position to point it at La Palma, which many large astronomical telescopes are unable to do.
Thales Alenia Space (TAS) is an aerospace joint venture between the French corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian conglomerate Leonardo (33%). It forms one half of their Space Alliance alongside Telespazio. TAS is headquartered in Cannes, France. It designs, builds, and delivers space-based systems, including satellites, orbital infrastructure and ground segments, for telecommunications, earth observation, space exploration, meteorological and navigation purposes. It is a key contributor to Galileo, a European global satellite navigation system, being responsible for the ground segment in particular. In 2021, the company was also awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission to build 6 of the 12 new Galileo Second Generation satellites. The company is also a notable industrial contributor to the International Space Station (ISS), having produced numerous pressurized modules including the Cupola, the Harmony and Tranquility nodes, the Columbus laboratory and for the Cygnus cargo spacecraft; as well as an important industrial partner as to the development of the Lunar Gateway. TAS has 17 industrial plants in Europe as well a joint venture in the United States, Leostella. This JV with the Seattle-based company, BlackSky Global, is mostly dedicated to the development of the BlackSky Pathfinder-1 high revisit optical constellation. Plans have been announced to merge TAS, Telespazio and the Space Systems and Space Digital divisions of Airbus Defence and Space into a new joint venture owned by Airbus (35%), Leonardo (32.5%), and Thales (32.5%). The combined entity would have had an estimated annual turnover of €6.5 billion. If approved by regulators, the new company is expected to be operational in 2027.
The superconducting camera, SCAM, is an ultra-fast photon-counting camera developed by the European Space Agency. It is cooled to just 0.3 K (three-tenths of a degree Celsius above absolute zero). This enables its sensitive electronic detectors, known as superconducting tunnel junction detectors, to register almost every photon of light that falls onto it. Its advantage over a charge-coupled device (CCD) is that it can measure both the brightness (rate) of the incoming photon stream and the color (wavelength or energy) of each individual photon. The number of free primary electrons generated per photon event is proportional to the photon energy and amounts to ~18,000 per electronvolt. As a result, if the device is operated in single-photon count mode the energy of each captured photon can be calculated in the visible-light range, where photons have energies of a few electronvolts, each generating >20,000 electrons. In a normal CCD, only one primary electron is generated per photon, except for very energetic photons, like X-rays, where a normal CCD can operate in a similar way to a SCAM. In 2006 the SCAM instrument was mounted on the ESA's Optical Ground Station telescope in order to observe the disintegration of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.
PeakSat is a Greek technology demonstration satellite intended to test a laser-based optical communication link between low Earth orbit and the optical ground station at Holomonta in Chalkidiki. The 3U CubeSat-type small satellite was developed by undergraduate students at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and its development was supported by the EU's and ESA's Greek CubeSat In-Orbit Validation programme. PeakSat includes an ATLAS-1 laser terminal by the Lithuanian company Astrolight. The satellite was launched on the Transporter-16 flight of the Falcon 9 rocket on 30 March 2026.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
