big antennas and paraboles, directed towards space. That is the INTA Estacion Espacial de Maspalomas, that is part of ESA, the European Space Agency.

ESA have a lot of things to do. The survey almost all spaceship movements, European as well as American, and a lot of satellites are monitored by ESA. Right now there are about 18 satellites being monitored. And they are travelling far. Som go to other planets in our solar system, and some are going further.

GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is the next flagship initiative for space in Europe, after Galileo.

It was confirmed as the European Union’s priority at the 2001 Summit in Gothenburg, where the Heads of State and Government requested that "the Community contribute to establishing by 2008 a European capacity for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security".

ESA is the main partner to the European Union in GMES and has contributed with programmatic activities since 2001 to the GMES endeavour. ESA has worked on the development of GMES pilot services in close conjunction with a large community of operational users.

ESA is also working on multi-mission facilities and ground segment operations and is preparing the Space Component for GMES with a series of studies and preparatory activities for the development of a series of satellites missions (the Sentinels) and the integration of national and European missions to guarantee continuity of data and services.

GMES is the response to the need by Europe for geo-spatial information services. It provides autonomous and independent access to information for policy-makers, particularly in relation to environment and security.

GMES represents also the European contribution to the international Global Earth Observation System of Systems, GEOSS, which was established at the third Earth Observation Summit in Brussels, in February 2005.

And be sure, if anything happens in space, ESA is among the first to know, and one of the means to this is the Station in Maspalomas.