ESA’s site for laser and quantum links marks 25 years

ESA’s Optical Ground Station, perched high on the slopes of Tenerife’s Mount Teide volcano, has now been peering skyward for a quarter of a century. Originally designed for laser-based communications with satellites, it is today additionally employed for tracking space debris and near-Earth asteroids as well as supporting world-class science: this year’s Physics Nobel Prize winner used the station for a quantum teleportation experiment that extended to the neighboring island of La Palma.