These 2 European telescopes use lasers to track potentially dangerous space junk (video)

A bright green laser light shines from a darkened dome of an observatory into a starry night sky.

At a double observatory atop Mount Teide on the Spanish island of Tenerife, a powerful laser is being deployed to track fragments of space debris in orbit and warn when these fragments threaten satellites. Soon, it could even be used to push space debris away from a collision course with a satellite.

The Izaña-1 and Izaña-2 laser-ranging stations are operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and were constructed by the German company DiGOS, which specializes in laser ranging. Izaña-1 has been active since 2021 and has already been employed in satellite laser-ranging, but with Izaña-2 now complete, the pair of telescopes have a much more ambitious task as part of ESA's Space Safety Program.