Agence spatiale européenne
The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to space exploration, with 22 member states. Founded in 1975, ESA shapes Europe's space capabilities, ensuring investments in space deliver benefits to European citizens, working across the entire space sector. ESA develops and operates Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications, and astronomy satellites and sends probes to explore the solar system, partnering with agencies like NASA, JAXA and commercial partners like Airbus. Key programs include the development of launch vehicles like Ariane and Vega, the Galileo satellite navigation system, and missions like Rosetta and BepiColombo.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
Airbus has been awarded a €109.3 million contract for the latest phase of the ESA TRUTHS mission under ESA’s Earth Observation Earth Watch program.
ESA's decision to create its own astronaut corps was intended to reinforce its role in international spaceflight.
The UK Space Agency's crew is expected to include reserve and active astronauts recently selected by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The creation of the European astronaut corps in 1998 led to the dismantling of national astronaut corps in ESA member states.
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen stated that Europe would have been better prepared for space if they had developed the Hermes crewed space vehicle 25 years ago.
In March 2023, the European Space Agency released a report calling for the development of its own capabilities to transport astronauts to orbit and beyond.
University College Dublin students designed, built, and tested EIRSAT-1 while participating in ESA Academy’s Fly Your Satellite! program.
The EIRSAT-1 team was accepted to ESA Academy’s Fly Your Satellite! program in 2017 and developed the mission over six years.
The EIRSAT-1 student team received spacecraft communications training at ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Centre and at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
SWISSto12 and the European Space Agency signed a contract in November 2023 for the full development and qualification of HummingSat.
As part of ESA’s InCubed program, a project equipped a Spire satellite with a Polarimetric Radio Occultation (PRO) demonstration sensor to detect and characterize precipitation using L-band signals from GNSS satellites.
The first HummingSat is being developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency for launch by anchor customer Intelsat in 2026.
The ESA-sponsored Spire LEMUR spacecraft carrying the PRO payload launched on 3 January 2023 and collected several months of PRO measurements.
Delays to Ariane 6 and the grounding of Vega C after a December 2022 launch failure required ESA and the European Commission to use SpaceX for launches of key science and navigation satellites.
The European Space Agency set a launch period of 2023-06-15 through 2024-07-31 for the inaugural Ariane 6 flight.
If the first Ariane 6 launch is successful, ESA and Arianespace will work towards a second Ariane 6 launch before the end of 2024.
At the European Space Summit in Seville on 2023-11-06, ESA members agreed to provide up to 340,000,000 EUR per year in support for Ariane 6 and authorized the purchase of a tranche of 27 rockets after an initial group of 15.
The European Space Agency will provide a more precise Ariane 6 launch date after qualification reviews in spring 2024.
The European Space Agency expects the first launch of Ariane 6 to take place in the middle of 2024.
The HummingSat Partnership Project contract was signed at a meeting of ESA’s Joint Board on Communication Satellite Programmes on 16 November at ESA Headquarters in Paris in the presence of government delegations from 22 Member States.