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.
Jan Woerner, Director General of the European Space Agency, is focusing on implementing ESA programs and establishing a new cooperative agreement with the European Union.
ESA held one informal meeting in 2019 about possible contents of a new partnership agreement with the EU and planned meetings with the European Commission the week following 2020-01-15 to begin negotiations.
ESA will support maintaining a 16 billion-euro level for the EU multiannual financial framework to fund Copernicus and Galileo.
Jan Woerner spoke at a press briefing at the European Space Agency’s Paris headquarters on 2020-01-15 about the need for a shorter deorbiting period.
The European Space Agency’s Space Environment Report published in July estimated that only 15–25% of satellites in orbits high enough to avoid natural atmospheric deorbiting within 25 years attempt to comply with the 25-year guideline.
The European Space Agency awarded Celestia Group an 8-million-euro contract to develop an electronically steered gateway station capable of tracking and communicating with multiple satellites simultaneously.
ESA selected Arianespace to launch the JUpiter ICy moon Explorer (JUICE) aboard the Ariane 64, the inaugural flight of the Ariane 6.
Euclid is a medium-class astronomy and astrophysics space mission that was selected in 2011 as part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 scientific program.
ClearSpace was selected for a roughly $130,000,000 mission to deorbit a piece of rocket debris for the European Space Agency.
The contract for Made In Space Europe to develop the robotic arm is managed by the European Space Agency.
ESA funding for ClearSpace-1 requires the mission to launch on a European rocket.
Under ESA’s Clean Space initiative, the agency will develop guidance, navigation and control technologies plus rendezvous and debris-capture methods to be applied to the ClearSpace-1 mission.
ESA’s 22 member states will discuss funding the remainder of the ClearSpace-1 mission in 2022 through the agency’s ministerial budget process.
ClearSpace-1 is slated to launch in 2025 to capture and deorbit a 100-kilogram Vespa payload adapter left in orbit by an Arianespace Vega after deploying ESA’s Proba-V satellite.
The European Space Agency signed a debris-removal contract with Swiss startup ClearSpace to deorbit a substantial piece of a Vega rocket that was left in orbit in 2013.
ESA estimates the total ClearSpace-1 mission will cost 117,000,000 EUR ($129,000,000) to complete.
Luxembourg announced a partnership with the European Space Agency to establish a Space Resources Research Center in the country.
NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano completed a third spacewalk on 2019-12-02 to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer instrument mounted on the ISS truss.
Italy’s funding commitment at Space19+ is nearly one billion euros higher than what Italy provided at the 2016 ESA ministerial meeting.
Italy contributed 2,280,000,000 EUR to ESA at the Space19+ ministerial meeting, representing 15.9% of the 14,400,000,000 EUR in funding provided by ESA members at the meeting.