Full Form of ESA – European Space Agency

The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 22-nation intergovernmental organization tasked with space exploration. Established in 1975, the European Space Agency (ESA) employs about 2,200 people worldwide and will have a budget of €6.5 billion in 2021, according to the organization’s website.

As part of its human spaceflight program, ESA launches and operates unmanned exploration missions to other planets and the Moon, conducts Earth observation, science investigations and communications, designs launch vehicles and maintains the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, a significant spaceport.

The main European launch vehicle, Ariane 5, is operated by Arianespace, with ESA sharing the launch and development costs of this launch vehicle. The company is also working with NASA to build the Orion Spacecraft Service Module for the Space Launch System.

ESA Facilities

The facilities of the agency are spread out among the following locations:

• ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, serves as the home base for ESA’s science missions.
• Missions for Earth Observation at the ESA Earth Observation Centre in Frascati, Italy;
• Darmstadt, Germany, is home to ESA Mission Control (ESOC).
• European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, trains astronauts for upcoming missions.

ESA & World War II

Many European scientists left Western Europe after World War II to work in the United States. Despite the 1950s boom allowing Western European countries to invest in research, particularly in space-related activities, Western European scientists realized that only national projects would not be able to compete with the two main superpowers.

Edoardo Amaldi (Italy) and Pierre Auger (France), two prominent members of the Western European scientific community, met in 1958, just months after the Sputnik shock, to discuss the establishment of a Western European space agency.

The nations of Western Europe decided to have two agencies: ELDO (European Launcher Development Organization), which developed launch systems, and ESRO (European Space Research Organization), which was the precursor to the European Space Agency (European Space Research Organisation).

On 20 March 1964, an agreement signed on 14 June 1962 resulted in the establishment of the latter. Seven research satellites were launched by the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) between 1968 and 1972.

ESRO & ELDO Merging Up

When ESRO and ELDO merged in 1975 to form ESA, the new organization was born with the adoption of the ESA Convention. ESA was founded by ten nations:

• Belgium
• Denmark
• France
• West Germany
• Italy
• the Netherlands
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland, and
• the United Kingdom.

These nations ratified the ESA Convention in 1980 after signing it in 1975 and depositing their ratification instruments. During this time, the agency operated de facto. In 1975, ESA launched Cos-B, an ESRO-developed space probe that monitored gamma-ray emissions throughout the cosmos, on behalf of the European Space Research Organization.

Significant ESA Programs

Important ESA programs include the Mars Express and Venus Express missions as well as the development of Ariane 5 and its role in partnership with the International Space Station (ISS). For example, SMART-1 is a probe that tests cutting-edge space propulsion technology. A major focus of ESA’s projects is astronomy-space missions like the 27 December 2006 launch of Corot, a milestone in the search for extrasolar planets.

ArianeGroup and Arianespace announced a one-year contract with ESA on January 21 to study and prepare for a lunar regolith mining mission.