European Space Agency

Template:Infobox Space agency European Space Agency or ESA (ESA; French: Agence spatiale européenne, ASE) is an international organisation with 22 member countries. Its job is to explore space.

Its headquarters are in Paris, France. ESA has a staff of more than 2,000 with an annual budget of about €4.43 billion / US$5.51 billion (2015).

The member countries of ESA are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

ESA's space flight programme includes

• human spaceflight,
• the launch and operations of unmanned exploration missions to other planets and the Moon,
• Earth observation.
• running a major spaceport, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana,
• designing launch vehicles.

The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching and further developing this launch vehicle.

European Space Agency Media

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  ESTEC buildings in Noordwijk, Netherlands. ESTEC was the main technical centre of ESRO and remains so for the successor organisation (ESA).

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  Mock-up of the Ariane 1

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  European Space Agency 2016 budget by domain out of a total budget is 5250M€.

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  Ariane 5 ECA transported to the ELA-3 launch pad

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  Sentinel-2 and Vega on the launch pad

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  Ulf Merbold became the first ESA astronaut to fly into space.

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  ISS module Columbus at Kennedy Space Center's Space Station Processing Facility

Other websites

Media related to European Space Agency at Wikimedia Commons

• ESA website