Space 
The European Space Agency (ESA)| History, Perspective Organization Programs | The European Astronauts Corps |
History, Perspective | a Ariane 1 taking off on June 16th, 1983 from Kourou, French Guiana. picture courtesy ESA |
The idea of an European space effort dates back to the 1960s when two European agencies were created, the ELDO (European Launch Development Organisation), for launchers, by six European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), and the ESRO (European Space Research Organisation), for science (those same countries plus Denmark, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland), both appearing in 1964. ESRO began on the initiative of individual scientists and that the science program was the backbone of this new undertaking. A first Intergovernmental Conference of Space Research was held at CERN, Meyrin, near Geneva, in 1960. Chaired by Sir Harrie Massey of the UK, this historic meeting set up the Preparatory Commission to Study the Possibilities for European Collaboration in the Field of Space (COPERS), which was to decide the future direction of Europe in space. As the ESRO used U.S. launchers to achieve the launch of 7 research satellites until 1972, it was succeeded by the ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre, Noordwijk, the Netherlands) which, in turn, was merged with the ELDO in 1974, marking the birth of the ESA in 1975. By May 1968, the ESRO-2B satellite which had launched by a Scout-B rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA, had already been controlled by teams at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany, a feat to occur again afterwards. The launch of the first European satellites on US rockets came after an offer from NASA to fly these first two satellites free of charge, as a 'christening gift' to ESRO. ESA eventually had been born from tight financial constraints on ESRO, the tribulations of ELDO's launcher, and a major tilt towards close technological cooperation with NASA in the early 1970s. In May 1975, in response to different needs of the space arena of those days and broadening the scope of the agency to include operational space applications systems, such as telecommunications satellites, the ESA was founded. ESA continued ESRO's activities and ELDO was dissolved. Since then, the original members have been joined by several other European countries. Since then, in partnership with the other space agencies of the world or on its own, ESA has participated to or built several space missions (like, for example, Giotto, SOHO, or even the Hubble Space Telescope). The ESA, on the other hand, has developed its own launch systems, the Ariane rockets which are now operating under their latest form of the Ariane 5. A laboratory for scientific experiments able to fit in the US Space Shuttle's cargo bay was performed under German leadership, the 'Spacelab.' The ESA later participated into the International Space Station. Global changes by the 1990's brought ESA to new partnerships, like its launcher fleet expanded to include the Russian Soyuz and the Italian-led Vega, a single European Astronaut Corps created, and major new programmes for Earth observation (GMES) and satellite navigation (Galileo) created in cooperation with the European Union. The ESA now can compete and collaborate from a position of strength with the USA and Russia. The ESA now accounts for 50 percent of commercial launches worldwide, in concurrence with Russia and NASA. The ESA has a budget of about 4 billion dollars, compared to the 16 billion-dollars budget of the NASA. It has to be noted, at last, that the European countries still maintain national space policies besides their participation to the ESA, like the "German Aerospace Center" (DLR), the French CNES ("Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales"), or the British National Space Centre (BNSC).
The European Space Agency (ESA) comprises 17 member states: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Canada, Hungary and the Czech Republic also participate in some projects under cooperation agreements. Although the ESA maintains close ties with the European Union (EU) through an ESA/UE Framework Agreement, not all members of the EU are members of the ESA, as all members of the ESA are not members of the UE. From an organizational point of view, the ESA is governed by the "ESA Council" which provides the basic policy guidelines, acting like a framework within which the ESA develops the European space program. Each member states owns one vote in the council, regardless of its size and financial contribution. The ESA's head is the "Director General", who is elected by the Council each 4 years. Each centre of the ESA is managed by a Directorate which reports to the Director General. ESA headquarters are in Paris. Space activities in Europe, at the difference of what happens in the USA or Russia, do not benefit from the influx of the military
OrganizationThe ESA has centers in a number of European countries, with different responsabilities
 | ESA's ESTEC center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. picture courtesy ESA |
The launch base for the European Space Agency is in Kourou, French Guiana, which is used too for specifically French space activities of the CNES. Since October 2011 Kourou is featuring a launch pad able to launch Russian Soyuz launchers, a deepening of the cooperation between ESA and Russia. As ESA is gaining a medium-load launcher with the Soyuz -and soon, by 2012, with the Russian Vegas, a small-load one- Russia is allowed to launches from the equator enabling to double the payloads it can launch, compared to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Payloads launchable from Kourou are ranging from the 21-metric ton (LEO) and 6-10-metric ton (GTO) Ariane 5 to the Russian Soyuz rocket (3 metric tons to GTO). As far as manned spaceflight is concerned, ESA never had it as a primary goal. It always relied on its participation to other agencies' programs to gain access to orbit, like the Space Shuttle, the Mir station, or, more recently, the international-partnership International Space Station (ISS). More recently, the ESA was to get into a partnership with the Russian "Kliper" program, the Russian counterpart to NASA's CEV ("Crew Exploration Vehicle"). Some of its members like Germany, Italy, and France opposed the project however. As far as the International Space Station (ISS) is concerned, 5 of the 15 member states of the ESA opted out of the project, as the ESA (with the Columbus module, the Cupola observatory, or the Automated Transfer Vehicle, ATV -the 8-metric ton European cargo craft to the ISS) may be considered actively participating into the program
 | New Norcia, Australia deep space 35-meter ESTRACK station. picture courtesy ESA |
As far as tracking and communicating with the European missions and satellites is concerned, the ESA possesses a tracking station network known as the ESTRACK, and composed of 13 terminals located at 9 stations in 6 countries. The core network of the ESTRACK is comprising the 9 following stations: Kourou (French Guiana), Maspalomas, Villafranca and Cebreros (Spain), Redu (Belgium), Santa Maria (Portugal), Kiruna (Sweden) and Perth and New Norcia (Australia). Such stations are hosting 13-, 13.5- or 15-metre antennas, and Santa Maria a 5.5m antenna. New Norcia, Australia and Cebreros, Spain with a 35-metre deep-space antenna (DSA 1 and 2) each, and completed in 2002 and 2005 respectively serve like the deep space stations of ESA. They were joined by 2012 with the DSA 3 antenna located by Malargüe, Argentina, in the province of Mendoza, which in turn had a major refurbishment by 2019 allowing to support future missions and to transfer data at much higher rates. Similar work had been performed at the Cebreros station located in Spain in 2017. The New Norcia station, in western Australia, typically acquires a mission launched from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, about 50 minutes after launch and it follows it until the separation of the payload into orbit. By Feb. 2016 it was featured with a 4.5-meter dish able to lock and track a payload during its critical initial orbits, also able to 'slave" the larger antenna. In addition to satellites, the new antenna can also track rockets, including Ariane 5, Vega and Soyuz as it replaced the Perth station with was threatened by urban sprawl. All those stations are remotely operated from the ESTRACK Control Center (ECC), which is located at the ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany as the core network typically provides over 44,000 hours of tracking support each year. Any station is manned during critical operations like launches, flybys, etc. as all ESA antennas are remotely operated by engineers at ESA ESOC operations centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The network provides for a accuracy of withing 3,300 feet (1000 meters) at a distance of 150 million km from Earth. The European Data Relay System (EDRS) will be a unique system of geostationary satellites permanently fixed over a network of ground stations, and acting as a go-between between low-orbiting satellites and the Earth. This process allows the lower satellite to continuously downlink the information it is gathering, instead of having to store it until it travels over its own ground station. The EDRS is a public–private partnership between ESA and Airbus
Programsclick to a list of ESA space missions
Like any other space agency, the European Space Agency is having programs about Earth science, planetary and deep space missions, and telecommunications, as the Galileo project is aiming to compete with the U.S. GPS
->More Programs For the ESA!
By December 2008, the European Union (EU) goverment ministers have pledged a budget of about $12 billion to fund more European space exploration missions. Are part of the new program, climate change-monitoring satellites and a long series of experiments to be performed aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The money also will serve for updating the Ariane rocket, which is the European launcher. At last, the 'Exomars Project', set to launch in 2016 is a Martian mission, carrying a rover there which will drill two meters (two yards) into the soil to take soil samples. The EU is expecting to be able to raise $260 million from the USA or Russia as part of the financement of those new missions
The BepiColombo mission to Mercury, on another hand, slated to launch in 2013, will be composed of two spacecraft -one built by Japan, the other by ESA- the first one studying Mercury's magnetic field, the other Mercury directly, including a study of the atmosphere, and, from the particles found there, of the nature of the planet's surface. The BepiColombo mission includes a participation by NASA
->The Herschel and Planck Missions, With Important Contributions from NASA
The JPL contributed key technology to both Herschel and Planck as NASA team members will play an important role in data analysis and science operations. Herschel has the largest mirror until now able to peak into the infrared and the -furthest- submillimeter range, likely representing a step into knowledge with new objects, new molecules and the earliest stages of the Univers and surely complementing the mission of the Spitzer Space
Telescope. Herschel will detect light from objects as cold as 10 Kelvin, which is 10 degrees above the coldest temperature theoretically attainable. To do this, the observatory's instruments must be cold, too. Onboard liquid helium will chill the coldest of Herschel's detectors to a frosty 0.3 Kelvin. Planck, with working in the microwave wavelengths, will be another mission measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation for a better knowledge of the how the Big Bang unfolded and improving our knowledge of the general aspect of our Universe and the theory of inflation. Both mission will be lifted off through a unique, ESA Ariane 5 rocket as, through their own path, they will then head to around the second Lagrangian point, about 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from the Earth, the one which is on the other side of Earth relative to the Sun
->Two Missions in The Cosmic Vision Program Might Blend Into Their NASA Counterparts!
Two missions of ESA's Cosmic Vision program might mix with two equivalent, NASA missions! That, about 2020, might result into a two orbiter-mission at Europa, in the Jupiterian system, and a orbiter-lander-exploratory balloon mission at Titan, the largest Saturn's moon
In terms of weather satellites, the ESA started a series in 1977, with Meteosat-1. A new series, the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellites are designed to improve weather prediction as the first mission, the MSG-1 ou Meteosat-8 had been launched by 2002. The MSGs offer more spectral channels and are sensing Earth at a higher resolution. The series returns highly detailed imagery of Europe, the North Atlantic and Africa every 15 minutes for use by meteorologists and national weather forecasters. ESA has developed the satellites in close cooperation with Eumetsat (or the 'European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites') as Eumetsat is responsible for the satellites' routine operations. MetOp class satellites are weather satellites with a polar orbit, a joint enterprise between ESA and Eumetsat. Eumetsat and the U.S. weather agency, the NOAA, are partners in the European Initial Joint Polar System (IJPS) with the agreement to fly their partner’s sensors on their own polar satellites and to exchange data from the POES and MetOp satellites
The European Astronauts CorpsSince 1998, the ESA members, as they were participating into the International Space Station (ISS) program, decided to unite their own astronaut teams into the existing ESA core team, and to form a single European Astronaut Corps. That integration process was completed in 2002. The European Astronaut Corps currently consists of 8 astronauts, from Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden. The corps is managed by the European Astronaut Centre's (EAC) Astronaut Division. 6 more astronauts (from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and UK) were selected in May 2009 after a year-long recruitment campaign as they started their basic training at the EAC in September 2009. European astronauts now mostly participate in the ISS program. When not part of a mission, astronauts on the ground are supporting the unfolding mission, like taking in charge the communications with the crew. Outside of such involvements, the ESA astronauts are participating into the development of ESA programs, like they did for the Columbus module of the ISS, or doing for the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). Public relations activities are also part of the job
for more, see the ESA official site
Website Manager: G. Guichard, site 'Amateur Astronomy,' http://stars5.6te.net. Page Editor: G. Guichard. last edited: 3/7/2016. contact us at ggwebsites@outlook.com
