European Space Agency

:This article is about the European Space Agency. For other meanings of ESA, see ESA (disambiguation).

ESA projects

International Space Station

With regard to the ISS ESA is not representing all its member states: 5 of the 16 countries have opted out because of either concerns on the expenses of the project or lack of interest. ESA is taking part in the construction and operation of the ISS with contributions such as the Columbus orbital facility, a science laboratory module that will be brought into orbit after NASA's Space Shuttle goes back into service or the Cupola observatory module that was completed in July 2005 by Alenia Spazio for ESA. The current estimates for the ISS are approaching 100 billion USD in total (development, construction and 10 years of maintaining the station) of which ESA has committed itself to pay 8 billion euros {{ref|ISS}}. About 90 per cent of the costs of ESA's ISS share will be contributed by Germany (41 per cent), France (28 per cent) and Italy (20 per cent). German ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter will be the first long-term ISS crew member in late 2005.

Related Topics:
ISS - Columbus orbital facility - Space Shuttle - Cupola - Alenia Spazio - Thomas Reiter - 2005

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As of 2005, the spacecrafts that establish the supply link to the ISS are the Progress and Soyuz spacecrafts as well as the Space Shuttle. The European Space Agency has started to construct a space freighter for the ISS, the ATV, an Automated Transfer vehicle with a cargo capacity of 8 metric tons that will be serving the ISS beginning 2006 {{ref|ATV}}. With the Space Shuttle reaching its retirement age in 2010 and until NASA will have a replacement for it (the CEV is not expected to make its first operational manned flight before 2012), the ATV together with Progress, Soyuz and the Japanese transporter HTV (that is yet to be developed) will be the only link between Earth and the ISS.

Related Topics:
2005 - ISS - Progress - Soyuz - Space Shuttle - ATV - 2006 - 2010 - NASA - CEV - 2012 - HTV

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Current projects already launched

• Artemis Europe's most advanced telecommunication satellite
• Huygens probe a space probe to Saturn's moon Titan
• Cluster-2 a group of four probes studying the magnetosphere.
• Double Star Mission probe to study effects of the sun on Earth (in cooperation with China)
• Envisat is the world's largest and most complex environmental satellite.
• ERS-2 is an earth-observing satellite launched in 1995. It is the successor to ERS-1.
• Hubble Space Telescope built and operated in cooperation with NASA
• Integral the most sensitive gamma-ray observatory ever launched (2002)
• Mars Express a space probe to Mars
• Rosetta a space probe launched in 2004 that will explore comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.
• Smart 1 a lunar spaceprobe testing new propulsion technology
• SOHO a space-based observatory to study the sun (together with NASA)
• Ulysses built and operated in cooperation with NASA
• XMM-Newton an X-ray observatory satellite.

Current projects to be launched in the near future

• ADM-Aeolus — Due for launch in 2007 will measure global wind profiles
• BepiColombo space probe to Mercury
• Chandrayaan-1 Indian space probe to the Moon that will carry ESA-made instruments (to be launched 2007)
• Corot — a space telescope for detecting rocky exoplanets larger than Earth. A project led by CNES
• CryoSat — a three-year radar altimetry mission, scheduled for launch in late 2005, to determine variations in the thickness of the Earth?s continental ice sheets and marine ice cover.
• Galileo positioning system a proposed satellite positioning system
• Gaia probe space telescope to make a 3-D chart of the galaxy
• Herschel Space Observatory a space telescope that will be launched together with Planck Surveyor in 2007
• KEO The ESA is sponsoring the KEO satellite, which will carry messages addressed to future inhabitants of the planet Earth (a time capsule expected to return in the year 52006).
• LISA Pathfinder (aka Smart-2)
• Venus Express — a space probe to Venus

Future projects

• Aurora Programme space exploration programme for manned and unmanned exploration of Mars and other planets in our solar system
• Darwin interferometer to detect Earth-sized exoplanets
• EADS Phoenix a possible European manned reusable launch system (following Hermes)
• JWST planned successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (together with NASA)
• XEUS an X-ray spectroscope mission

Past projects

• Hipparcos — a space-based astrometry mission
• Giotto mission — first deep space mission of ESA, which went to Comet Halley
• ISO — Infrared Space Observatory
• Cos-B — first project of ESA after foundation (in 1975)
• IUE — ultraviolet astronomical space observatory