European Space Agency
The headquarters of ESA are in Paris, with four major ESA facilities in other countries. The European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC), located at Noordwijk, the Netherlands, is the primary research center and manages the satellite projects. The European Space Operations Center (ESOC), located at Darmstadt, Germany, is responsible for satellite control, monitoring, and data retrieval. The European Space Research Institute (ESRIN), located at Frascati, Italy, supports the ESA documentation service and manages the data obtained from remote-sensing satellites. The European Astronaut Center (EAC), located at Cologne, Germany, is responsible for the selection and training of astronauts for space station missions. In addition to the major centers, ESA operates sounding-rocket launch stations in Norway and Sweden, a meteorological program office at Toulon, France, and satellite tracking stations in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Major ESA programs include the development of the Ariane and Vega rockets, used for launching most ESA satellites from the Guiana Space Center at Kourou and Sinnamary, French Guiana. There also is a joint Russian-European launch program there that uses Soyuz ST rockets, a version of the Soyuz 2. ESA developed the Spacelab scientific workshop, which was transported into space more than 20 times by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) space shuttle; the
The foundation of ESA was laid with the formation of the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) in 1962 and of the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) in 1964. ESRO consisted of ten European countries and Australia, which placed its rocket-firing range at Woomera at the organization's disposal; between 1968 and 1972 seven ESRO satellites—Iris (ESRO-2B), Aurorae (ESRO-1A), HEOS-1, BOREAS, HEOS-2, TD-1A, and ESRO-4—were launched on NASA rockets. ELDO, which consisted of seven European countries, developed Kourou's launch site. Intending to build the Europa 1 multistage launch vehicle—combining a British first stage, a French second stage, and a German third stage—to orbit an Italian satellite, ELDO was unsuccessful primarily because of organizational problems. By 1975 it was obvious that a new approach was required, and ESRO and ELDO were merged to form ESA.
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