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Organization · Evropa (mezivládní organizace) · Founded 1975

European Space Agency (ESA)

An intergovernmental European space agency founded in 1975, with 23 member states since January 2025. It contributes to the development of Ariane launchers, exploration of planets and comets, and operation of European ISS modules.
Logo of the European Space Agency (ESA).
Founded
1975
Hardware
1

Hardware

Rockets and spacecraft

Launch vehicleArianeFirst flight 1979 · Height 52 mAriane is a family of European launch vehicles operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) together with the company Arianespace. Since 1979 it has given Europe independent access to space, launching from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana near the equator. The family's most successful member was the heavy-lift Ariane 5 (1996–2023), which among other things launched the James Webb Space Telescope and Europe's ATV cargo ships to the International Space Station; its successor is the more modern Ariane 6, whose first flight took place in 2024.Open article →

History

Key events

On the timeline →
  1. May 1975Founding of ESATen European states signed the convention establishing the European Space Agency (ESA), merging the earlier ELDO and ESRO organizations.
  2. Dec 1979Ariane 1The European launch vehicle Ariane 1 lifted off for the first time from Kourou — the beginning of European independence from American and Soviet launchers for commercial satellites.
  3. Mar 1986Giotto probeESA's first deep-space probe flew just 596 km from the nucleus of Halley's Comet and captured the first detailed images of a cometary nucleus in history.
  4. Jun 1996Ariane 5 failureThe new heavy-lift Ariane 5 launcher broke apart 37 seconds after lift-off due to a software error (a data-type overflow in code carried over from Ariane 4). Its payload of four Cluster probes was destroyed.
  5. Mar 2004Rosetta probeThe Rosetta probe set off on a ten-year journey to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, becoming the first spacecraft in history to accompany a comet in orbit and to deploy a lander onto its surface.
  6. Nov 2014Philae landingPhilae became the first spacecraft in history to land on the nucleus of a comet. Because its harpoons failed, it bounced twice and came to rest in the shadow of a cliff, yet it still managed to carry out key measurements.
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