The European Space Agency: what is the European space programme, what do they do and what projects are next?

The European Space Agency (ESA) is an intergovernmental space programme consisting of 22 member states.

It was created in 1975 with its headquarters based in Paris. Since then, it has grown to have 2,200 worldwide staff and an annual budget of €7.08 billion, as of 2023. 

So what does the ESA do, and what are its next projects? Here is what you need to know. 

What is the European Space Agency?

The European Space Agency's programme includes human spaceflight, exploring other planets and the Moon, Earth observation, designing launch vehicles and maintaining a major spaceport in France. 

The ESA had ten founding member states: 

• Belgium
• Denmark
• France
• West Germany
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Spain
• Sweden,
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom

Which later expanded to:

•  Austria
•  Belgium
•  Czech Republic
•  Denmark
•  Estonia
•  Finland
•  France
•  Germany
•  Greece
•  Hungary
•  Ireland
•  Italy
•  Luxembourg
•  Netherlands
•  Norway
•  Poland
•  Portugal
•  Romania
•  Spain
•  Sweden
•  Switzerland
•  United Kingdom

On its website, the ESA says its purpose is to: "provide for, and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications systems". 

It has a number of top locations which are: 

• ESA's headquarters are in Paris which is where policies and programmes are decided. ESA also has sites in a number of European countries, each of which has different responsibilities:
• EAC, the European Astronauts Centre in Cologne, Germany;
• ESAC, the European Space Astronomy Centre, in Villanueva de la Canada, Madrid, Spain;
• ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany;
• ESRIN, the ESA Centre for Earth Observation, in Frascati, near Rome, Italy;
• ESTEC, the European Space Research and Technology Centre, Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
• ECSAT, the European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications, Harwell, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.
• ESEC, the European Space Security and Education Centre, Redu, Belgium.

What is the European Space Agency working on?

The ESA is currently working on several missions, which can be found on its website.

In 2023, the ESA launched Euclid, which has already yielded some significant pictures of the universe. 

Its mission was to investigate Dark Matter, and its conditions, as well as if dark matter is a constant energy spread across space or a new force of nature. It has an operational lifetime of six years. 

Another launch planned for this year is Juice. In an acronym, JUICE - JUpiter ICy moons Explorer - is the first large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. It will spend at least three years making detailed observations of Jupiter and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

In the next year, the ESA is planning to launch another six missions which revolve around Earth observation and dealing with climate change.