COSMIC VISION

Over the past thirty years, Europe has made history in the scientific exploration of the Solar System and the Universe: from a close encounter with Comet Halley in 1986, to parachuting a probe onto Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005 and finding water-ice under the surface of Mars. ESA missions are studying Venus and our Sun as never before and are providing us with images of distant galaxies.

The European Space Agency, ESA, is now looking ahead to the next twenty years with the Cosmic Vision programme. European scientists are working today to develop innovative missions to face the scientific, intellectual and technological challenges of tomorrow.

At the core of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme lie several fundamental themes:

- How does the Solar System work?

- What are the conditions for life and planets to form?

- What are the fundamental physical laws of the Universe?

- How did the Universe originate and what is it made of?