|
|
History of Europe in space 
1958 Pierre Auger (F) and Edoardo Amaldi (I), two prominent members of the Western European scientific community, recommend that European governments set up a ‘purely scientific’ joint organisation for space research taking CERN as a model.
1960
Scientists from ten European countries, the ‘Groupe d'etudes europeen pour la Collaboration dans le domaine des recherches spatiales’ (GEERS), with Harrie Massey (UK) as President and Auger as Secretary, set up a commission at which government representatives would decide on possibilities of European cooperation in space.
1964 European nations decide to have two different agencies, one to develop a launch system, the European Launch Development Organisation (ELDO) and the other, the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), to develop spacecraft. 1966 ESRIN set up as part of ESRO in Frascati, near Rome, Italy, and begins acquiring data from environmental satellites in the 1970s. ESRIN, now known as the ESA Centre for Earth Observation, is one of the five ESA specialised centres situated in Europe. 1967 European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) set up in Darmstadt, Germany. It has now operated more than 50 satellites in 40 years of history.
1968
After an initial period in Delft, ESTEC moves to its present site in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in April 1968. ESRO-2B, intended to study cosmic rays and solar X-rays, is the first successful satellite launch by ESRO.
1973
ESRO and NASA agree to build Spacelab, a modular science package for use on Space Shuttle flights. Construction starts in 1974 and the first module was given to NASA in exchange for flight opportunities for European astronauts. Spacelab was used on 25 shuttle flights between 1983 and 1998.
1978
Canada becomes a Cooperating State. ESA joins NASA and the UK in launching IUE, the world’s first high-orbit telescope, which operates very successfully for 18 years.
1980 A French company, Arianespace, is formed to produce, operate and market the Ariane 5 rocket as part of ESA’s Ariane programme. As the successor of ELDO, ESA had begun to build rockets for unmanned scientific and commercial payloads. Ariane takes mostly commercial payloads into orbit from 1984 onward. A more advanced launch system, Ariane 4, operates between 1988 and 2003 and establishes ESA as the world leader in commercial space launches in the 1990s.
1983
Ulf Merbold from Germany becomes first ESA astronaut to fly on US Space Shuttle, during STS-9 Spacelab mission.
1990s SOHO, Ulysses and the Hubble Space Telescope all jointly carried out with NASA. Recent scientific missions in cooperation with NASA include Cassini-Huygens, to which ESA contributes the successful Huygens probe.
1997
The first flight of Ariane-5 ends in failure, but later flights establish Ariane in the highly competitive commercial space launch market, with 25 successful launches by 2006.
2005
The ESA Huygens probe lands on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon - the first ever to land on a world in the outer Solar System.
2008 ESA's Columbus laboratory is launched on Space Shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station (ISS). ESA now becomes a fully responsible partner in the operations and utilisation of the ISS and is thus entitled to fly its own astronauts for long-duration missions as members of the resident ISS crew. ATV Jules Verne, ESA's first Automated Transfer Vehicle, is also launched to take vital supplies to the ISS. The Czech Republic formally becomes ESA's 18th Member State on 12 November 2008.
Last update: 24 June 2010
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
