Since time immemorial, man’s natural instinct for discovery has pushed us to explore other continents and worlds to give us a better understanding of the Earth and our place in the Universe.
Over the past five decades, 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; discovering water-ice under the surface of Mars, and probing our Sun as never before and imaging the farthest galaxies.
The European Space Agency, ESA, is now looking ahead to the next twenty years with the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. This will be a starting point for crucial studies in space science to discover if other worlds exist and how we evolved from the Big Bang to now. 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:
The conditions for planetary formation and the emergence of life
How the Solar System works
The fundamental laws of physics governing the Universe
The origins of the universe and what it is made of.
