Ariane roaring into space, a spacecraft catching up with a comet, seeing how much ice at the north pole cap has melted, landing on one of Saturn’s moons, your chance to become an astronaut - that's what ESA means!

ESA stands for European Space Agency. A group of European countries decided in the 1960s that it would be better to explore space together than race to beat each other. In 1975 ESA was born. Since then more countries have joined.

There are now 15 Member States - Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Canada also has a special agreement with ESA and takes part in some programmes.

Our job is to learn as much as we can about our Universe and to make the very best peaceful use of all aspects of space exploration.

What do we do?

Looking up

We use satellites to explore the Universe:

• Giant observatories far up in space look at far-away stars and galaxies, and try to learn more about how our Universe began. They also study our own special Star, the Sun.
• Space probes travel far into the solar system to look at different planets, moons and comets. ESA's Huygens probe, on board Cassini, is even now on its way to Saturn's moon Titan.

Nearer to home satellites look down at our own Earth. You may be using them in everyday life without even noticing - when you watch the weather forecast, use the phone, travel on a ship or plane that navigates by satellite.

Earth observation satellites are used to help people: monitoring emergencies, keeping track of a flood, alerting coastguards to pollutants in the sea, detecting burning fires or assisting authorities in rebuilding after earthquakes, such as that in Turkey this August.

Third rock from the Sun

Looking down at our Earth from space, it is easy to see that, whatever country we are from, we all share this one small planet. Only by working together can we protect our planet and discover more about the Universe around it.

ESA also works together with other space agencies throughout the world. One recent example is the International Space Station in which NASA, Russia, Japan, Canada and ESA have joined forces to build the biggest space laboratory of all time. ESA's astronauts have already been busy, alongside their American and Russian colleagues, to prepare for this giant building project in the sky. European astronauts have also taken part in many Shuttle missions and have paid many visits to the Russian Mir space station.

In these laboratories, where things float around because there is almost no gravity, space scientists can perform special experiments - perhaps to find new metals or medicines, or to learn what happens in human bodies and other earthly life forms in zero gravity.

So you're a rocket scientist …?

Astronauts and scientists make the news most often. But the men and women who work at ESA have every kind of job: astronomers, engineers, designers, mathematicians, meteorologists, accountants, administrators, computer experts, doctors, editors and translators - from all 16 countries.

With so many different nationalities we've settled on English and French as our working languages, but in ESA offices you will hear Dutch, Danish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and more.

Where are we?

ESA has offices, research centres, training centres, satellite testing facilities and control centres all over Europe. These are just some of them:

• France: the headquarters of ESA in Paris

• the Netherlands: ESTEC, the research and technology centre is by the sea at Noordwijk. There's a Space Museum right outside the gates.

• Germany: mission control is from ESOC, the spacecraft control centre in Darmstadt. The European astronaut's training centre is also in Germany, near Cologne.

• Italy: at Frascati, near Rome, is an information centre, much of the data from satellites, including that from Envisat, comes here for scientists to work on.

• Spain: a satellite tracking station and scientific data centre, at Villafranca near Madrid.