The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 22-member intergovernmental body devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975. Its 2024 annual budget was €7.8 billion.
The Guiana Space Centre, also called Europe's Spaceport, is a spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana, a overseas region of France in South America. Kourou is located approximately 500 kilometres north of the equator at a latitude of 5°. In operation since 1968, it is a suitable location for a spaceport because of its near equatorial location and open sea to the east and north.
A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to launch instruments from 48 to 145 km above the surface of the Earth, the altitude generally between weather balloons and satellites; the maximum altitude for balloons is about 40 km and the minimum for satellites is approximately 121 km. Certain sounding rockets have an apogee between 1,000 and 1,500 km, such as the Black Brant X and XII, which is the maximum apogee of their class. Sounding rockets often use military surplus rocket motors. NASA routinely flies the Terrier Mk 70 boosted Improved Orion, lifting 270–450-kg (600–1,000-pound) payloads into the exoatmospheric region between 97 and 201 km.
CNES is the French national space agency. Headquartered in central Paris, the agency comes under the supervision of the ministries of the Armed Forces, Economy and Finance and Higher Education, Research and Innovation.
The British National Space Centre (BNSC) was an agency of the Government of the United Kingdom, organised in 1985, that coordinated civil space activities for the United Kingdom. It was replaced on 1 April 2010 by the UK Space Agency.
Esrange Space Center is a rocket range and research centre located about 40 kilometers east of the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high-altitude balloons, investigation of the aurora borealis, sounding rocket launches, and satellite tracking, among other things. Located 200 km north of the Arctic Circle and surrounded by a vast wilderness, its geographic location is ideal for many of these purposes.
The Italian Space Agency is a government agency established in 1988 to fund, regulate and coordinate space exploration activities in Italy. The agency cooperates with numerous national and international entities who are active in aerospace research and technology.
Pegasus is an air-launched multistage rocket developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) and later built and launched by Northrop Grumman. Pegasus is the world's first privately developed orbital launch vehicle. Capable of carrying small payloads of up to 443 kg (977 lb) into low Earth orbit, Pegasus first flew in 1990 and remained active as of 2021. The vehicle consists of three solid propellant stages and an optional monopropellant fourth stage. Pegasus is released from its carrier aircraft at approximately 12,000 m (39,000 ft) using a first stage wing and a tail to provide lift and altitude control while in the atmosphere. The first stage does not have a thrust vector control (TVC) system.
A mission control center is a facility that manages space flights, usually from the point of launch until landing or the end of the mission. It is part of the ground segment of spacecraft operations. A staff of flight controllers and other support personnel monitor all aspects of the mission using telemetry, and send commands to the vehicle using ground stations. Personnel supporting the mission from an MCC can include representatives of the attitude control system, power, propulsion, thermal, attitude dynamics, orbital operations and other subsystem disciplines. The training for these missions usually falls under the responsibility of the flight controllers, typically including extensive rehearsals in the MCC.
GIOVE, or Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element, is the name for two satellites built for the European Space Agency (ESA) to test technology in orbit for the Galileo positioning system.
Inmarsat is a British satellite telecommunications company, offering global mobile services. It provides telephone and data services to users worldwide, via portable or mobile terminals which communicate with ground stations through fifteen geostationary telecommunications satellites.
European Space Camp (ESC) is a summer camp for youths aged 17–20, which focuses on giving a hands-on experience into the field of aerospace engineering and space sciences. Participants from all over Europe and the world stay at the Andøya Space Center in Northern Norway for one week, learning from professionals and becoming amateur rocket scientists. Ultimately the goal of the camp is to launch a student sounding rocket, capable of carrying several sensors and reaching a height of 10 000m and Mach 3. Participants are divided into groups ordered with respect to their interests and work together as a team for the week-long project of launching a student rocket. The students are involved in every aspect of the rocket campaign, ranging from internal circuitry and scientific case work to creating the payload of weather balloons for monitoring wind conditions prior to launch. Through the European Space Camp experience the young people are motivated to redirect their studies or renew their interest in the direction of science and technology.
Andøya Space, also named Andøya Space Center and formerly Andøya Rocket Range, is a rocket launch site, rocket range, and spaceport on Andøya island in Andøy Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. Since 1962, over 1,200 sounding and sub-orbital rockets of various configurations have been launched from the site.
Svalbard Satellite Station or SvalSat is a satellite ground station located on Platåberget near Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Opened in 1997, it is operated by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a joint venture between Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC). SvalSat and KSAT's Troll Satellite Station (TrollSat) in Antarctica are the only ground stations that can see a low altitude polar orbiting satellite on every revolution as the Earth rotates. As of 2021, the facility consists of 100 multi-mission and customer-dedicated antennas which operate in the C, L, S, X and K bands. The station provides ground services to more satellites than any other facility in the world.
Tromsø Satellite Station, until 1988 known as Tromsø Telemetry Station, is a satellite earth station located in Tromsø, Norway. The facility is owned by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a joint venture between the Kongsberg Group and the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC). In addition to hosting its own antennas serving thirty satellites, TSS acts as the center-point of KSAT's operations and provides backbone services for the high Arctic Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat) and the Antarctic Troll Satellite Station (TrollSat).
Soyuz at the Guiana Space Centre was a European Space Agency (ESA) programme that operated Soyuz-2 launch vehicles at the Guiana Space Centre (CSG). It provided Arianespace with a medium-lift launch vehicle alongside the light-lift Vega and heavy-lift Ariane 5. The rocket was marketed by Starsem a joint venture of ArianeGroup, Arianespace, Progress Rocket Space Centre and Roscosmos.
The European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) is a space agency, managing the European Union Space Programme as one of the agencies of the European Union (EU). It was initially created as the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Supervisory Authority (GSA) in 2004, reorganised into the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency in 2010, and established in its current form on May 12, 2021. EUSPA is a separate entity from the European Space Agency (ESA), although the two entities work together closely.
Spaceflight in 2025 promises to follow the 2020s trend of record breaking orbital launches and increased developments in lunar, Mars and low-earth orbit exploration.
Cygnus NG-15, previously known as OA-15, was the fifteenth launch of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its fourteenth flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. The mission launched on 20 February 2021 at 17:36:50 UTC. This is the fourth launch of Cygnus under the CRS-2 contract.
