Celebrating the European Space Agency: A select history

Europe was active in space long before the European Space Agency (ESA) came to be. The first European spacecraft to go beyond near-Earth space was HEOS-1 (the Highly Eccentric Orbit Satellite). Launched on December 5, 1968, its assignment was to study Earth's magnetic fields and the cosmic rays and solar wind emitted from the sun.

After the milestone launch of HEOS, the establishment of ESA in 1975 meant its first dedicated project was COS-B, operating from 1975-1982. Its name stands for Cosmic Ray Satellite B. COS-B was used to map gamma rays in the Milky Way Galaxy for the first time. Scientists can use gamma rays to determine the elements on other planets.

ESA's flagship rocket is the Ariane series. Since its first launch in 1979 from Europe's launch site in French Guiana, in South America, ESA has used these rockets to put satellites and probes into space. In 2024, ESA launched its Ariane 6 rocket for the first time.

Halley's Comet returns to our solar system once every 75–76 years. In 1986, a European probe was there to capture the action. Called Giotto, the probe was ESA's first deep space mission. It sent back more than 2,000 images of the cosmic visitor.

In 1990, ESA launched its Ulysses spacecraft to study the sun — the polar regions of the sun, its magnetic field and solar wind. It was one of many missions for which ESA has collaborated with its North American counterpart, NASA.

That same year, 1990, ESA-NASA launched a second collaborative project. They sent the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit to capture thousands of images of our solar system (and beyond). These included some of the most detailed images of other planets in our solar system, images which revolutionized space research.

In 2001, Claudie Haignere became the first European woman to reach space. The neuroscientist was a member of the Cologne-based European Astronaut Corps and was assigned to a Russian mission called Andromede. During her eight days aboard the International Space Station, Haignere performed research for the French national space agency, CNES.

The Rosetta mission is one of ESA's grand achievements. Its tandem landing vehicle Philae set down on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.

The Copernicus satellite family are some of the most advanced climate monitoring services in Earth orbit. These satellites, known as Sentinels, feed data back to the world's best atmospheric and climate scientists to help them understand and address the effects of our changing world. The Sentinel family is being expanded with new projects, such as FLEX that will measure plant fluorescence.

Gaia was a decadelong mission that launched in 2014 to observe 2 billion stars in the Milky Way and create a 3D map of our galaxy.

BepiColombo, with its planetary orbiter, is on its way to Mercury — the first planet in our solar system, from the sun. It is due to arrive in November 2026 and will be the most complex mission to have ever monitored Mercury.

The James Webb Space Telescope is one of the most important initiatives developed by the world's leading space agencies. It is a collaboration between ESA, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. It was launched into space on an Ariane 5 rocket in 2021 and has since produced the most detailed images of our solar system and galaxy ever.

Euclid's job is to work as a photographic time machine. Launched in 2023, it will eventually map billions of galaxies, some 10 billion light years away, in order to create a detailed map of the universe and the role that dark matter and dark energy play in it — those being two elements that scientists have yet to fully understand.