European Space Agency (ESA)
- ESA is an intergovernmental organisation established in 1975 and is composed today of 22 Member States. Belgium is a founding member of ESA and has strongly supported its programmes ever since. BELSPO is in charge of the representation of Belgium in ESA (Belgian Delegation).
- The Science Programme is a mandatory Programme of ESA which studies the so-called 'Space Sciences' by means of satellites from space. Three separate fields can be distinguished: our Solar System, astrophysics, and fundamental physics.
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- The ESA Exploration Programme targets four destinations, essentially in the framework of large international collaborations: Low Earth Orbit (LEO, including the International Space Station), Beyond LEO, Moon and Mars.
- The Space Safety Programme develops services aiming at warning and protecting users against a number of threats that originate from the space environment. This includes as well the development of an observational capacity and of applications that underpin those services.
- Future EO • Earth Watch • Copernicus Space component • Meteorological programmes
- ARTES (Advanced Research in Telecommunications) • CSS (Civil Security from Space) • ESA Sec Con (ESA Contribution to EU Secure Connectivity Programme IRIS²) • Moonlight
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- ESA's Navigation programmes have been contributing to the development of the Galileo satellite positioning Programme of the European Commission for more than 20 years.
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- Access to space has been a major European concern since the 1960s, mainly characterized by the 'Ariane' success story. Belgium has been involved from the start and the know-how of the Belgian industry is present on the 3 launchers operated today from Kourou: Ariane, Soyuz and Vega.
- The PROgramme for the Development of scientific EXperiments aims at providing funding for the development of scientific instruments and experiments.
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- The General Support Technology Programme covers the development of space technologies for all domains, except for telecommunications.
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- To support Space-to-Earth applications, Belgium mainly uses some specific ESA programmes: BASS, Future EO, NAVISP, INCUBED...
- The European space Security and Education Centre is an official ESA site on the Belgian territory. ESEC has concentrated all its operational and cyber security activities in Redu, while its educational activities take place in the Galaxia centre in nearby Transinne.
