| THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY (ESA) | ||
To understand how the ESA developed, it helps to look back at the history of Europe. Europe is a patchwork of relatively small countries. In the latter part of the 20th Century, even before politicians moved towards economic union, scientists in Western Europe realized that expensive facilities needed for cutting-edge research were beyond the science budgets of individual nations. The first "big science" collaboration was for particle physics in Geneva (CERN, 1953). The second was the European Space Research Organization (ESRO, 1962) headquartered in Paris–the precursors of the European Space Agency. |
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