What is the full form of ESA

ESA: European Space Agency

ESA stands for European Space Agency. It is a European space and space-technology research organization established in 1975 from the merger of the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) and the European Space Research Organization (ESRO). It has 22 member states and is headquartered in Paris. It also has centers in several European countries.

It aims to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space programmes deliver benefits to the European citizens and the world. It is also a coordinating entity for European civilian space activities and a major contributor to the international space station.

Furthermore, it has various satellite programs designed to explore Earth as well as other planets. Some of its important missions are Mars Express which is orbiting the Red Planet and Rosetta which is a space probe that arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.

Origin:

Europe felt the need for a space agency after the World War II. Eventually, in 1958, two famous European scientists Pierre Auger and Edoardo Amaldi suggested to unite the European governments and set up an organization similar to CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

By 1964, the countries were creating the foundation for the European Launch Development Organization to work on launchers and for the European Space Research Organization to make spacecraft. After around ten years, in 1975, the European Space Agency came into existence through a merger of ELDO and ESRO and the initiatives of its 10 founding member countries. Its first satellite mission was Cos-B that was designed to look at gamma rays in the space.

ESA has a council which is its governing body and provides the basic guidelines within which ESA develops the European space programmes. ESA is headed by a Director General who is elected by the council for a term of four years. As of July 2018, Jan Woerner is the Director General of ESA.