As Director General of the European Space Agency, together with our Archives team, I am delighted to welcome you to this site and to take advantage of the free and public release of the digital content of the ESA Historical Archives, brought together for the first time
The digitisation of another year of our historical picture collections has just been completed and pictures from 1978 are now open in the ESA Archives’ SHIP database. For this year, we take a slightly different perspective from usual as we reflect on failure - looking back at the loss of ESA’s OTS-1 satellite and focusing on the story of the OTS debris that was recovered after the launch failure and documented in 1978.
Across much of Europe and the globe, 1 May is a public holiday, celebrated as Labour Day, International Workers’ Day or May Day and commemorating the struggles and achievements of the labour movement and workers in general. Accordingly, this month’s object is a staff register for ELDO, which very appropriately seems to have been compiled on 1 May 1964!
Earlier this month we marked the International Day for Monuments and Sites, held on 18 April, with a satellite image of the landscape surrounding the World Heritage site of Toledo for our Object of the Month. Today we continue our programme of openings and celebrate Earth Day, held each year on 22 April, with the full collection of ERS satellite images from which it was taken.
This collection of satellite images was transferred to the European Centre for Space Records from the Earthnet Office and from the personal collection of Maurizio Fea, who held positions in various Earth observation roles throughout his career at ESA. These included responsibility for the development of the ground infrastructure for data management of ERS-1 and, as Head of the Training and Promotion Section of the Earth Observation Applications Department, for applications and training on the use of satellite data for Earth observation.
18 April is the International Day for Monuments and Sites, an annual event, established by ICOMOS in 1982, and an opportunity for heritage enthusiasts and organisations worldwide to come together and celebrate the importance of cultural heritage.
