Much of the focus for the celebrations for fifty years of ESA will be on 30 May 1975, the date on which the ESA Convention was signed and the day before ESRO (the European Space Research Organisation) officially became ESA. This month’s object, however, shows how this was as much a process as a rupture. 

It takes us further back in time, by just over a year, to the tenth German Aeronautical and Space Exhibition, held in Hanover from 27 April to 5 May 1974. The photo captures the stand presented to the public as both ESA (in large lettering) and ESRO (in small letters underneath). 

This ‘double identity’ neatly resolved the difficulties posed by uncertainty over the date when ESA would come into being and of who the stand would be representing. At the outset of planning for the exhibition, the intended date was 1 April 1974, but protracted negotiations resulted in delays and this eventually slipped to May 1975. Consequently, as the 1974 ESRO Annual Report noted, “we had an ESA stand and ESA posters and brochures before the new Agency in fact existed”.

It appears that the ESA logo was also in a process of transition at this time. The stand and the poster visible on the far left use the same style as the ESRO logo, whereas the panels hung in a display of satellite models at the same show adopted the more familiar ESA lettering still used in our logo today. (See the panels in SHIP). 

The event also acted as the forum where ESRO presented Spacelab – Europe’s reusable space laboratory - to the international press and public for the first time. Exhibits included two full-scale models built by the teams from ERNO and MBB who were competing for the design and development contract, one of which can be seen on the right. 

This work on the development of Spacelab, and on ESRO’s other programmes, was subsequently taken over by ESA, encapsulating the continuity that was maintained throughout this period of transformation.
 

While at first glance this might seem like a routine piece of committee paperwork, this month’s object represents the end of an era and one of the last steps on what we have dubbed ‘the road to 1975’ and the creation of ESA.

Fifty years ago today, the final session of the European Space Conference – tasked with the implementation of a common European space policy and the establishment of a single European space organisation – took place in Brussels. The meeting examined and adopted the text of the Convention for this new ‘European Space Agency’, which it had authored through its Committee of Alternates. This resolution was released in French three days later, with an accompanying English translation, as formal confirmation of the outcome. 

Following on from the preamble, the main part of the resolution is made up of four elements that are each introduced with a different verb. It outlines that the Conference:

• expresses appreciation to the Committee of Alternates for its work;
• confirms that the texts presented corresponded to the aims of its 1972 Resolution on the setting up ESA;
• considers that the text are final and;
• invites the President to submit them to the French government with a view to convening the Conference of Plenipotentiaries by the end of May 1975.

On the one hand, the resolution is concerned with the past. It is the crowning achievement of the ESC - the ultimate demonstration that it had honourably discharged its responsibilities and could now be wound up. And it also signals the end of the era of ELDO and ESRO, the first two European space organisations, who were brought together at this point.

On the other, it looks forward to the Conference of Plenipotentiaries as the very last marker on the road. It was at this meeting on 30 May 1975, with the signature of the Convention, that ESA became a reality.

Space agencies rarely operate alone – a vital part of their work is done in collaboration with industry. This month’s object takes us back to the 1960s and to a box of papers in the collections of the European Centre for Space Records, entitled ‘Contrats ESRO depuis l'origine (fev. 64) à 1969’.

It contains a list, with columns spread across four horizontally aligned sheets of paper, of ESRO contracts with industrial partners, from the start of its operations until 1969. The title is, in fact, slightly misleading, as the first page, which you can see here, shows the very first 11 of these contracts, which date back to 1963 and form the entire group of contracts awarded in that year. The list goes on to cover each subsequent year up to 1969, with the contracts for each year numbered from 1 for the first. As a whole, it is made up of 108 sheets, representing a list 27 pages long.

The main information recorded includes the contract description, main contractor name and country, and in the run on sheets, the value of the contract in French Francs, financial plan, and percentage breakdown of the contract assignments between the countries listed (ESRO member states, the USA and ‘other’). In the event, all the 1963 contracts remained at 100% for the main contractor country.

As an example, the first three contacts were awarded for contractors in the UK (Ministry of Aviation), West Germany (DVL, the German Aeropspace Centre) and France (CNES, the French national space agency) for work on the TD-1 and LAS astronomical satellites. The contracts that follow were distributed between Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Two holes, made by a hole puncher, can be seen on the left, so we can assume that the list was originally kept in a ring binder. The four sheets for the 1963 entries were each made up of two different sheets of paper stuck together, presumably since the sheets are wider than standard A4 paper. The sticky tape is visible here as a yellow line. By 1964, a template form had been produced on a slightly different and heavier grade of paper.

At this time, the ESRO Contracts Service was headed by George Van Reeth, who would go on to work for ELDO as its Administrative Director and become ESA Director of Administration in 1975. Find out more about Van Reeth’s career in space and his legacy in the ESA contract regulations in our next news, coming soon!

This month’s object is a relic from the days before word processing! It is a handwritten table showing the end result of the planning process for meetings of ESA Council and its subordinate bodies for 1976.

Created in French, the left columns lists the months of the year, with the names (or, for the majority, acronyms) of the different bodies running along the top. ESA Council - Conseil - can be seen in roughly the middle, between FSLP SPAG (for First Spacelab Payload / Space Payload Advisory Group) and STAG (Scientific and Technical Advisory Group). While some of these acronyms will be familiar to ESA colleagues today (such as AFC for the Administrative and Finance Committee, which continues to operate), others are more difficult to work out, such as the four entries on the far right. They appear to read: w.g. réseau Sol; Ad hoc grande (?) Marot; gr. tr. res. Conseil; and w.g. S. T. From what we can reconstruct, the first was an Ad Hoc Working Group of Council on Ground Support for Geostationary Satellites. The third was likely a Council working group on a resolution on the 1976 budget correcting the effects of inflation and exchange rate variations.

The dates for the relevant meetings have been entered in the body of the table, with a running total of meeting days for each committee recorded along the bottom and for each month on the right.

The calendar was recently discovered in the ECSR and caught our eye as a nice example of day-to-day work in the early days of ESA and as reminder of how things were done before computers revolutionised office life. Sadly, we have no idea who its creator was, most likely a member of administrative staff of the Director General’s Cabinet, who still retain responsibility for establishing and approving the calendar for such meetings. Work usually begins in January on the calendar for the following year, which will be published in March and then updated if needed at each Council meeting. Meetings of Council are listed first and the process of drawing up the calendar starts with these dates. The calendars now include both the location and format of meeting, since there is now a mix of in-person, virtual or hybrid sessions.

To make a comparison, you can download current and recent calendars from the ESA website. 

In 2025 ESA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the signing of its Convention. The Convention opened for signature at the end of the Conference of Plenipotentiaries that took place on 30 May 1975, ushering in the creation of the new European Space Agency, which began operations the next day.

Over the years, wording taken from the Convention has been used on a variety of merchandise and gifts, including this glass paperweight, which features an excerpt from Article II, entitled purpose:

“The purpose of the Agency shall be to provide for and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications systems”.

This text will be familiar to many ESA colleagues and partners, enshrining in ESA’s founding document the principles of peaceful objectives and European collaboration which have underpinned its first 50 years and which will continue to inspire our endeavours as we embark on our second half century.

However, the object itself, and its journey to the ESA Archives, is something of a mystery! From the style and design, we think that it dates back to the early 2000s and that it could have been produced at ESA Headquarters in Paris for a meeting of Council at Ministerial Level. But we have no concrete information on who commissioned it and for what purpose. Anyone who can help us fill in the gaps, can write to us at Archive.Services@esa.int – we would love to hear from you!

Our story of ESRO’s Directors General concludes this month, following up on a reference in November to Alexander Hocker as Chairman of the ESRO Council from 1965-1967. Hocker’s association with ESRO did not end with this conclusion of this term: on Bondi’s return to the UK in late 1971 as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence, it was Hocker who was appointed to replace him as Director General.

Equally, Hocker had been involved in the efforts to create ESRO long before 1965. His legal background, senior positions in the German civil service and in scientific research and administration, and time as German delegate to CERN in the 1950s gave him experience to draw on as Chairman of the Legal, Administrative and Financial Working Group of COPERS from 1961 to 1964. On its creation in 1964, he became Vice-chairman of ESRO’s first Council for a year, prior to assuming the Chairmanship in 1965.

As DG from February 1971 to June 1974, Hocker oversaw both the ten-year anniversary of ESRO and the start of its metamorphosis into ESA. He guided ESRO through key milestones including the adoption of the first Package Deal reorienting its activities in 1971, the revision of the ESRO Convention (becoming the ESA Convention in 1975) and the European Space Conferences of 1972 and 1973 which approved the Ariane, Spacelab and Marots programmes and led to the merger of ESRO and ELDO to create ESA. A point which is a fitting conclusion to this series and from where we look forward to ESA’s 50th anniversary next year!

Alongside this exists the story of the physical object itself. Portrait photographs of ESRO and ELDO (and later ESA) Directors General and Chairmen of Council were usually made for display in a dedicated area at Paris headquarters. This framed print was donated to the Archives in the 1990s as we believe that it had been made in format that was no longer being used.

The frame itself contains a plaque with the dates of his terms as both Chairman of ESRO Council and Director General. According to the register kept by the ESRO photographers, the negative of this print dates back to 1969 and therefore to the interim between them. Interestingly, there are marks on both the original negative and this print, but in different places (and with fewer marks on the negative, which you can see in the SHIP database searching for ESTEC-PHOTO-1969.05.571). We can therefore assume that the marks were not originally present on the negative, and that both sets of marks are probably the result of degradation of the chemicals used in the film and photographic paper. Compared to the negative, there is an appreciable fading of the colours in the print, probably owing to the lighting conditions where it was displayed.

Read more about Hocker in the Space Glossary and ESA’s biography.

This month, we pick up where we left off in October, with the retirement of Professor Pierre Auger as ESRO’s first Director General in October 1967. On 27 July 1967, the ESRO Council had elected the UK’s candidate Professor Hermann Bondi as his successor and Bondi took up the position on 1 November.

Bondi was an Anglo-Austrian mathematician and astronomer, who enjoyed long associations with Cambridge University and King’s College London during his academic career, leaving a legacy of important contributions to the theory of general relativity. His lesser-known mandate as ESRO Director General covered the period from 1967 to 1971.

This foreword was published in the ESRO Bulletin in December 1967, the first pages of which dealt with the handover from Auger to Bondi, with an introductory report from the Chairman of Council Alexander Hocker, and biographies of both Auger and Bondi. Bondi himself sounds an optimistic note for the future of ESRO in his text, highlighting the start of its operational phase’ with the 1968 programme of satellite launches as the realisation of the years of preparation. He also touches on some of the debates taking place within the European space and scientific community, particularly on the shift in mission emphasis from science to applications. Again, his positive outlook and approach was to seek ways to bolster ESRO’s scientific programme through common interests in electronics and applied research, promoting a “fruitful coexistence of scientific and application programmes”.

In the event, and although he inherited the lead of a newly streamlined organisation (a ‘house in good order’), ESRO lurched from teething problems to ‘mid-life crisis’ during these years, leaving Bondi the challenge of restoring confidence in the organisation, both internally and outside it. His success in securing ongoing financial resources and averting the threat of the breakup of ESRO into national research programmes were major achievements. As the obituary published by ESA in 2005 on Bondi’s passing credits, “It is largely thanks to his determined guidance that the organisation survived to evolve into ESA”.

See Bondi’s entry in the Space Glossary and ESA’s obituary for Professor Sir Hermann Bondi.

As we come to the close of the 60-year anniversary of the creation of ESA’s predecessors ELDO and ESRO in 2024, we will be looking at some of the instrumental figures behind Europe’s first space organisations, in particular, at ESRO’s three Directors General.

We start today with Pierre Auger, eminent French physicist, who became the first Director General of ESRO on the entry into force of its convention in March 1964. Already a veteran promotor of European cooperation in scientific research (including the post-war creation of CERN), his path to this position can be traced back to a 1960 meeting of European scientists which Auger hosted in his Paris home. This set in motion the formation of GEERS, a study group for European space science, and later COPERS, the preparatory commission for the establishment of ELDO and ESRO, of which he was Executive Secretary.

This image takes us to the other side of his mandate, spanning the turbulent initial years of ESRO with all the associated teething problems of bringing an entirely new organisation into being and managing the often-competing demands and expectations of its Member States. (His legacy includes the extensive administrative reforms planned to resolve these tensions, agreed under his directorship, but implemented in subsequent years.)

It shows Auger at the farewell symposium organised in his honour, and shortly after his retirement on 31 October 1967, held on 28 November at the Centre de Conférences Internationales, Avenue Kléber, Paris. We know that an introductory address was given at the event by Reimar Lüst (who drew up ESRO’s Scientific Programme and would go on to become ESA’s third Director General). This was followed by speeches outlining the achievements of Auger’s career by professors including Nobel-winning physicist Alfred Kastler, and CERN physicist Lew Kowarski. However, we are not sure of the identities of the staff members pictured with Auger here.

Compared to his successors, the ECSR holds few photographs of Auger during his tenure as DG, making this set of images very rare. It was generously donated to the Archives as a set of printed contact sheets by former COPERS and ESRO staff member Fede Fully, who was present at the event and captured in some of the pictures. According to the records, she was just the third member of staff appointed to COPERS in 1961, and by 1963 was Assistant to the Head of Personnel. We are unsure who the photographer was, but it seems likely that it was a member of ESRO staff rather than one of the dedicated ESRO photographers, who would have generally provided negatives along with contact sheets.

You can read more about Auger in our space glossary and consult a full biography here.

Recently returned home after the summer holidays? If you were travelling within the EU then your baggage and effects will not have been subject to customs checks. But it was very different back in the 1970s – a world which we delve into with this sticker!

Over 50 years ago, and in the pre-digital age, ESA’s predecessor ESRO needed protocols and procedures to help its staff negotiate borders when travelling or when transporting material around Europe. This was the responsibility of its Division for Legal, Contractual and International Affairs, who produced a manual, published in December 1971 outlining the arrangements that had been agreed, consisting of a lever arch binder with separators dividing the information according to country. The section for each country dealt with the movement of both staff and material, outlined the procedures for importation and exportation and included any relevant annexes, such as official letters, forms or certification. A French-language copy of this manual forms part of the holdings of the ECSR, we are unsure whether there was also an English-language counterpart.

This bilingual sticker was intended to be attached to shipments of papers, and confirms the exemption of official ESRO documentation from customs charges and restrictions, in line with the privileges and immunities that ESRO enjoyed.

Of course, this all changed with widening European integration in the 1980s and 1990s, and in particular the 1985 and 1990 Schengen Agreements (implemented in 1995) and 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, which respectively abolished checks at common borders and established the freedom of movement and residence as one of the cornerstones of EU citizenship. All of which allowing the research and activity that ESA conducts today to be truly without borders!

It’s already July and summer holidays are on the horizon. If you are looking for ways to keep your children busy during the long summer break, help is at hand! This month’s object is a template to use to cut out and assemble a model of the LMS configuration of Spacelab.

Spacelab was an integral part of NASA’s Space Shuttle Programme, funded, designed and built by ESRO and subsequently ESA as a modular, general-purpose laboratory. It flew 22 missions between 1983 and 1998, making important contributions to astronomy, life sciences, atmospheric physics, Earth observation and materials science.

This configuration of Spacelab belongs to its Life & Microgravity Sciences (LMS) mission. Space Shuttle Columbia carried the Spacelab module on flight STS-78 for the LMS mission, which took place over 17 days from 20 June to 7 July 1996 and carried out research into the effects of long-duration spaceflight on human physiology in preparation for flights on the International Space Station.

The complete template (of which you can see the cover page here) comes as a z-folded document, made up of six different ‘pages’ - three forming the front side and the other three as the back side. Each of these pages is roughly A4 size, with the whole template measuring 65cm (width) by 25cm (height). It includes full instructions for assembling and putting together the base/cradle and laboratory which form the two main elements of the model, with tips printed on the back side of each of the parts, which are all perforated. While this meant they were easy to pop out of the template, it now has the disadvantage of making the document very fragile. Perhaps the best part is the three tiny astronaut figures to attach, which measure no more than 4cm. Unfortunately, this makes it almost impossible to establish whether they are based on the real-life astronauts who took part in the Spacelab missions (even if we like to think this is the case)!

We are offering a free download of the template (for personal use only) from the SHIP database for any aspiring model builders, or to simply use as a poster:

Open the template directly, or search for ESA_SPACELAB_MODEL in SHIP (this series contains tif files of both the front and back sides, which can be downloaded as a double-sided pdf file).

Please refer to the instructions for downloading files from SHIP and note that you will need to create a double-sided print to make the model. We unfortunately cannot guarantee that the front and back views will align perfectly when printed as this will depend on your printer and print settings. For this reason, and for its large dimensions, we suggest that you ask your local copy shop for help. We advise you to print on thick paper or thin card, ideally between 130 and 200gsm, at ‘Actual Size’ or scale to 100%.

We would love to see photos of your finished model so do share them with us, either by email to Archive.Services@esa.int or on the ESA Space History Facebook or X pages!

Each year the international Fête de la Musique or Make Music Day is celebrated in more than 100 countries on 21 June. With the occasion, we are once again taking the opportunity to focus on music inspired by space, and more specifically, by ESA missions.

This handwritten score for a piece of music, entitled Konstellation, was discovered in the papers of Professor Massimo Trella, ESA Inspector General from 1984 to 1998, when they were ingested into the ESA Archives. The piece was composed by Prof. Dr Peter Brömse (1912-2004), German composer and author, who was Professor of Music Education at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen from 1966 to 1977, where he was deeply involved in new didactics of music and new concepts for teacher training.

Accompanying details are scant, but it seems that it was piece of music composed for an event at ESOC to mark the rendez-vous of the Giotto spacecraft with Comet Halley in March 1986. A covering letter by the composer that came with the score, dated 18 September 1989, refers to a performance by the ESOCTETT – we are guessing this was an ESOC ensemble. The letter seems to be in reply to a request from ESOC for a copy of the music, with a view to it being played by an organist.

Eight different parts can be seen in the score (for flute, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, violin, viola, cello and bass) making an arrangement for woodwind, brass and strings. But we have been unable to locate any recordings of this music, and we don’t have any suitably qualified musicians in our team, so we have to admit that we have no idea how this piece actually sounds!

Since the Fête de la Musique is all about encouraging people to play music or enjoy concerts in public, the ESA Archives would like to encourage anyone interested in bringing this music back to life. We would be happy to share the score with musicians interested in performing it – please contact us as Archive.Services@esa.int!

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!

ELDO, the European Launcher Development Organisation (or European Space Vehicle Launcher Development Organisation) was formally created 60 years ago in 1964 with the entry into force of its Convention on 29 February, following ratification by five of its Member States. Its purpose was to establish a satellite launch vehicle for Europe and it operated until the mid-1970s when it was merged with ESRO to form ESA in 1975.

The register was compiled in French and entitled ‘Liste des agents en function avant la ratification de l’ELDO au 1er Mai 1964’ and therefore should list staff members of ELDO in post prior to 29 February 1964, when its Convention entered into force. Confusingly, however, the list goes on to record staff with start dates running up to 1 May 1964, so its title remains slightly unclear.

There is a mixture of typewritten and handwritten information: the first two columns are typed and include the name and date of entry. The rest of the list contains handwritten information such as: availability of contract (available or not), type of renumeration (salary or allowance), professional category (official/civil service or employee), pension provider and a last category which is not easy to decipher: ‘Mise à la disposition du Groupe Priparat. (?) par’. We assume this is a reference to staff who were made available to work for the Preparatory Group which set up ELDO by their respective government or organisation, and who then continued to work for ELDO. (There are lots of handwritten corrections to this column - probably made at a later date since they are in a different hand - often changing ‘privé’ to CNES – the French National Space Agency.)

It is also interesting to note that the legibility of the handwriting seems to decline as the list goes on, which is why we have selected page one here!

From this list we can ascertain that at the start of ELDO’s life as an independent, intergovernmental European organisation, it numbered 130 staff, along with 3 Australian and 8 Italian staff, paid for by their respective governments, who are listed separately. From the list, the longest serving staff member at the time was Jacob De Hoog, with a joining date of 1.1.1962 and the most recently recruited was Françoise Moussard, on 27.4.1964.

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.

We are celebrating the day with a SAR multitemporal image captured by the ESA ERS-1 satellite in 1993 of the area around Toledo – a UNESCO World Heritage site.

SAR is the abbreviation for Synthetic Aperture Radar. It is a special radar technique that allows users to obtain high-resolution radar images from large distances, for example, from space. Multi-temporal images are combined imagery of multiple images of the same place or location taken at different points of time, in this case during the period from June to October 1993, which can help to identify changes   in a landscape.

Toledo is located in central Iberia, in a bend of the Tagus river (which can just about be seen in the image – trace a line straight up from the final backet around (Spain) in the title). It is home to the government and parliament of the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha, the region famed for the fictional ‘Man from La Mancha’ Don Quixote.

Throughout its history, Toledo has passed through many permutations: from being a Roman municipium to the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom, a fortress of the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba in Al-Andalus and as the seat of the court of Charles V - Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain - in the 16th century. Its historic centre has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1986, for its extensive monumental and cultural heritage. As UNESCO notes, “Toledo is the repository of more than 2000 years of history. Its masterpieces are the product of heterogeneous civilizations in an environment where the existence of three major religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – was a major factor’’. Accordingly, it is also known at the ‘City of the Three Cultures’.

In slightly more recent history, Toledo also has a space connection as host of the first ERS-1 Pilot Projects Workshop which was held 30 years ago in June 1994  , to discuss the various applications of ERS-1 data, with presentation of more than 100 projects covering a wide spectrum of operational applications (e.g. meteorology, ice forecasting and bathymetry).

Watch out for our next collection opening, coming very soon, for more ERS-1 images and to explore the ways that space data can be leveraged for the protection of cultural heritage.

Continuing our exploration of the ESRO years, prior to the creation of ESA in 1975, this month’s object comes from the collection of ESRO Staff Member cards held in the European Centre for Space Records.

These cards confirmed that an individual was employed by the European Space Research Organisation and entitled them to the privileges and immunities granted to staff members of ESRO as an intergovernmental organisation. They were probably used much as staff badges are used within ESA as identification today.

This particular card was issued to Georges Kenedi, but it does not include his job title. From the ESRO staff records in the ECSR, we believe that he was appointed in 1967 as Secretary to Council, a position that in the early 1970s became Head of the Director General’s Cabinet (and that continues in ESA today). Since the ESA Archives at the ECSR are part of today’s Director General’s Cabinet, we can also consider M. Kenedi as one of our former managers.

An interesting side-note is the address listed at the top of the card for ESRO headquarters. ESRO began life in rented headquarters at 36, rue La Pérouse, in the 16th arrondissement, as per the header on the card. However, it later moved to 114 Avenue de Neuilly in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the location noted here as his duty station. (To confuse matters even further, Avenue Neuilly was renamed as Avenue Charles de Gaulle in 1971, in the aftermath of de Gaulle’s death in November 1970.)

Since the date of issue on the reverse of the card is 24 May 1968, we can safely assume that the move to Neuilly took place before then, a fact confirmed in ESRO reports and documentation which give a date for the move as November 1967.

As for the use of these two different addresses on the same card, it seems likely that a decision was made to use up the stock of cards with the old address, before putting in an order for new ones!

Staying with the theme of anniversaries, the story behind this month’s objects, despite appearances, actually begins in 2014!

And in another change from usual, it’s about recreating the past rather than preserving material from it.

Let’s begin with the anniversary: back in 2014, planning was underway across ESA establishments for the series of events celebrating fifty years of European cooperation in space. (That is, 50 years since the creation of ELDO - the European Launcher Development Organisation, and ESRO - the European Space Research Organisation, the first European space organisations and ESA’s predecessors, in 1964.) But in ESRIN the immortal words ‘we have a problem’ were uttered (although for an admittedly less major crisis than Apollo 13). The issue? The ESA flag and the flags of its Member States were to be hung in the room at ESRIN that would host the formal celebrations, but it came to light that ESA was not in possession of an original ELDO or ESRO flag. We know that both organisations had produced flags, since we can see them in some of the historical photos in our collections, but they had clearly been lost somewhere along the way.

And that is where the ESA Archives became involved. Using the logos and images held in the European Centre for Space Records a new set of flags was quickly commissioned, and took pride of place in the ESRIN Big Hall throughout 2014.

This may come as a surprise to any participants reading this today – we suspect it was generally assumed that the flags were originals!
And the epilogue is that at the end of the celebrations, the flags were given to the ECSR where they hang today as you can see in the photo, alongside the flag commemorating 50 years of space cooperation.

2024 is a special year since it marks 60 years since the founding of the first European space organisations, and ESA’s predecessors, ELDO (the European Launcher Development Organisation) and ESRO (the European Space Research Organisation), in 1964.

Fast forward a decade and we arrive in 1974, which was the first major anniversary for ESRO. Its officials planned a ten-year celebration in Paris, with ten speakers (presumably one for each year?) talking about the organisation’s history and activities, and including former chairmen and directors. Another special guest was Arnold Frutkin, NASA Assistant Administrator for International affairs, who did not arrive empty handed - he presented this plaque, commemorating ten years of ESRO-NASA cooperation to the then Director General of ESRO,  Alexander Hocker. (Search for ‘10th Anniversary of ESRO’ in the SHIP database to see pictures from this event.)

The plaque itself bears the signature of NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher and shows six ESRO satellites: TD-1, HEOS-1&A2, ESRO-1, ESRO-1B, ESRO-II and ESRO-IV, in roundels along the top and on the left-hand side. Sharp eyed readers will have noticed that it follows US (or Oxford) English in spelling organization with a ‘z’, where the ESRO Convention used an ‘s’. Or perhaps NASA chose to be consistent with the spelling adopted by Edoardo Amaldi in his 1959 text on space research in Europe, which is where this whole story began!

We are not sure how the plaque found its way into the ESA Archives, but today, it is part of the holdings of the European Centre for Space Records at ESRIN, and its future is safeguarded.

And with that happy ending, the Archives team wishes a happy new year to all our readers!

It is already December and your preparations for Christmas may already be underway. If you can hear sleigh bells in the distance, your ears are not deceiving you - we are in Kiruna in Swedish Lapland this month!

This beautiful hand-drawn map was produced for ESA’s predecessor ESRO at some point in the late 1960s, by Swedish designer Robert Hont. It shows the site of Esrange (the European Space Research Range), a rocket range and research centre built by ESRO in the mid 1960s, just to the east of Kiruna, in the Arctic Circle and in northern Sweden. The ownership of Esrange was transferred to the newly created Swedish Space Corporation in 1972, with ESA as a regular user and major research partner. ESA also maintains a connection with the area through its Kiruna station just down the road, part of the Estrack tracking station network.

Jan Stiernstedt, who was Chairman of the ESA Council from 1978 to 1981, played an important role in the establishment of the Swedish National Space Board and the Swedish takeover of Esrange. A tribute to him in the November 2008 issue of the ESA Bulletin by Kerstin Fredga, Chair and Director General of the Swedish National Space Board from 1989–98, contains a fascinating snippet about the history of Esrange:

One concern was the reindeer herding and the possibility of a reindeer being hit by a rocket or a burnt-out rocket stage. The Lapps got, and still have, a yearly compensation for this eventuality. Also, special impact-proof shelters supplied with food and dry fire wood had to be built for those who happened to be in the impact area, and the Lapps received a battery-powered radio for them to listen to the countdown of each rocket launch. These measures became quite popular and the shelters are still used as fishing and hunting huts by the local people and, so far, not a single reindeer has been hurt.

We trust that this is still the case and are happy to add protecting reindeer to ESA’s accomplishments!

Later this month we will mark 40 years since the launch of the first Spacelab mission and the first ESA astronaut, Ulf Merbold, on 28 November 1983. As a sneak preview, this month’s object is one of the stickers produced for the programme.

Spacelab was also one of the first flagship ESA programmes, for a European, reusable space laboratory, designed to be flown on the Space Shuttle with a different mix of modular elements for each mission.

Stickers were often part of the press kits for mission launches, along with brochures, pin brooches and other gadgets. The central part of this sticker shows Spacelab nestled in the Space Shuttle cargo bay, with two astronauts at work underneath, presumably busy conducting experiments in it! Around the outside are the flags of the then 11 Member States of ESA and Austria (with whom ESA had signed an association agreement in 1979). Stickers often replicated the design of mission patches and in this case an almost identical design was used in orbit on the Spacelab-1 mission, so we can assume that this sticker also dates back to 1983 and to the first mission.

Watch this space for a special anniversary opening of material, and a celebration of the legacy of Spacelab, coming soon!

In September 2023, the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, celebrated his Golden Jubilee. Currently the longest-reigning Swedish king in history, he ascended to the throne in September 1973. While preparing the latest set of photographs in our historical picture collections for opening later this month, we came across this record of a royal visit he made to ESA ESTEC in October 1976.

The photograph shows the King facing the camera towards the bottom right. His wife Silvia, the Queen of Sweden, is in the centre and they were hosted by Roy Gibson, ESA Director General, at the top left. (The young King and Queen were newlyweds at the time – their marriage had taken place just months before, in June 1976.)

The ESA Bulletin reports that this visit to ESTEC was made in the company of Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands during the course of a three-day state visit to the Netherlands: ‘After being introduced to the Agency’s Swedish staff, they attended a presentation of the work of the Agency and made a tour of ESTEC facilities’.

The origins of the Ariane programme can be traced back to the 1970s and a project entrusted by the European Space Council to ESA’s predecessor ESRO, called LIIIS, to develop a competitive European satellite launcher. LIIIS was the working name adopted for the ‘third generation substitute launcher’ (hence the three ‘i’s), the heir to the abandoned ELDO Europa 3 programme. The name Ariane was adopted by delegates at ESRO’s AFC (Administrative and Finance Committee) fifty years ago, in September 1973. In his book Advocate of Space Swiss delegate Peter Creola recounts the heated debates over a new name – “a whole continent was embroiled in a row between competing interpretations of classical mythology”. He doesn’t explain why Ariane was proposed but admits that it was chosen simply because it was only option left on the table! Whereas André Lebeau in Ariane: Entretiens avec André Lebeau tells us that the name was effectively imposed by French Minister Jean Charbonnel.

If, like us, you need a recap, in Greek mythology Ariadne was a Cretan princess and the daughter of King Minos, known for using a ball of thread to help Theseus escape the Labyrinth. Perhaps her subsequent deification by her husband Dionysus as the Goddess of paths and labyrinths is the clue to the link with the launcher? Or could it be in the Corona Borealis constellation, created when Dionysus set her wedding diadem into the heavens?

This image shows a fold-out technical drawing of the LIIIS launcher, from an annexe to a dossier of CNES preliminary studies produced in March 1973. These initial studies all contained a planned date of 1980 for a maiden flight. In the event, ESA beat them to it by one week and the success of Ariane’s first launch, on 24 December 1979, paved the way to hundreds of further launches, and a significant share of global commercial launch contracts.

If you are interested in the continuation of the Ariane story, check ESA’s Space Transportation pages for updates on the development of the Ariane-6 launcher and its first flight.

This month we are showcasing a recent rediscovery from the Archives. Almost forgotten on the shelves of the ECSR’s stack was a small blue box, with an intriguing list of contents handwritten on its top cover: ‘Plaques pour cartes visite’.

Inside are a set of engraved printing plates, we think in copper, for business cards for the top management of ELDO. ELDO was the European Launcher Development Organisation, also known as the European Space Vehicle Launcher Development Organisation, which existed from 1964 to 1975, when it was merged with ESRO (the European Space Research Organisation) to become ESA.

In the picture is the printing plate for the Secretary General of ELDO, General Robert Aubinière (find out more about him in our glossary), obviously back to front. We were interested by the disparity between the French acronym for ELDO – CECLES, for Centre Européen pour la Construction de Lanceurs d'Engins Spatiaux – and the spelled out (and lengthier) organisation name of ‘Organisation Européenne pour la Mise au Point et la Construction de Lanceurs d’Engins Spatiaux’. This seems to mirror the variations in the organisation’s name in English mentioned above. We are grateful that in 1975 ESA adopted a much simpler name!

What’s also striking is that all the plates are only in French. We might assume from this that the organisational culture of ELDO was very much francophone, unlike today’s multicultural ESA.

Sadly, the box doesn’t contain all the items listed on its cover and the plates for the generic ELDO-CECLES cards are missing. But it’s still a wonderful find and a great insight into the world of ELDO in the 1970s and traditional copperplate printing methods. We also think this image (a scan of the plate) brings to mind some of the stunning images of space produced by the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes!

21 June is known around the world as the Fête de la Musique or Make Music Day. Established in Paris in 1982 by Jack Lang of the French Ministry of Culture, the festival is now celebrated in more than 700 cities in 120 countries, including Germany, Italy, Greece and the UK, with people encouraged to play music outside in public spaces or attend free concerts.

To encourage your musical aspirations, why not start with space? Here is the ESRO-1B (Boreas) satellite, one of the first pair of ESRO satellites which was launched in 1969 to study near-Earth space and which inspired a piece of music by avant-garde Italian composer Bruno Maderna. At that time Maderna was living in Darmstadt, home to both the famous Darmstädter Ferienkurse for contemporary classical music and to ESRO’s European Space Operations Centre, which was responsible for operating satellites after their launch. It was therefore natural that the Director of ESOC, Umberto Montalenti, also a patron of the arts, gave the commission for a piece of music to celebrate the launch to Maderna.

Ironically, the subsequent composition – Serenata per un Satellite – enjoyed greater success than the satellite itself. Due to launcher underperformance the satellite was injected into too low an orbit and reentry inevitably occurred within two months. In her book How to survive in Space, staff member Madeleine Schäfer recounts that this led to the ESOC colleagues disrespectfully renaming the piece Serenade to a Dying Satellite.

The score of the Serenata is written in an open style that allows the performers to begin reading at several points – you can listen to various interpretations of it on YouTube.

Unfortunately, the ESA Archives holds no material related to Maderno’s composition and its link to ESA, and so our research had to be carried out using internet sources. These gaps in our holdings are arguably as important as those we do have: they highlight how certain kinds of material do not easily find their way into formal collections and the challenge institutional archives face in acting as a collective memory. And they also underline the important contribution of the community behind an organisation in supporting the preservation of its culture and memories.

To celebrate the coronation of King Charles III on 6 May, this month we are highlighting ESRO’s royal connections, and a July 1972 visit by the UK’s former Admiral of the Fleet - Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, to ESOC.

This photograph shows Lord Mountbatten, on the right, with then ESRO Director of Administration Roy Gibson at the flipchart. (We think the man seated on the left is C G Giles from the Research Division of the UK Department of Trade and Industry, and the man seated in the centre is most likely S. A. Jenssen, Acting director of ESOC). Gibson recounts in his book Recollections that ESRO was contacted by the British Foreign Office with a request to demonstrate its Remote Console System – RECON – to Lord Mountbatten at ESOC. RECON was the first online search system in Europe, based on data retrieval using keywords, which was completed and operational in August 1969. It was managed by the ESRO Space Documentation Service in Frascati, with terminals across Europe.

Lord Mountbatten had a long career in the Royal Navy, where he specialised in wireless and wrote two handbooks for the Navy on wireless telegraphy, culminating with several high-ranking positions prior to his retirement in 1965. He became Chairman of the newly formed National Electronics Research Council in July 1964, was President of the Institution of Electronics and Radio Engineers in 1947 and 1961 and elected to Honorary Membership of the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1965 for his ‘contributions to the progress of electrical and electronic science and engineering’.

Roy Gibson and Lord Mountbatten were known to each other, probably from their time in military service in South Asia, and Mountbatten recognised him on his arrival at ESOC. Gibson describes the event: He looked at me standing at the top of the steps and said: "Gibson, what the bloody hell are you doing here?" "It's me, the boss" I replied". (Gibson, of course, would go on to become ESA’s first Director General in 1975.)

Lord Mountbatten was a close relative of the British royal family. His great-grandmother was Queen Victoria, which made him a second cousin, once removed, to Queen Elizabeth II. He was also Prince Philip's uncle, and therefore great-uncle to King Charles III. Known as ‘Uncle Dickie’, the then Prince Charles and Lord Mountbatten were known to have had a close relationship.

Europa was the first European satellite launcher development programme. ESA’s predecessor ELDO was responsible for 11 Europa launches (F1 - F11) between 1964 and 1971, from Woomera in Australia and Kourou in French Guiana. Find out more about these launches in our Space Timeline. Spiralling costs and disappointing tests of the upper stages led to the eventual closure of the programme in 1973.

But beyond the launcher itself, there’s also the fascinating story of this physical object, and its own particular journey to being held in the ECSR collections.

From the ESA side, things all began in 2019 when a colleague forwarded an email to the Archives team. The message was from an Italian man whose mother had worked for Renzo Carrobio di Carrobio, Secretary General of ELDO from its creation in 1964 until 1971. He had inherited the model from his mother (to whom it had been gifted by Carrobio di Carrobio). Worried that his young child might damage the model when playing with it, he offered to donate it to ESA. Naturally, the Archives were delighted to accept this wonderful piece of space heritage. In return, ESA offered a replacement model - of ESA’s Vega launcher - to the son as a much safer model to play with!

We are very grateful to the generosity of this particular person, through which we have an important physical link to the first ELDO Secretary General, and to everyone who has given material to the Archives over the years. We are always here for any future donations!

In 2023, after almost three years of construction, the opening of ESA’s new Headquarters building in 8-10 Rue Mario Nikis, in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, is imminent. But this won’t be the first Head Office building on this site – here you can see works in May 1976 to prepare the original HQ building in rue Nikis for the arrival of staff in October of that year.

However, Rue Nikis wasn’t the first home for ESA’s Headquarters. After starting life in various Paris locations, ESA’s predecessors - the European Space Research Organisation and European Launcher Development Organisation - came together in 1967 in rented accommodation at 114 Avenue Charles de Gaulle in Neuilly-sur-Seine. And it was at this address that ESA came into being in 1975, with the merger of ESRO and ELDO, and where the search began for suitable office space for ESA’s own building.

The right location was found in former electronic components laboratories in a street named after Mario Nikis (1908-1944). We think Nikis was an alumnus of the nearby Ecole Supérieure d’Electricité (in Rue Germaine de Staël) who went on to work for French national radio, and was Director of the Nikis Laboratories in Clermont-Ferrand and a French Resistance fighter.

Staff had the chance to see the renovation works to the site on a visit in July 1976 and the works were completed by the autumn. ESA Bulletin No. 7 announced in November 1976 that staff had moved in on 18 October.

Skylark was a family of British sounding rockets and the UK’s first space rocket. In the 1960s and 1970s ESA’s predecessor ESRO used two types of Skylark sounding rockets to conduct investigations as part of its operational programme (Raven VI/Cuckoo and Raven VI/Goldfinch), launching seven Skylark rockets from the Salto di Quirra range in Sardinia, Italy, between 1964 and 1965.

This photo appears to show the S.03 or S.04  payload being assembled at ESTEC. Generally, rocket-borne payloads were constructed in duplicate, both payloads being launched in succession: two boosted Skylark rockets carrying this payload were launched at sunrise in Sardinia on 30 September and 2 October 1965, to investigate atmospheric parameters using release experiments. Both launches were successful and all emissions were observed. One of the experiments, R-33: Barium release, was undertaken by Professor Reimar Lüst of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who would go on to become ESA’s third Director General in 1984. We can’t be sure but we think he could be the man in the middle!

The Italian physicist Amaldi is one of ESA’s founding fathers. A key advocate of the establishment of a European organisation for space from the very start, his open letter of 1959, urging the creation of a European organisation for space, set in motion the process that led to the founding of ESA’s predecessors, ESRO and ELDO in 1962.

In the wake of this, ESRO’s European Space Research Institute in Frascati (ESRIN), was established in 1966 and is home today to the ESA Archives at the European Centre for Space Records. Ironically, one of the gaps in our holdings is any photo of Amaldi from these early years, particularly as we have his signature in the ESRIN guest books!

Following the merger of ESRO and ELDO to form ESA in 1975, Amaldi became Chair of its Science Programme Committee in July 1979. He is seen here in that same year, visiting ESTEC, ESA’s technical hub in the Netherlands, 20 years after it all began. (Amaldi is on the right, on the left is Massimo Trella, ESA Technical Director.)