The ESA Archives exist in two different physical sites in Italy today: the European Centre for Space Records (ECSR) at ESRIN, Frascati, which houses technical documentation from ESA projects and missions and administrative and legal material; and the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU), based at the European University Institute in Florence, where collections focus on the legacy of ESA and its predecessor organisations.
However, it was not originally set up that way. The first official ‘home’ of the ESA Archives was in Florence, and the HAEU remained its sole location for over a decade, prior to the opening of the ECSR in the early 2000s. Why Florence, and why then the dual-site arrangement? To explain how it all came about, and to clarify what information is where, we have conceived a (very) brief history of the ESA Archives, covering its first 35 years! It all starts back in the 1980s with the first awakening of interest across European organisations in preserving their institutional memory...
A repository for EU archives and the deposit agreement with ESA
Among these organisations were the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Council, who both decided in 1983 to open their historical archives to the public. An agreement in the following year between the European Commission and the European University Institute (EUI) paved the way for the foundation of the HAEU in Florence. It was established in 1984 as the official repository for the historical documents of the EU institutions, and would eventually expand its remit to include material from the private archives of key European personalities and from international organisations involved in European integration. The then Historical Archives of the European Communities was inaugurated in December 1985 in EUI’s Villa il Poggiolo in the hills above Florence, under the guidance of its first Director Klaus Jaitner, and opened its doors to researchers in 1986.
Back within ESA, work was underway in the late 1980s to consolidate its own archives, under the responsibility of Director of Administration, George Van Reeth. The aim was primarily to safeguard the heritage of its predecessor organisations (and the efforts of the individuals behind their creation), to offer researchers access to these valuable resources, and to demonstrate increased transparency in its decision-making and management.
The paths of these two organisations converged in November 1987, when the EUI proposed to ESA that it become one of the non-EU organisations to also deposit their archives at HAEU. There were mutual advantages: for ESA, services for its archiving needs and increased visibility in the research community and among EU stakeholders; for EUI, consolidation of its role as host of international archives on European collaboration with the addition of the prominent ESA collection.
Following 18 months of discussion, a deposit agreement was signed on 12 May 1989 in an exchange of letters between George van Reeth and the President of the EUI, Émile Noël. Appropriately enough, this took place during the year that ESA celebrated its Silver Jubilee commemorating 25 years since the creation of the first European space organisations in 1964.
From the latter half of 1989, ESA began to send regular consignments representing the legacy of ESA and its predecessor organisations, COPERS (the European Preparatory Commission for Space Research) ESRO (the European Space Research Organisation) and ELDO (the European Launcher Development Organisation) as well as from the European Space Conference (ESC) and the European Conference on Satellite Communications (CETS). The first researchers interested in these ‘ESA family fonds’ arrived in 1991.
A history of ESA and the first researchers
Just one month before the signature of the deposit agreement, a celebratory conference for the Silver Jubilee took place in Paris in April 1989 and brought together many of the pioneers from the early days of European space. Among papers in the ECSR holdings is a preface to a 1995 symposium at the London Science Museum where the Head of the Director General’s Cabinet, Karl-Egon Reuter, looked back at the event and on their perception of “the need to record the events leading the development of the European space effort. This, combined with the interest of historians of scientific and technical cooperation in Europe gave birth to the idea of studying and writing up the history of European cooperation in space.”
With the support of Director General Reimar Lüst, plans followed for an ESA History Project, to be directed by Professor John Krige. Since the logical next step was to ensure the exploitation of the newly-deposited ESA Historical Archives at HAEU, the EUI agreed to an ESA proposal for it to host the project for its first five years. And with serendipitous timing, its team members were some of the first researchers to benefit from access to these primary documentary sources, and from the guidance and expertise of Archivist Gherardo Bonini, who had been assigned to the ESA collections, and Jean-Marie Palayret, who became Director of HAEU in 1990.
And the rest, as they say, is history! Running from 1990 and extended until 2005, the project resulted in a comprehensive series of publications (including a series of History Study Reports and monographs), conferences and workshops, on the history of ESA and European space activities, and an oral history project for Europe in space, with interviews available today on the HAEU website.
A home within ESA for technical documentation
Following a favourable 1995 internal report the HAEU collaboration, contained in the ECSR’s holdings, the 1990s saw a growing awareness of the need for information management within ESA. This was thrown into focus by some of the teething problems encountered with the lack of pre-sorting of the first dossiers sent to HAEU, and a recommendation in 1995 by the ESA Council for the proper management of documentation recording the history of the Agency.
A memo from May 1995 from the Head of ESA’s Legal Department, Gabriel Lafferranderie, lists a number of follow-up actions to the report, proposed in order to implement an ESA archiving policy, covering guidelines, training and human resources. The work led by Lafferranderie’s team eventually led to the appointment of an ESA Records Manager in the late 1990s and the establishment of the ECSR itself in 2002, to preserve R&D (research and development) records from ESA projects. In 2017, with the move of the HQ Archives to the ECSR, it also became the host for material on administrative and legal affairs and decision-making processes.
The fruits of digitisation
In a next step in the continuing cooperation with HAEU, and to foster digital access to the Historical Archives of ESA, a Letter of Intent was signed by ESA and HAEU on 2 May 2019 during an event at Villa Salviati within The State of the Union conference. The Parties agreed to revise and amend the deposit contract of 1989 with a focus on digital access, data protection and information security. A revised and amended contract was signed by ESA and EUI in December 2020.
In the same month in 2019, ESA and HAEU made available online to the public the digitised paper documents of ESA's predecessors CETS, COPERS, ESC, ELDO and ESRO. Since then, digitisation work has continued and today almost 12 500 files have been made available to the public through the online database. In addition, the bulk of ESA official records over 15 years old are also preserved in the HAEU fonds. (This includes minutes and correspondence files originating from the various ESA bodies and departments, as well as from short-term bodies established for ad-hoc needs.)
2025 and into the future
For the ESA Archives, the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 is a period of triple celebrations – for the first 50 years of ESA, and the milestone of just over 35 years of close collaboration with HAEU, which itself has just marked its 40th anniversary with a recently published history, Forty Years of Access and Preservation!
Throughout these years, many colleagues in ESA and HAEU have played a part in our collective achievements and to building a solid foundation for successful cooperation into the future, only a few of whom we have been able to name above. However, we gratefully recognise the contribution each of them has made to safeguarding ESA’s memories and heritage.
More information
ESA Historical Archives at HAEU
Oral history of Europe in Space
HAEU - New volume celebrates forty years of access and preservation
