Despite the changing seasons, some of the fundamental work in the ESA Archives is ongoing, including our digitisation efforts. Our first opening for 2025 consists of a first tranche of material from the collection of ESA Special Publications and Special Publications produced by its predecessor ESRO (The European Space Research Organisation). These digitised highlights focus on publications related to events and include proceedings from early ESRO and ESA sponsored conferences and from ESA commemorative events.
Considered the most prestigious of ESRO and ESA’s technical publications, the SP series was published with an audience of scientists, industry or the space-interested public in mind. It was intended for the publication of scientific or technical information of value to, or derived from ESRO/ESA programmes, such as sponsored conference proceedings, data compilations, handbooks, manuals, or special bibliographies.
The physical collection in the ECSR Archives covers the period 1966 to 2019 in over 1300 publications. The presentational format mirrors changing fashions in design, branding and presentation, with a changing colour palette and variations in the use of graphics and pictures. Equally, the range of topics covers maps the changing focus for ESRO and ESA activities and research across these decades, from the ESRO publications on sounding rockets from the 1960s, to the birth of Earth Observation in the 1990s with the first remote sensing satellites. However, there are also some outliers among the publications! The vast majority of these are in English, along with just over a dozen in French, but a handful were published in other languages; for the 30th anniversary of ESA in 2005, the ESA Convention was compiled into a new publication – SP-1300 – in the twelve languages of its then Member States (Danish, Dutch, German, Greek, Finnish, French Italian Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish).
The recently digitised selection consists of 16 editions. It includes 13 ESRO and ESA SP publications related to conferences held in the 1960s and 1970s. Seven of these are ESRO SPs, with the rest from the early ESA SP-XXX Conference/ Symposium Proceedings series, which was concerned with the publication of proceedings immediately after the relevant event. (In an early example of a key performance indicator, the aim was to publish proceedings no later than 12 weeks after the event!)
Additionally, there are three SPs from commemorative events spanning the decade from 1980 to 1990, selected for their special historical interest, especially during this anniversary year where we celebrate the first 50 years of ESA. The first was produced as part of a European art exhibition for the Spacelab mission, the second relates to an ESA anniversary celebrated in 1984 and the third was published for a symposium in honour of one of the key figures from both the ESRO and ESA years – Reimar Lüst:
- The Spacelab project was conceived by ESRO and was inherited by ESA as one of its first flagship projects, signifying ESA’s entry into human spaceflight. In 2023, the project marked the milestone of 40 years since the launch of its first mission (with the first ESA astronaut, Ulf Merbold) in November 1983. The brochure for the1980 Man and Space: Young Europeans Spacelab exhibition (ESA SP-1024) looked forward to these events, and drew together works of art from young Europeans who had taken inspiration from this theme.
- The commemorative book Europe two decades in space, 1964-1984, Recollections by some of the principal pioneers (ESA SP-1060) was published in English in French in 1984 as part of the series of events that marked the first twenty years of European cooperation in Space. More details of the 1984 celebrations can be found in our recently published round-up of ESA anniversary events from 1974 to today.
- A Symposium for Reimar Lüst (ESA SP-325) was organised in September 1990 to mark his retirement as the (third) Director General of ESA. However, Lüst’s connections with European space went back to the very beginning, where his involvement with ESRO ranged from drawing up its scientific programme as the Scientific Director of the preparatory commission COPERS, to participation in the Skylark sounding rocket programme and ESRO’s first rockets. It was also during Lüst’s mandate that a deposit agreement was signed with the Historical Archives of the European Union for the preservation of the ESA Historical Archives (see our recently published news on the history of our collaboration with HAEU).
More information:
To browse the digital collection, enter the SHIP database and search for ‘ESA SP’.
Read more about the collection on ESRO/ESA SP (Special Publications).
