The continuing digitisation work for the historical photographic collections in the ESA Archives has recently entered a new chapter and new decade, with the opening of photos from 1981. The images from this year bear witness to the fruition of projects inherited from ESA’s predecessor ESRO and capture the beginnings of ESA’s first ‘native’ ones, through the eyes of a new generation of photographers.
Spacelab: engineering model to flight unit
1981 began in the aftermath of the roll-out of the Spacelab engineering model at prime contractor MBB ERNO in Bremen, at the end of November 1980. The ceremony marked the official handover to NASA, after which it was transported by plane to the Kennedy Space Center at the end of the year. The photos from 1981 document the work that took place in ESA and industry after that: astronaut training on the Sled, instrument testing at Dornier and integration and check out tests at MBB ERNO, culminating in December 1981 with delivery of the first Spacelab Flight Unit, following Flight Acceptance Review, and its own shipment to the US.
It is also an appropriate moment to turn a focus on the host city for these two end-of-year milestones. The German city of Bremen will once again take centre stage for European space when it hosts the forthcoming Meeeting of ESA Council at Ministerial Level (CM25), from 25-26 November 2025, whose decisions will shape the future of Europe's space ambitions.
The next generation of programmes
Alongside this, development work continued on a portfolio of ESA satellites, including some from programmes initiated by ESRO in the years before ESA (the European Communication Satellite, ECS, Exosat and Marecs-A) and others more recent and solely under the flag of the fledgling ESA (Hipparcos, the International Solar Polar Mission (ISPM, which later became Ulysses), and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS)). The photographs also cover the ongoing work on the Faint Object Camera and solar array for the Hubble Space Telescope and the launch of Meteosat-2 on 19 June 1981. This was one of the two nominal 1981 launches that qualified Ariane-1, the other being the launch of Marecs-A, at the close of the year on 20 December.
Promotional material was already under production for another future project which would go on to make ESA a household name in 1986. The 1981 collection of photos includes an image from the section of the Bayeux Tapestry showing Halley's Comet, taken for a folder for the Giotto programme.
Conversely, the images also cover projects that were not destined to ever be realised, such as the plan for Space Shuttle launches using the Ariane launcher. A model of Ariane in configuration with the Space Shuttle therefore takes on an extra level of meaning and offers a tantalising glimpse of what might have been.
Back on Earth...
Meanwhile, back at base, some of the everyday activities of an international space agency were also captured on film. A series of photographs documents the work of the people behind the ESTEC switchboard, a piece of equipment that has itself acquired historical value in the era of mobile phone communication! Another shows a collection of money for the Natural Disaster Fund, used as an image for the 1981 ESA calendar and demonstrating ESA’s commitment to humanitarian causes over the decades. (The ESA Humanitarian Relief Fund was founded in 1979 and continues to operate today.)
New decade, new generation of photographers
During the early 1980s new names also start to appear in the credits for photographs, reflecting the changing organisation of photographic services within ESA and the members of the team, and representing the start of a new era of ESA photography.
While the remaining staff records do not give a clear narrative, it seems that following the sudden death of ESA Photographer (and Head of the ESTEC Photo Section) Robert Duhem in July 1979, and the resignation of the ESTEC photographer (we are unsure who this was) at the end of the same year, the ESTEC photo and graphics sections were merged, to become the Photo and Illustration Section in July 1980. We believe that Simon Vermeer arrived as the new Head of Section at this time, which formed part of ESA’s Technical Directorate. In the year that followed, various staff changes and reductions took place after a reorganisation, resulting in the end of the contract for an Assistant Photographer (again, we have no name). Within a few years, Vermeer had been transferred to the ESA Public Relations team in the Director General’s Cabinet in the role of photographer and from the photographic records, we know that he continued to take pictures for ESA into the 1990s. Accordingly, most of the photos in the collection for 1981 were taken by Vermeer, but there are also a significant number credited to S. Burden until July.
From the dates, it might be tempting to assume that Burden was the Assistant Photographer, but we have also found a Burden listed as an Electronic Engineer in the Technical Directorate at that time. Could Burden the photographer and Burden the engineer be the same person, in the form of a special technical photographer?
More information
To browse the new images, simply search for ‘1981’ in the SHIP database, or refer to our highlight on SHIP for additional details of its functionalities.
