European Space Agency
Supplies Orion’s service modules, flies European astronauts on Dragon and Artemis, and partners on Webb and other science missions.
- Founded
- 1975
- Headquarters
- Paris, France
- Machines in the atlas
- 2
ESA provides the European Service Module that powers and propels Orion; Airbus builds it in Bremen, Germany. The arrangement grew out of the barter system through which ESA pays its share of the International Space Station’s running costs: in January 2013 ESA and NASA extended that barter to cover a service module for Orion.
European astronauts fly to the station on Dragon—ESA’s Sophie Adenot launched on Crew-12 in February 2026—and ESA’s Luca Parmitano is the pilot of Artemis III. For the James Webb Space Telescope, ESA provided the Ariane 5 launch and the NIRSpec instrument, and built the MIRI instrument together with a consortium of European countries and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Its machines
Stories that involve ESA
3 more stories
Sources
- European Service Module NASA
- International partnership (Orion) European Space Agency
- ESA facts European Space Agency
- Webb FAQs NASA
- ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano joins NASA’s Artemis III mission as pilot European Space Agency, June 9, 2026
- NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 Launches to International Space Station NASA, February 13, 2026