Following the success of Horizon 2000, and to continue the work of the Horizon 2000 Plus missions once they are launched, Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 aims at furthering Europe's achievements in space science for the benefit of all mankind in the decade that follows. The plan is based on a massive response by the scientific community to ESA's call for themes, issued in April 2004. A total of 151 novel ideas were submitted, more than twice as many as for the equivalent exercise in 1984.

ESA's scientific advisory committees and working groups then made a preliminary selection of themes, which were discussed in a workshop in Paris in September 2004, attended by nearly 400 members of the scientific community. After discussions with the Science Programme Committee (SPC) and its national delegations, ESA's Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) prepared the Cosmic Vision plan with the assistance of ESA's Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration. The SSAC is made up of scientists chosen for their scientific standing and who are expected to represent the views of the European science community as a whole rather than any particular national interest. A further encounter with the wider space science community occurred at a symposium in Noordwijk in April 2005. In May 2005, the SPC saw a draft of the plan and endorsed the approach.

Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 was designed to address four main questions that are high on the agenda of research across Europe (and, indeed, the world) concerning the Universe and our place in it:

1. What are the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life?
2. How does the Solar System work?
3. What are the fundamental physical laws of the Universe?
4. How did the Universe originate and what is it made of?

(See Related Links and Related Publications for further details)

	Overview
	Call for proposals; missions selected