About ESA Science
ESA space science teams
To make the dreams of Europe's space scientists come true, by creating and operating new scientific spacecraft for the European Space Agency, is the responsibility of staff based mainly at ESTEC, ESA's science and technology centre at Noordwijk in the Netherlands. At ESA headquarters the Director of Science, David Southwood, oversees policy and the overall shape of the science programme, aided by a small team in Paris. ESA science staff are deployed elsewhere, for example at ESA's Villafranca station (near Madrid) for the ISO Data Centre and XMM-Newton Science Operations Centre, in Garching (Germany) and Baltimore (USA) for the Hubble Space Telescope, and at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (near Washington DC) for the SOHO mission. The work of evaluating science projects and managing them in their formative years is never the less concentrated in ESTEC, where technological laboratories and test facilities give practical assistance.
On the engineering side, the Scientific Projects Department at ESTEC led by John Credland provides each mission with a project manager and a supporting team. The project management interacts with the aerospace and instruments industry in the 15 member states, and oversees the construction, launch and operation of the spacecraft. There is close liaison with ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, with Arianespace and other agencies providing launchers, and with the ground stations needed for communicating with the spacecraft.
Also located at ESTEC is ESA's Research and Scientific Support Department, formerly the Space Science Department, with Alvaro Gimenez at its head. To each mission, the department assigns a project scientist charged with ensuring that it achieves its scientific goals. The project scientist links the project management to the scientists in universities and institutes who provide instruments for the spacecraft, and who are also represented on a science working team. When the mission is operational, the project scientist and the science working team coordinate the observations, in consultation with the spacecraft controllers.
The Research and Scientific Support Department was restructured in 2000/2001 into 8 Divisions. Each Division is the 'home' of the study and project scientists for the study, project development and operation of the missions. These scientists chair the mission's 'science working teams' usually comprising the instrument principal investigators (PIs) and mission scientists drawn from the scientific community. They are the direct interlocutor to the study or project manager as the 'scientific conscience' for all science issues of a mission.
ESA serves the space scientists of Europe, under the supervision of the Science Programme Committee on which all member states are represented. Any scientist or group within the member states can propose a space science mission. Ideas are sifted by fellow-scientists from the member states invited to serve on advisory committees and working groups. Before a final selection is made, some rival proposals are selected for detailed study of their scientific, technological and budgetary implications. The same advisory groups choose the instruments that will fly on authorised missions. The arrangements whereby prime contractors and sub-contractors in European industry develop and build the spacecraft are subject to approval by the ESA Industrial Policy Committee, again representing all member states.
Under a Science Communications initiative, ESA is intensifying its efforts to keep the press, public and schoolteachers well informed about the science programme and the progress of its various missions. This website is part of that initiative.