In 1989 the European Space Agency (ESA), under the administrative direction of George van Reeth, and the European University Institute, represented by its then-President Émile Noël, signed a deposit agreement to preserve and make accessible to the public the archives of ESA and its predecessor organisations at the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU).
The agreement was the fruit of eighteen months of negotiations and offered mutual advantages to both parties. On the one hand, it fit with the HAEU’s expansive vision to include among its holdings prestigious archives of diverse and non-EU institutional provenance that had bearing on the history of European integration. On the other hand, it provided ESA with services for its archiving needs and increased visibility in the research community and among EU stakeholders.
Following the 1989 agreement, ESA began to send regular consignments representing the legacy of ESA and its predecessor organisations. They are inventoried at the HAEU in the following series: COPERS (the European Preparatory Commission for Space Research), ESRO (the European Space Research Organisation) and ELDO (the European Launcher Development Organisation), ESC (European Space Conference), CETS (the European Conference on Satellite Communications) and ESA.
A history of ESA and the first researchers
ESA, in its arrival to the 1989 deposit agreement with the EUI, aimed primarily to safeguard the heritage of its predecessor organisations (and the efforts of the individuals behind their creation), to offer researchers access to these valuable resources, and to demonstrate increased transparency in its decision-making and management.
With the support of ESA’s then-Director General Reimar Lüst, plans soon followed for an ESA History Project directed by historian Professor John Krige. On its side, to ensure the exploitation of the newly-deposited ESA Historical Archives at the HAEU, the EUI agreed to host the project for its first five years, starting from 1990. The researchers affiliated with the ESA History Project would be among the first to benefit from access to these primary documentary sources, and from the guidance and expertise of HAEU archivist Gherardo Bonini, who had been assigned to the ESA collections.
The rest, as they say, is history! The project ran from 1990 until 2005 and resulted in a comprehensive series of publications (including a series of History Study Reports and monographs), conferences and workshops on the history of ESA and European space activities, and an oral history project for Europe in space, with interviews available today on the HAEU website.
The fruits of digitisation
In 2019, ESA and the EUI agreed to revise and amend the deposit contract of 1989 with a focus on digital access, data protection and information security. A Letter of Intent to this effect was signed by the two parties on 2 May 2019 at the EUI, and a revised and amended contract was signed by ESA and EUI in December 2020.
The agreement formalised the two organisations’ new efforts toward greater access to the ESA archives. The digitised paper documents of ESA's predecessors CETS, COPERS, ESC, ELDO and ESRO were made available in 2019. Since then, digitisation work has continued and today almost 12 500 files have been made available to the public through the online database.
Fostering new research on ESA history
In addition to the deposit agreement, the HAEU and ESA continue their joint efforts to stimulate scholarship on the history of Europe’s space programme through the European Space Agency Grant Programme. Each year, up to two grants are awarded for projects focusing on the origins of the European Space Agency, the development of European space research, and the evolution of Europe’s activities in space.
The application for this year’s grant will open on 1 March 2025.
*This news item is based on a more in-depth article published by the European Space Agency to mark the 35 years of collaboration between the Agency and the Historical Archives at the European University Institute. Read the full article here.
Photo: ESA’s ESRIN establishment in Frascati, Italy. The centre was created in 1966 and since 2004 it has been the headquarters for ESA’s Earth observation activities. One of its main tasks is managing the operation and exploitation of ESA’s Earth observation satellites. In cooperation with other space agencies, it also manages the acquisition, distribution and exploitation of data from non-ESA satellites. Credit: ESA, used with permission for informational purposes.