Meanwhile the long-awaited flight of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope – the tennis-court-scale successor to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope – will be taking place this year, due to be launched by Ariane 5 from French Guiana. And NASA’s DART spacecraft will lift off, beginning its daring mission to deflect an asteroid, to be followed up in turn by a close-up survey by ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence.

Meanwhile ESA’s European Robotic Arm – its construction Dutch-led, and flown to orbit this summer – is being prepared for operations aboard the International Space Station.

Where do such audacious visions of things to come – and all our other innovations helping Europe explore space and improve life on Earth – originate? The answer, ultimately, is the human imagination; ESA, after all, is an agency made of people. So the theme of this year’s ESA Open Day is ‘Inventing the future’.