The European Space Agency (ESA), established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 19 member states.

Headquartered in Paris, ESA has a staff of more than 2,000 (2012).

ESA's space flight program includes human spaceflight, mainly through the participation in the International Space Station program, the launch and operations of unmanned exploration missions to other planets and the Moon, Earth observation, science, telecommunication as well as maintaining a major spaceport, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana, and designing launch vehicles. The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching and further developing this launch vehicle.

ESA is managing several centres distrbuted in Europe:

• ESTEC: the ESA science missions are based at ESTEC in Noordwijk, Netherlands,
• ESRIN: the Earth Observation missions at ESRIN in Frascati, Italy,
• ESOC: the ESA Mission Control (ESOC) is in Darmstadt, Germany,
• EAC: the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) that trains astronauts for future missions is situated in Cologne, Germany,
• ESAC: and the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) is located in Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain.

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is an intergovernmental organisation created through an international convention agreed by a current total of 30 European Member States.

EUMETSAT's primary objective is to establish, maintain and exploit European systems of operational meteorological satellites. EUMETSAT is responsible for the launch and operation of the satellites and for delivering satellite data to end-users as well as contributing to the operational monitoring of climate and the detection of global climate changes.

The activities of EUMETSAT contribute to a global meteorological satellite observing system coordinated with other space-faring nations.

Satellite observations are an essential input to numerical weather prediction systems and also assist the human forecaster in the diagnosis of potentially hazardous weather developments. Of growing importance is the capacity of weather satellites to gather long-term measurements from space in support of climate change studies.

EUMETSAT is not part of the European Union, but became a signatory to the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters in 2012, thus providing for the global charitable use of its space assets.^[1]

 the International Space University (ISU) provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community at its Central Campus in Strasbourg, France, and at locations around the world. In its two-month Space Studies Program and one-year Masters program, ISU offers its students a unique Core Curriculum covering all disciplines related to space programs and enterprises, space science, space engineering, systems engineering, space policy and law, business and management, and space and society. Both programs also involve an intense student research Team Project providing international graduate students and young space professionals the opportunity to solve complex problems by working together in an intercultural environment.

It was founded in 1987.