The European Space Agency (ESA) faces a crossroads as it works to prepare flights of the Vega-C and Ariane 6 as early as this December. While technicians in Europe and French Guiana are preparing these rockets and their payloads for flight, ESA and Arianespace are grappling with major changes in the space launch industry over the last decade.
The multinational agency was created in 1975 by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other European countries who realized that they could not explore space by themselves on the scale of the United States and the Soviet Union. Over the decades, ESA has grown into an agency counting 22 nations as members and others as associate or cooperating states, and has achieved many notable successes and firsts.