The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
ESRO-2 control room at ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany, in 1968.
On 17 May 1968, the ESRO-2B satellite was launched by a Scout-B rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA, and became the first mission controlled by teams at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany.
Renamed the International Radiation Investigation Satellite (or ‘Iris’) once in orbit, it was the first developed by the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), a predecessor of the European Space Agency. ESRO's first satellites concentrated on solar and cosmic radiation and their interaction with Earth and its magnetosphere.
ESRO-2A had been launched on 30 May 1967 from the same base in California, but the fourth stage of its rocket failed to ignite, and the satellite subsequently burned up in the atmosphere. The 74 kg ESRO-2B replacement carried the same seven experiments.
Although its design life was only one year, most subsystems and four experiments were still returning data by the time atmospheric drag produced reentry on 9 May 1971.
The mission was the first to be controlled from ESOC, which had been inaugurated eight months earlier, on 8 September 1967.
More information