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!
Steffan Powell from BBC at envihab to prepare for space – at least for the virtual world of the new Mass Effect: Andromeda computer game.
ESA’s centre in Cologne, Germany, welcomed six European celebrities of the gaming world to put their gaming skills to the test on real astronaut training.
The budding astronauts go by such names as Squeezie, from France, Sep from the PietSmiet German collective, SciFun, from Poland, Jane of the Outside Xbox collective, TheGrefg from Spain, and Steffan Powell from the BBC, UK.
The six reporters filmed and documented themselves piloting a simulated Soyuz spacecraft, making a ‘spacewalk’ in ESA’s pool and submitting to tilt tables, rotating chairs and vertical treadmills at the German aerospace centre’s ‘envihab’ facility. Not all the challenges were strenuous: the YouTubers and reporters were treated to space food developed for European astronauts.