Mission Statement
Since the Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union's "iron curtain", space agencies around the world had to refocus and revise their visions and goals. In an interview with JAXA, the Japanese national space agency, Jean-Jacques Dordain ESA's Director General (since 2003) outlined briefly the European Space Agency's mission:
Today space activities are pursued for the benefit of citizens, and citizens are asking for a better quality of life on earth. They want greater security and economic wealth, but they also want to pursue their dreams, to increase their knowledge, and they want younger people to be attracted to the pursuit of science and technology. I think that space can do all of this: it can produce a higher quality of life, better security, more economic wealth, and also fulfil our citizens' dreams and thirst for knowledge, and attract the young generation. This is the reason space exploration is an integral part of overall space activities. It has always been so, and it will be even more important in the future.Article II, Purpose, Convention of establishment of a European Space Agency, SP-1271(E) from 2003 also defines ESA's mission statement:
ESA's purpose shall be to provide for, and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications systems:- by elaborating and implementing a long-term European space policy, by recommending space objectives to the Member States, and by concerting the policies of the Member States with respect to other national and international organisations and institutions;
- by elaborating and implementing activities and programmes in the space field;
- by coordinating the European space programme and national programmes, and by integrating the latter progressively and as completely as possible into the European space programme, in particular as regards the development of applications satellites;
- by elaborating and implementing the industrial policy appropriate to its programme and by recommending a coherent industrial policy to the Member States.
Read more about this topic: European Space Agency
Famous quotes containing the words mission and/or statement:
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry]. He said he didnt know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidates coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (18591964)
“Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individuals sovereignty.”
—Mario Vargas Llosa (b. 1936)