Posted on 24 May 2019
The EUI has signed a Letter of Intent with the European Space Agency (ESA), paving the way for a continued close relationship between the two institutions.
The letter was signed by EUI President Renaud Dehousse and the Director-General of the ESA, Jan Wörner, at a special event during The State of The Union conference at Villa Salviati on the 2nd of May.
The Letter of Intent allows for the continuation of a 30-year relationship of collaboration between EUI and the ESA, which began in 1989 with the signing of a Deposit Agreement between the two institutions.
Since the Deposit Agreement was signed, around 45 000 documents from the ESA’s archive have been entered into the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) at Villa Salviati.
The new Letter of Intent will “continue and potentially enhance” the “successful cooperation” created by the Deposit Agreement.
Accordingly, EUI and ESA have been working on a new shared project since 2018: digitising the existing archive and making the documents electronically accessible to the general public. Previously, the documents were only available for study by visiting researchers.
Documents from five collections are already available to be viewed digitally: the European Preparatory Commission for Space Research (COPERS); the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO); the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO); the European Space Conferences; and the European Conferences on Satellite Communications.
For the ESA, Jan Wörner and Elena Grifoni-Winters; for the EUI, Renaud Dehousse and Dieter Schlenker.