99 objects telling tales from ESA's technical heart

 

A selection of items from the ESA ESTEC in 99 Objects website. Credit: ESA-Remedia

The new 99 Objects of ESA ESTEC website gives visitors a close-up view of intriguing, often surprising artefacts assembled together to tell the storey of ESA's technical heart, from simulated moondust to an ultraflat floor, a 3D-printed human bone to a wall decoration that once flew on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, a famous anthropologist, once said, "Objects are what matter." "Only they carry the evidence that throughout the millennia anything genuinely transpired among human beings." So, what kinds of things have come out of Europe's largest space center's more than half-century of activity?

The European Space Research and Technology Centre, or ESTEC, is ESA's single largest facility, located in Noordwijk, Netherlands, on the North Sea coast.

Most ESA projects are born and steered through the many stages of development at ESTEC, which is often referred to as the agency's technical heart. It also houses the Agency's technical development centre, as well as Europe's largest satellite testing centre, which is equipped to mimic every aspect of spaceflight.

ESTEC has amassed a large collection of objects over the course of its long and illustrious history as the incubator of Europe's space efforts—the first satellite was launched in 1968, the same year the establishment opened—and has a long and illustrious history as the incubator of Europe's space efforts. Whether exotic or mundane, each one has a tale to tell—a narrative of inspiration and perseverance, of forward and backward steps, of exploration, discovery, and surprise.

Part of a solar panel from the Hubble Space Telescope was returned to Earth by Space Shutle and is now on display at ESA's ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands. Credit: ESA-Redmedia

The goal of ESA ESTEC IN 99 OBJECTS is to document Europe's cosmic adventure through objects left behind by scientists and engineers who have assisted in the launch of more than 180 missions.

Nearly 3,000 international scientists are currently working in 35 ESTEC laboratories, surrounded by these 99 things and many more, on the missions—and new objects—that will define the coming decades in space.

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