6. European Space Agency
Points – 16
Ok, the European Space Agency isn’t exactly a country, but it’s been making headway on some very important issues. It’s also investing quite a bit of money into space exploration and it represents the European Union, so we decided to include it.
The European Space Agency was established back in 1875 and is an intergovernmental organization. Nowadays, there are 22 member states working together in the ESA. Its annual budget is of about $5.5 billion, which is quite low considering how many sources of money it could have given the number of members. Regardless, the ESA has quite a few important projects it’s working on, but they’re generally unmanned missions.
There is, however, the Spacelab, which was built in 1983 and where various experiments were conducted and where European Space Agency astronauts participated. Furthermore, European astronauts participate regularly in ISS missions.
