Space science: everything starts here

How did it all begin? What are the origins of our planet? To understand our place in the universe, we need to explore space. Let's look at some of the missions we are using to do this. ESA's Planck satellite has mapped the cosmic microwave background, a picture of the universe just after its birth 13.8 billion years ago. The tiny colour differences in the image represent seeds that later formed galaxies and galaxy clusters. Thanks to Planck, we've confirmed that our universe today is dominated by dark energy. There's also a good share of dark matter. Only 4.8% is ordinary matter, out of which the stars, the planets, and we humans are made. But we're still a long way from understanding how this dark universe works. Euclid will observe billions of faraway galaxies. It will reveal how dark matter acts as scaffolding around which galaxies are built, and how dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe. We happen to live on a planet, orbiting a pretty ordinary star, in a pretty ordinary galaxy. But how exactly is our galaxy, the Milky Way, laid out? Gaia will tell us. ESA's Gaia space telescope is cataloguing more than a billion stars to create the most precise map of the Milky Way, showing us not just the positions of the stars in it, but importantly, their motions through it. From this, we can understand how it was put together. But where did the stars and planets come from? This is one of the key questions examined by Herschel. Carrying the largest telescope ever flown in space, and observing at far infrared and submillimetre wavelengths, ESA's Herschel mission observed the cool universe. It surveyed vast star-forming complexes containing thousands of new suns. Coming back to our own solar system, a trail of water will guide ESA's JUICE spacecraft to Jupiter and its icy moons. Ganymede, Callisto and Europa have vast oceans of water beneath their icy crusts. Somewhere in these oceans, the conditions to support life may exist. Our search for life also leads us to Mars. ESA's Mars Express has found evidence that there was once liquid water on the planet, while methane in the atmosphere today could be linked to microbial life under the surface. ESA's ExoMars programme is now underway to continue the hunt. Launched in March 2016, a new orbiter will track the methane in much more detail, and new landing technologies will be tested. And a few years later, a rover will drill into the Martian terrain in search of signs of life, past or present. The SOHO spacecraft is able to determine what's happening deep inside our Sun. It can warn us of eruptions leading to solar storms three days before they reach the Sun's surface. Its successor, ESA's Solar Orbiter, will take pictures of the polar regions of the Sun for the first time, and study the origin of the fast solar wind. And now to Mercury. BepiColombo will orbit the nearest planet to the Sun to unlock the origin and history of this mysterious planet. Special insulation and solar cell technology are needed to withstand soaring temperatures of more than 400 degrees Celsius. Finally, ESA has reached new heights in exploration with Rosetta, the first-ever mission to rendezvous with, escort and land on a comet. Comets are icy time capsules containing almost unaltered matter left over from the birth of our solar system. Exploring this material in detail as the comet evolves, we will change our understanding of the birth of our planetary system and of our own origins. The exciting journey of Rosetta and its lander Philae has captured the world's imagination, bringing space exploration once more to the fore. In the quest to understand our place in the universe, the European Space Program pools national resources and achieves what no single member state could do on its own. The total cost of ESA's activities is less than the price of one cinema ticket per European per year. A ticket that answers the questions about our place in the universe. A ticket that creates jobs in Europe and maintains a competitive space industry. A ticket that supports European scientists performing at a world-class level. A ticket that fosters European identity and demonstrates European capability and vision.