The ESA Headquarters in Paris stored the files arranged by topics and according a related filing system.
The fonds was deposited at the HAEU under the terms of a deposit contract signed on 12 May 1989. To continue and deepen the fruitful archival cooperation, and to foster digital access to the historical archives of ESA, a Letter of Intent was signed on 2 May 2019 during an event at Villa Salviati within The State of the Union conference 2019. The Parties agreed to revise and amend the deposit contract of 1989 with a focus on digital access, data protection and information security. The signature of the new deposit contract was finalized on December 2020.

ESA Headquarters and ESTEC

The ESA fonds contains basically minutes and correspondence files emanating from the various ESA bodies and departments, as well as from an increasing number - over the years - of short-lived bodies established for occasional projects.

Since 1995 onwards, an intermediate work of description and arrangement by series made by ESA Headquarters run before all transfers.

"Blue papers" are deposited annually by ESA Headquarters, instead other ESA series are deposited when they are considered as closed historical files from ESA Archives.

"Blue papers" are sequentially arranged, instead regarding other files the Historical Archives evaluates the files in homogeneous folders.

Open, except contract series closed for 40 years since the creation of the file, documents marked as confidential and restricted.

The HAEU may not own the rights on the photographs present in this fonds. Copyright or other restrictions applying to the material should be assessed by the user. Any copyright violations resulting from the use of documents held at the Historical Archives are solely the user’s responsibility. More about copyright

English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish

Photograph, Textual

ESA Bulletins and ESA Annual reports.