French
DeutschList of government space agencies
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Government space agencies, established by governments of countries and regional agencies (groupings of countries) are established as a means for advocating for engaging in activities related to outer space, exploitation of space systems, and/or space exploration. The listings summarize all countries' and regional authorities' space agencies with a comparative summary of demonstrated capabilities.
The objectives include national prestige, exploitation of remote sensing information, communications, education, and economic development. These agencies tend to be civil in nature (vs military) and serve to advance the benefits of exploitation and/or exploration of space. They span the spectrum from old organizations with small budgets to mature national or regional enterprises such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States, the European Space Agency (ESA) which coordinates for more than 20 constituent countries, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos) of Russia, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and the China National Space Agency (CNSA).
The space agency listings are segregated to enable identification of subsets of the complete list that have advanced to higher levels or technical or programmatic proficiency in accordance with the following:
- Establishment of agency, initial exploitation of space-based systems
- Development of launch capability
- Capacity for extraterrestrial exploration
- Demonstration of human spaceflight capability across one or more of these domains
Overview
[edit]As of 2024,[update] nearly 80 different government space agencies are in existence, including more than 70 national space agencies and several international agencies.
Launch capability
[edit]This group of agencies have developed or are developing launch infrastructure including space launch sites, suborbital launch technology, orbital launch systems, and reusable hardware technologies.
Extraterrestrial exploration capability
[edit]This group of agencies have developed advanced technological capabilities required for travel and study of other heavenly bodies within the Solar System. These involve the capacity to leave the local area around the planet Earth for lunar and/or missions to other bodies in the Solar System.
| Country | Space agency | Demonstrated capability | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Acronym | Founded | Operates flyby spacecraft | Operates extraterrestrial orbiter | Controlled surface impact | Uncrewed soft landing | Uncrewed rover operation | Sample return | |
 China | China National Space Administration[118] | CNSA | 22 Apr 1993[15] |  (Chang'e 5-T1) | (Chang'e 1) | (Chang'e 1) | (Chang'e 3) | (Yutu-1) | (Chang'e 5) |
| European Space Agency[119] | ESA ASE EWO | 30 May 1975 | (Ulysses) | (Mars Express) | (Rosetta) | (Huygens) | |||