The European Space Research and Technology Centre is the European Space Agency's main technology development and test centre for spacecraft and space technology. It is situated in Noordwijk, South Holland, in the western Netherlands, although several kilometers off the village but immediately linked to the most Northern district of the nearby town Katwijk.At ESTEC, about 2500 engineers, technicians and scientists work hands-on with mission design, spacecraft and space technology. ESTEC provides extensive testing facilities to verify the proper operation of spacecraft, such as the Large Space Simulator , acoustic and electromagnetic testing bays, multi-axis vibration tables and the ESA Propulsion Laboratory . Prior to the launch of almost all equipment that ESA launches is tested in some degree at ESTEC.The Space Expo is ESTEC's visitors center. It has a permanent exhibition about space exploration.Activities Future mission assessment Current project support Test Center OperationsHistoryThe European Space Research and Technology Centre was founded in 1968. The centre was to be a facility at the very core of ESRO. Its responsibilities included the engineering and testing of satellites and their payloads, the integration of scientific instruments in these payloads, and making arrangements for their launch. In some cases member states were to produce the scientific instruments for ESRO or produce them as part of their own national effort and compensate ESTEC for its service. In practise, national organisations simply used ESTEC as a service organisation and left it to pay for their efforts from the ESRO budget. After the Bannier Report the facility gained overall executive authority for spacecraft development and was merged with ESLAB. The satellite control centre was also moved to ESOC. ESTEC was originally to be located in Delft but because of unforeseen difficulties, Noordwijk was chosen instead.
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