Visiting the ESA Science Faculty

Collaborator visits

The ESA Science Faculty supports scientific visitors to ESA Faculty members at ESAC (Madrid, Spain), ESTEC (Noordwijk, Netherlands) or STScI (Baltimore, Maryland, USA) enabling and facilitating face-to-face collaboration. The location of each, including travel instructions, can be found on the Sites page, Visits normally last a few to ten days, although long-term visits may also be considered.

To offset the expenses incurred by visitors, the ESA Science Faculty may cover travel costs from and to the home institution and provides support for lodging and meals.

Interested scientists should discuss the proposed visit with their ESA collaborator(s), or prospective host(s) in the case of budding new partnerships. The ESA Faculty member(s) will need to submit a Visitor Funding proposal to their Faculty Council for review.

Faculty visits need to be scientifically justified and should usually result in a tangible outcome (such as a paper plan, observation proposal or even publication etc). Visitors can also request to give a seminar during their stay (although an available seminar slot is not guaranteed). Visits lasting more than two weeks will require a detailed work plan to justify the extended stay, as our experience shows that a good plan greatly increases the productivity of the visit.

Team meetings hosted at ESAC or ESTEC may also be possible, via multiple visitor applications or an "internal workshop" organised by the team members at ESA. For more information, the ESA Faculty member(s) should contact their Faculty Council

Archival Research Visitor Programme

ESA also welcomes applications from scientists interested in pursuing research based on publicly available data in the ESA Space Science Archives. The Archives host data from all current and past ESA space science missions in astronomy, planetary science, and heliophysics.

The ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme is open to scientists at all career levels who are affiliated with institutes in ESA Member States and Collaborating States. Early-career scientists (within 10 years of the PhD) are particularly encouraged to apply. PhD students are also welcome to apply through their supervisors.

Residence lasts typically between one and three months, and can be distributed over multiple visits depending on the complexity of the research project. The research projects can be carried out at ESAC (Madrid, Spain) or ESTEC (Noordwijk, Netherlands). To offset the expenses incurred by visitors, ESA covers travel costs from and to the home institution (affiliations must be an ESA Member or Collaborating State) and provides support for lodging expenses and meals.

For more details, please visit the ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme pages.