COSMOS PORTAL Terms and Conditions

The Cosmos Portal presents news, information, data, tools and services in support of the Science Missions of ESA and is offered by the Science Directorate (D/SCI) of the European Space Agency (ESA). Access to the Cosmos Portal is provided from two sites; ESTEC (Noordwijk, Netherlands) and ESAC (Madrid, Spain).

In the following Terms and Conditions statement:

• 'Portal' means the www.cosmos.esa.int web portal, its content and associated services
• ‘Content’ means all pages, screens, information and materials included in or accessible throughout the Portal (including any content available on any e-mail service)
• ‘you’, ‘your’ and ‘yours’ means you, the person(s) accessing our Portal and related services, and the party on whose behalf you are doing so
• ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ means the European Space Agency (ESA).

Disclaimer

Access to, and use of, the Portal constitutes acceptance of the following general terms and conditions.

Neither ESA nor any other party involved in creating, producing or delivering the portal and its contents shall be liable for any direct, incidental, consequential, indirect or punitive damages arising out of users' access to, or use of, the Portal. The Portal does not guarantee the accuracy of information provided by external sources and accepts no responsibility or liability for any consequences arising from the use of such data.

Though ESA uses the best technical standards to control the Portal, material on the portal may inadvertently include technical inaccuracies or other errors. We should be grateful if users could notify us of any errors or inaccuracies they may find. Please note that users browse and use the Portal at their own risk. ESA does not warrant that the functional aspects of the Portal will be uninterrupted or error free or that this Portal, or the servers that makes it available, are free of viruses or other harmful components. ESA may change material on the Portal without prior notice.

If you’re under the age of 16, you must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to register and use the Cosmos Website. Please have your parent or legal guardian read these terms with you and provide their consent together with you when you register.

It is not permitted to extract, copy or use any personal data from the COSMOS site for any other purpose than that for which it is published or provided.
Doing so may lead to the cancellation of your COSMOS account and potential legal action.

Access and availability of service and links

The Portal may contain links and references to third-party websites. These are provided for the convenience and interest of users and on the part of ESA this implies neither responsibility for, nor approval of, information contained in these websites. ESA makes no warranty, either express or implied, as to the accuracy, availability or content of information, text, graphics which are not under the 'esa.int' domain. ESA has not tested any software located on other websites and does not make any representation as to the quality, safety, reliability or suitability of such software.

Personal Data Privacy

By accessing the Portal, certain information about users, such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, navigation through the Portal, software used and time spent, as well as other similar information, will be stored on ESA servers. These will not specifically identify users and the information will be used internally for traffic analysis only. If users provide unique identifying information, such as name, address and other information on forms stored on the Portal, this information will be used for statistical purposes only and will not be published or made available for general access.

ESA does not sell or rent its Portal users' names, addresses, email addresses or other personal information.

For further details please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Use of IP address

The IP address is a number that is automatically given to your computer when you are surfing on the internet. Servers that host web pages, automatically identify your computer through its IP number. ESA uses IP addresses in order to carry out statistics, however, as IP addresses and personal identification are not linked to each other users remain anonymous.

Use of Cookies

Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to an individual hard drive for record-keeping purposes; passwords are not saved in cookies. Cookies help ESA to know which pages are visited most often and helps ESA to ensure that the Portal responds to users' needs.

If you do not wish to receive a cookie, or if you wish your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, you may use the option on your web browser to disable cookies. Click on the 'help' section of your browser to learn how to change cookie preferences. However, please note that if you disable all cookies you may not be able to take advantage of all the features available on the Portal.

ESA does not use personal identification details transferred through cookies either for promotion or marketing purposes, nor will such information be shared with a third party.

For further details please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Forums and Blogs

From time to time the Portal contains forums and blogs or other services enabling posts and commenting (collectively termed 'forums'). Users agree to use forums only to send and receive messages and materials that are strictly related to the particular forum.

When using an ESA forum, users agree not to do any of the following:

• Users may not download, distribute or otherwise publish through the Portal any content which is libellous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive or in any way violates any laws
• Forums are for non-commercial use only. Users should not distribute or otherwise publish any material containing any solicitation for funding, advertising or solicitation for goods or services without requesting and receiving prior written approval from ESA
• Users shall not delete any author attributions, legal notices, proprietary designations or labels from any file that is downloaded nor falsify the origin or source of software or other material contained in a file that is downloaded.

ESA does not and cannot review every message posted by users on forums and is not responsible for the content of any messages posted. ESA reserves the right to delete, move or edit, at its sole discretion, messages that it deems abusive, defamatory, obscene, in violation of copyright laws or unacceptable. Users shall remain solely responsible for the content of their messages.

Users acknowledge that any submissions may be edited, removed, modified, published, transmitted and displayed by ESA.

Users should be aware that all forums and discussion groups are public and not private communications. Further, users acknowledge that chats, postings, conferences and any other form of communication by other users are not endorsed by ESA, and that such communications shall not be considered as having been reviewed, screened or approved by ESA.

Copyrights

The contents of the Portal are intended for the personal and non-commercial use of its users. ESA grants permission to users to visit the Portal, and to download and copy information, images, documents and materials from the Portal for users' personal non-commercial use. ESA does not grant the right to resell or redistribute any information, documents, images or material from the Portal or to compile or create derivative works from material on the Portal. Use of material on the Portal is subject to the terms and conditions outlined below.

All material published on the Portal is protected by copyright and owned or controlled by ESA or the party credited as the provider of the content, software or other material.

Users may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display or in any way exploit any of the content, software, material or services, in whole or in part, without obtaining prior written authorisation.

Use of ESA Logo

The ESA logo is owned by ESA and protected by trademarks and under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. You may not modify or create derivatives of the ESA logo. Any use, reproduction, publication, display, transmission, making available to the public or exploitation of the ESA logo requires prior written authorisation. For authorisation, please contact: corporatedesign@esa.int
 

RELATED PRIVACY PUBLICATIONS

Please note that alongside this Terms and Conditions statement, we also publish our Cosmos Portal Privacy Policy and our Cosmos Portal Cookie Policy.