Visiting the ESA SPACE Science Faculty

Collaboration visits

The ESA Science Faculty provides support for scientific visitors to ESAC (Madrid, Spain), ESTEC (Noordwijk, Netherlands) or STScI (Baltimore, Maryland, USA) with the aim of fostering ongoing and building new science collaborations with the community. The Faculty may cover expenses incurred during the visit, such as travel costs from/to their home institution and support for lodging and meals.

All proposals need to be scientifically justified and should usually result in a tangible outome (such as a paper plan, observation proposal or publication etc.) commensurate with the duration of the visit. Visitors can also foreseen to give a seminar talk during their stay (although an available time slot can not be guarenteed by default). Visits lasting more than two weeks 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.

Interested scientists should first identify a Faculty host and discuss their proposed visit. The visitor can then follow the application instructions on the Visitor Funding Application page.

For more details, please visit the ESA Space Science Faculty Visitor Funding Application page.

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.