Privacy notice
The European Space Agency (hereafter “the Agency” or “ESA” or “We”) is committed to protecting Personal Data in line with the ESA Framework on Personal Data Protection (herein the “ESA PDP Framework”) available at: http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Law_at_ESA/Highlights_of_ESA_rules_and_regulations
composed of:
– the Principles of Personal Data Protection adopted by ESA Council on 13 June 2017
– the Rules of Procedure for the Data Protection Supervisory Authority adopted by ESA Council on 13 June 2017
– the Policy on Personal Data Protection (including its Annex entitled “Governance Scheme of the ESA’s Personal Data Protection”) adopted by the Director General of ESA on 1 March 2022 (“ESA PDP Policy”).
This notice is intended to describe why and how Your personal data are collected and processed by or on behalf of ESA as Data Controller, on the initiative of the ESA above-mentioned Department, as well as what rights You have in relation to Your personal data. It also informs You about the contact details of the Data Protection Officer. This privacy notice was last updated on 22/03/2025. It must be read in conjunction with the ESA PDP Framework and other privacy notices referred to herein.
Cookie notice
The European Space Agency (herein the “Agency” or “ESA”) is an intergovernmental organisation established by its Convention opened for signature in Paris on 30 May 1975 having its headquarters located at 8-10 rue Mario Nikis, CS 45741, 75738 Paris Cedex 15, France.
Protection of Personal Data is of great importance for ESA, therefore this Cookie Notice aims to ensure lawfulness and transparency by explaining the cookies and similar technologies that we use in the ESA public website, what they do, what your choices regarding their use are and how you can contact us.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are small bits of data that a website may send to the browser on your device, for instance mobile device or computer, upon your visit to the website. Cookies may allow a website to recognise an individual’s device and store some information about the user.
What are the different types of cookies?
A cookie can be classified by its lifespan and the domain to which it belongs. By lifespan, a cookie is either a:
- session cookie which is erased when the user closes the browser or;
- persistent cookie which remains on the user’s computer/device for a pre-defined period of time;
As for the domain to which it belongs, there are either:
- first-party cookies which are set by the web server of the visited page and share the same domain;
- third-party cookies stored by a different domain to the visited page’s domain. This can happen when the webpage references a file, such as JavaScript, located outside its domain.
The European Space Agency (herein the “Agency” or “ESA”) is an intergovernmental organisation established by its Convention opened for signature in Paris on 30 May 1975 having its headquarters located at 8-10 rue Mario Nikis, CS 45741, 75738 Paris Cedex 15, France.
Protection of Personal Data is of great importance for ESA, therefore this Cookie Notice aims to ensure lawfulness and transparency by explaining the cookies and similar technologies that we use in the ESA public website, what they do, what your choices regarding their use are and how you can contact us.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are small bits of data that a website may send to the browser on your device, for instance mobile device or computer, upon your visit to the website. Cookies may allow a website to recognise an individual’s device and store some information about the user.
What are the different types of cookies?
A cookie can be classified by its lifespan and the domain to which it belongs. By lifespan, a cookie is either a:
- session cookie which is erased when the user closes the browser or;
- persistent cookie which remains on the user’s computer/device for a pre-defined period of time;
As for the domain to which it belongs, there are either:
- first-party cookies which are set by the web server of the visited page and share the same domain;
- third-party cookies stored by a different domain to the visited page’s domain. This can happen when the webpage references a file, such as JavaScript, located outside its domain.
Which cookies do we use?
Strictly Necessary or Essential Cookies: these cookies are strictly necessary for the website to provide the services that you requested and/or for the solely purpose of the transmission of the services and/or the website. Without these cookies you would not be able to access the services or the website and therefore this category cannot be disabled.| Source | First Party or Third Party cookie? | Cookie Name | Session or Persistent cookie? | Type of personal data collected | Purpose | Expires |
| Web server | ESA | (arbitrary) | Session | None | Web server session | Session time |
| Web server | ESA | PHPSESSIONID and ESADAMSessId | Session | None | Web server session | Session time |
| Web server | ESA | cc_cookie_accept | Persistent | None | Consent for cookies acceptance | 1 year |
| Web server | ESA | cc_cookie_decline | Persistent | None | Consent for cookies acceptance | 1 year |
| Source | First Party or Third Party cookie? | Cookie Name | Session or Persistent cookie? | Type of personal data collected | Purpose | Expires |
| Web server | ESA | is_logged_in | Session | None | User has successfully logged | Session time |
| Web server | Matomo | _pk_ref | ||||
| _pk_cvar | ||||||
| mtm_consent, mtm_consent_removed mtm_cookie_consent | Asking users for consent | |||||
| matomo_ignore | When a user doesn’t want to be tracked | |||||
| matomo_sessid | When use the opt-out feature to prevent CSRF security issues | |||||
| _pk_hsr | For session recording | |||||
| _pk_id – 13 months | used to store a few details about the user such as the unique visitor ID | |||||
| _pk_ref – 6 months | used to store the attribution information, the referrer initially used to visit the website | |||||
| _pk_ses, _pk_cvar, _pk_hsr – 30 minutes | short lived cookies used to temporarily store data for the visit | |||||
| _pk_testcookie | short lived cookies used to temporarily store data for the visit | |||||
| mtm_cookie_consent | are created with an expiry date of 30 years to remember that consent was given (or removed) by the user |
Analytics Cookies: these cookies collect information about how you use our website and help us, for example, to understand what is of interest to our users and measure how effective our communications are. In this way, we can adapt the content of our website more specifically to your needs and thereby improve what we offer you, for example by ensuring that you can easily find what you are looking for.
In this website we use the following analytics cookies:
Matomo:
Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform, places cookies on your device that help us to improve the website by collecting and reporting information on how you use the website:
- Information is collected in a pseudonymised form. Matomo’s random unique visitor ID, enables the distinction between the website user’s first visit and subsequent visits.
- Moroever, Matomo seeks to: comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation of 27 April 2016 (GDPR); to protect end-user personal data (opt-out mechanisms for users; encrypting analytics data communication; internet protocol (IP) pseudonymization mechanism for automated masking of a portion of the IP address used to prevent user identification).
- Matomo generates analytical reports on the basis of the pseudonymised data. These reports are distributed to ESA, which may be required to analyse, develop and maintain the website.
- ESA uses Matomo to track the visitors’ path in the platform. Information and navigation data gathered by Matomo are just accessible to ESA employees.
Social Media Plugin Cookies: These cookies enable you to share our website content via your social media account(s) or easily share information with others.
This website relies on the AddToAny service to allow visitors to bookmark and share website content on a variety of social media sites. Visitors who use the AddToAny service to share content do not need to register or provide any personal information. The AddToAny service providers collect non-personal data, including the aggregate and summary statistics on browsers and usage patterns. AddToAny also uses non-personal data to manage the service efficiently and diagnose server problems. Although AddToAny offers some analytics and usage data to ESA, these reports do not include any personally identifiable information. The reports are password protected and only available to members of ESA and other designated staff requiring this information to perform their duties. The AddToAny Privacy policy is available here.
The social plugins allow that social media website to receive information that you have visited website and share the content. Please note this is an optional feature to use.
Without these cookies you would not be able to activate the sharing or liking functionalities to link our content to your social media accounts.
However, if you desire to disable Social Madia Plugin Cookies, please only accept the “essential cookies” the first time you visit the ESA Portal, then Social Madia plugins will be disabled, and social media cookies will not be stored.
Please note that we do not enable social media tracking, such as behavioural advertising, analytics or market research, however we have no control over any content or decisions taken by the social media companies. For more information about social plugins from other social media websites you should refer to their Privacy and Cookies statements.
Third Party Websites’ Cookies
Certain third-party features on our website require cookies. When using our website, you may encounter embedded content which we do not have control of, and cookies that were not placed by us. For example, when a video player or social media content is embedded on a page, it may set cookies. We do not have control over the placement of cookies by other websites, even if you are directed to them from our website.
How do you withdraw your consent and delete the cookies?
Using Your Browser: all the cookies used on our website can be disabled through your browser. To disable cookies through your browser, follow your browser instructions. Normally within the ‘Help’, ‘Tools’ or ‘Edit’ menus in your browser. Please note that blocking or deleting cookies may lead to reduced functionality of some features on the website. Therefore, the website may not function optimally without enabled cookies, in particular strictly necessary and essential cookies.
Changes to our Cookies Notice
All future changes we make to our Cookie Notice will be posted on this website.
Contact
In case of any question, you can contact ESA DPO, as first point of contact, by sending an email to: dpo@esa.int
Partners
