Video: Building spaceships
How do you build a spaceship? It's not easy – because space is hard. It's endless vacuum, hot and cold at the same time, streaked with radiation – and you have to fly at eight kilometres per second just to get there.
It takes clever engineering – and costly research and development – to operate in orbit. Space is risky, but past payoffs have been vast. ESA's track record lets us manage that risk, balancing it with chances for rich rewards.
Provided by European Space Agency