12 European Space Agency

Like NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) is a science and technology agency that primarily develops research-oriented satellites. Throughout its history, ESA has seen the value of sharing this data with the research community. However, the development of ESA's first nonmeteorological Earth observing satellite corresponded with a global trend of commercial remote sensing activity, and ESA's early data policies reflected its own interest in participating in this trend. ESA developed policies that restricted access to data to allow commercial sales. Even with regard to research access, ESA placed restrictions on access, such as the need to submit full research proposals as a requirement for data access, which further limited data use. As commercial efforts proved to be less lucrative than hoped and evidence suggested existing restrictions were hindering research use, ESA gradually decreased the amount of data sold and increased the accessibility of its data for researchers and others. A breakthrough in ESA's data policy came in 2009, when it first adopted an open data policy in support of the European Copernicus program. In the following years, ESA applied this policy to nearly all of its satellite data.