The European Space Agency (ESA) is the intergovernmental body that, since 1975, has coordinated the civil space programmes of its member states: launchers (the Ariane programme), scientific, telecommunications and Earth-observation satellites, human spaceflight and exploration. Formed from the merger of ELDO and ESRO, it is headquartered in Paris, with its main technical centre at ESTEC (Noordwijk, the Netherlands). Its Scientific and Technical Publications Branch issues the ESA Special Publications (SP) series, which gathers monographs, conference proceedings and reference works on European space history and activities.