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Government space agencies are established by governments of countries or regional groupings of countries to establish a means for advocating for and/or engaging in activities related to outer space, exploitation of space systems, and space exploration. The listings summarize all countries and regional authorities that have established space agencies. The listings established a comparative summary of demonstrated capabilities across the countries that have invested in the pursuit of space-based objectives.
Government space agency organizations are established with objectives that include national prestige, exploitation of remote sensing information, communications, education, and economic development. These agencies tend to be civil in nature (vs military) and serve to advance the benefits of exploitation and/or exploration of space. Government agencies span the spectrum from ancient organizations with small budgets to mature national or regional enterprises such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States, the European Space Agency (ESA) which coordinates for more than 20 constituent countries, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos) of Russia, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and the China National Space Agency (CNSA).
The space agency listings are segregated to enable identification of subsets of the complete list that have advanced to higher levels or technical or programmatic proficiency in accordance with the following:
- Establishment of agency, initial exploitation of space-based systems
- Development of launch capability
- Capacity for extraterrestrial exploration
- Demonstration of human spaceflight capability across one or more of these domains
The four listings identify a technological progression in complexity and capacity that historically aligned to the developments that occurred during the 20th century space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is not intended to offer that this is the only path to advanced space faring status; variations and adaptations are expected and are likely to occur based on the technological capabilities that are available to today as opposed to 50 or more years ago. For each identified "Demonstrated capability" a reference is included to that program's first demonstration of the technical capacity or capability to meet the defined objective.
The fifth listing identifies countries that are considering or are developing space agency organizations but have not ratified formation or operation as of yet.
Note as well that the demonstrated capabilities represent the national (or regional) capacity to achieve the identified objective. These listings do not attempt to determine which programs were uniquely or solely funded by the space agency itself. For each listing, the short name or acronym identified is the English version, with the native language version below. The date of the founding of the space agency is the date of first operations where applicable. If the space agency is no longer running, then the date when it was terminated. Additionally, the strategic nature of many space programs result in cooperation between civil agency and military organizations to meet unique staff and technical proficiencies required to support space programs given the geographic expanse required to ensure successful operation.
List of space agencies
As of 2024,[update] 74 different government space agencies are in existence, including 68 national space agencies and six international agencies. Initial competencies demonstrated include funding and nomination of a candidate to serve as astronaut, cosmonaut, or taikonaut with the countries/organizations executing human spaceflight solutions. Other demonstrated capabilities include operation of a satellite (e.g. a communications or remote sensing system) largely developed and/or delivered by a third party, domestic development of a satellite system, and capacity to recover a science payload from a sub-orbital or orbital mission. Seven space agencies (six national, one international) have demonstrated all four of those capabilities.
