Description

The Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales (CNES) is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are in Paris and it is placed under the supervision of the French ministries of Defence and of Research. It was founded in 1961, and presently has a workforce of about 2400, of which 1800 are engineers. CNES is helping to foster new technologies that will benefit society, focusing on: access to space, civil applications of space, Science and Technology research, and security and defence.