ESA, which came into being through the desire for a shared effort by the countries of Europe, has not been content with setting up just its own programmes. It soon initiated cooperative ventures with other space nations, including the United States, Japan, the USSR and, today, Russia. In this way, major programmes have been run jointly, such as Spacelab, ISEE, IUE, Ulysses, Hubble and soon Cassini/Huygens and the International Space Station. In the International Space Station programme, ESA is one of the international partners associated with Canada and Japan to the USA and Russia.
But co-operation between ESA and its partners does not stop there : the Agency has had a consistent presence in many other programmes. ESA's international cooperation is not limited to the traditional space nation partners, but also takes in developing countries, including the setting up of a network for transmitting weather and environmental data for the African countries.