On this day in space: Dec. 19, 1961: France creates a space agency

On Dec. 19, 1961, France's space agency was born! After more than a decade of experimenting with rockets and missiles under the country's department of defense, President Charles de Gaulle finally decided that France needed an official governmental space research and signed the creation of the Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales, which in English is the National Center for Space Studies.

A metal ball surrounded by metal rings sits on a grassy lawn in front of a glass building with the letters CNES on the front — The CNES facility in Toulouse which is part of France's space agency. (Image credit: Guyblade (talk) - self-made, CC BY-SA 3.0)

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.

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