The European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) is the ESA's centre for space science, which means Astronomy as well as Solar System exploration. It is located in Villanueva de la Cañada, close to Madrid in Spain and hosts the science operation centres for all ESA astronomy and planetary missions together with their scientific archives.

Space telescopes are humankind’s eyes in the heavens: from their superior observing positions high above the Earth’s atmosphere, they provide us with astounding views of the Universe. ESAC is where those views are first studied – data on black holes and distant galaxies, from neighbouring planets and even from planets far beyond the Solar System are beamed back to the Madrid countryside. ESAC is thereby the ‘home’ of ESA’s space-telescope and planetary missions, the place from where their science operations are conducted, and where all of the scientific data that they produce are archived and made accessible to the world. ESAC is therefore one of ESA’s centres of excellence for space science. Missions represented a ESAC include (in alphabetical order) AKARI, Gaia, Herschel, INTEGRAL, LISA Pathfinder, Mars Express, Planck, Rosetta, Venus Express, and XMM-Newton.

In addition to deep space and solar system exploration ESAC hosts the data processing of SMOS, a satellite observing the earth, as well as the Space Situation Awareness (SSA) programm.