How do you evaluate the scientific performance of the ESA's Science Programme missions? In this book, we report on a systematic study of certain metrics related to publication output and their evolution with time to provide insights into mission successes and the communities exploiting the data provided by the Science Programme’s missions. In addition, we examine the outcomes of the announcements of observing opportunities for ESA’s observatory missions, INTEGRAL, Herschel and XMM-Newton to provide insights into the evolutions of the user communities with time, location and gender.



Finally, we examine the provision of payload elements for ESA’s Science Programme missions. We use the number of payload investigators to give insights into the levels of contribution and exploitation of the different ESA Member States.



This book is open access under a CC BY license.