[etiennebausson]

France has its own agency, the CNES (though most research go through ESA nowaday), and had it for a long time.

Its launchers are still the best when it comes to reliability I believe, though not competitive on cost anymore since the advent of spaceX (Ariane6's first flight was in 2024 and its price per kilogram is just an order of magnitude worse than spaceX). Definitely missed a step.

Still, France has an active and ongoing space program since about 1970.

[rsynnott]

The Ariane family is, at least formally, ESA, not CNES, tho. The UK also has its own agency, but launches via ESA (or private). I think it would be probably fair to say that Ariane is more French than anything else, but it’s not strictly a French project.

Confusingly, the EU also has its own agency, though it doesn’t, as far as I can see, do much outside of operating Galileo. ESA, though obviously very EU aligned, isn’t an EU agency, and has non-EU/EEA/former-EU members (notably, _Canada_).