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The French Space Program is more often referred to as the CNES. CNES stands for Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (National Space Research Centre). This program was started back in 1961 by the French government in hopes to propel the French and their scientific community to the helm of outer space research. The CNES works closely with other space programs held by other nations, such as the United States, Russia, Japan and the ESA, or European Space Agency. Along with these nations, many past joint ventures have been accomplished, as well as many future ventures to come. The CNES’s main role in the space program is to very carefully analyze both the technical and economical angles of any and all proposed space projects presented to them by the government. In other words, it is their duty to decide whether the proposed project is even capable of being accomplished with the current technology on hand, and then also decide the estimated cost of this project and if it is worth investing X amount of millions of dollars. Once this overall breakdown of a project has occurred, if the proposal is approved, the CNES then oversees the development stages all the way through the operational stages of the project. The CNES also t