CNES (nonfiction)

The National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) (French: Centre national d'études spatiales) is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is under the supervision of the French Ministries of Defence and Research.

It operates from the Toulouse Space Center and Guiana Space Centre, but also has payloads launched from space centres operated by other countries. The president of CNES is Jean-Yves Le Gall. CNES is member of Institute of Space, its Applications and Technologies. As of April 2018, CNES has the second largest national budget—€2.438 billion—of all the world's civilian space programs, after only NASA.

• CNES @ Wikipedia