It was developed with the aim to delivering space access technology, and more specifically to facilitate the deployment of European-wide telecommunication and meteorological satellites into orbit.

In addition, Britain decided to pull out of the ELDO organisation, and thus Europa, to focus on the rival all-British Black Arrow launcher instead.

They re-formed as the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1974 and proceeded to develop the Ariane family of launchers, which would prove to be a commercial success with hundreds of launches performed.

During the early 1950s, the British government had identified the need to develop its own series of ballistic missiles due to advances being made in this field, particularly by the Soviet Union and the United States.

[4][5] Following several launches, the Black Knight came to be regarded as a successful programme, having produced a relatively low cost and reliable rocket, and thus there was impetus present to proceed with further development of the platform.

"[7][8] While development of the Blue Streak missile continued with the view of using it as a capable satellite launcher, the rate of work was substantially slowed.

Hill wrote that this declaration had been made: "Mainly, I suspect, to minimise the political damage that ensued from the [Blue Streak] decision".

[8] In 1957, a proposed design, known as Black Prince, was put forward by Desmond King-Hele and Doreen Gilmour of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) during 1957.

[10] In 1960, the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough was given the job of considering how the Blue Streak missile could be adapted as a satellite launching vehicle, in conjunction with other rocket stages.

Accordingly, it was decided that it would be preferable for other nations to be involved in the programme in order to share the burden of the costs and to be predisposed to making use of the launcher.

[14] As early as 1961, Peter Thorneycroft, the Minister of Aviation, had been giving some thought on the topic of a joint European project, the main intention of this ambition being to not waste the advanced development of the Blue Streak, and to also not leave space exploration to the Americans and Russians.

[18] Headquartered in Paris, the founding members of the ELDO were Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany; while Australia, Spain, Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden had chosen to decline participation.

[19] The ELDO not only served the purpose of harnessing Blue Streak, but also fulfilled ambitions to produce a European rival to the American and Soviet launchers being developed and deployed at that time.

[14] In response to the rise of the ELDO initiative, work on the competing Black Prince launcher gradually came to a halt as attention from the British government drifted towards European collaboration.

[21] According to Hill, the Black Prince and Europa were comparable launchers capable to delivering similar performance and roughly the same payloads, the overlap leaving little room for both programmes.

[22] In January 1965, the French thought the initial three-stage rocket design would not be sufficiently advanced to carry the size of payloads required, while another rocket – referred to as Eldo B – which featured liquid hydrogen-fuelled second and third stages, came to be viewed as being a superior design, partly due to reduce the cost of the project via the elimination of transition test launchers.

By 1970, the project was under a perceived economic threat from America's offer to fly satellites for foreign powers on a reimbursable basis.

That agreement had been signed between ESRO and NASA on 30 December 1966 and by 1970 it was becoming clear that the advantage in having a national launch vehicle was insufficient to justify the cost.

In 1972, NASA approved development of the reusable Space Shuttle, which at that time was largely perceived to eventually offer greater savings over the launching of satellites using an expendable system.

[21] By 1969, the ELDO was beginning to realize that dividing work up by country led to not enough overall collaboration and had resulted in a disjointed framework of planning.

Notably, in November 1971, the West Germans publicly blamed the failure and explosion of Europa 2 upon immense divisions within ELDO.

Although assembled by ERNO in Bremen, the engine was made by Société d'Etudes pour la Propulsion par Réaction (SEPR), part of Snecma in Villaroche.

Tests were conducted by Australia's Weapons Research Establishment and the French Laboratoire de Recherche en Balistique et Aérodynamique (based at Vernon).

At 11:12 pm GMT on 29 November 1968, the first three-stage Europa 1 launcher failed to put a 550 pounds (250 kg) Italian satellite-model into orbit.