On 31 March 2016, Johann-Dietrich Woerner, Director General of European Space Agency (ESA), paid an official visit to NSSC and met with Prof. WU Ji, Director General of NSSC. During the bilateral meeting, Prof. WU introduced the ongoing Chinese space science satellite missions as well as those under intensive study and both sides also exchanged views on hotspot issues in space science and exploration.

After the meeting, Mr. Woerner delivered a lecture entitled Space 4.0, which attracted more than 100 audiences from NSSC and other institutes. Mr. Woerner enumerated different stages of space exploration human being has gone through in the course of history and put forward the concept of "space 4.0" with distinctive feature of international cooperation. He stressed the role of ESA in the era of space 4.0 and touched upon three areas that international cooperation can grow and prosper: frequent LEO activities, China space station and the moon village.

During the Q&A session, Mr. Woerner answered a batch of intriguing questions. Compared with other major national space agencies, he said that ESA's advantages lies in its culture diversity, which determines ESA's open policy on international cooperation, scientific data etc. Mr. Woerner answered questions such as how ESA makes its space policy and how much can China get involved in the moon village.

This the first time that Mr. Woerner visited China after he stepped into office on 1st July 2015 as the DG of ESA. Previously, he was Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), from March 2007 to June 2015, and served as Chairman of the ESA Council from 2012 to 2014.