The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Friday 13 November the signature of three major industrial contracts to launch new Sentinel missions as part of the Copernicus European Earth observation programme. But fears are emerging about limits to the budget for space policy in the EU.
The Agency announced a contract worth a total of EUR 455 million for CHIME (the Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission), which is primarily dedicated to farm and biodiversity management; EUR 495 million for CIMR (the Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer), which monitors ocean and ice parameters; and finally EUR 389 million for LSTM (the Land Surface Temperature Monitoring Mission), which measures soil temperatures. Only the first tranches have been disbursed (EUR 90, 93 and 95 billion respectively).
The budgetary question has arisen because of the overall budget provisionally agreed between the co-legislators (see EUROPE 12599/2), which falls short of ESA’s expectations, as Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, points out.
“We are missing EUR 2.3 billion for Copernicus compared to the nominal scenario, and the question is now what do we do”, he told EUROPE, recalling that there are six missions planned in total under the Copernicus 2.0 programme. Mr Aschbacher explained that an evaluation will be carried out at the end of 2021 to determine the future of the missions.
“We are now starting an exercise with the European Commission and our Member States: we will go budget line by budget line through the various items to see which ones could be reduced in order to cope with less money”, he continued. “In parallel, of course, we are looking at the options we might find, perhaps outside the space regulation, maybe in Horizon Europe or somewhere else, in order to compensate for some of these shortcomings”.
Norway’s recently expressed interest in joining Galileo and Copernicus could bring in extra money: “It will help, but it won’t cover the whole difference. And the situation with the UK and Switzerland is not known”, says the director.
For Mr Aschbacher, the EU’s dominant position could be challenged by China, which is in the process of developing a Copernicus-like programme with more satellites, and by the United States, particularly with the arrival of the new president, Joe Biden, who could strengthen the earth observation programme in the context of the fight against climate change (a low priority during Donald Trump’s term).
After having a successful ministerial meeting in 2019, with Copernicus receiving EUR 400 million more than the Agency had requested, ESA has been sounding the alarm for many months about the cuts in EU space policy in the next budget cycle (see EUROPE 12409/8). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)