The newly elected Director General of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, spoke to Agence Europe and Politico about space policy, including the Financial Framework Partnership Agreement (FFPA), the Secure Connectivity Constellation, the European Launcher Alliance and Space Traffic Management.(Pascal Hansens)
The FFPA will be signed on the 22nd of June. But can you tell us what is in there and what the terms of the agreement are?
It is not yet signed and sealed. It is true that we have agreed on the key cornerstones of the FFPA. The big picture is all agreed.
However, the devil is in the detail. We are now in the midst of this process. I can tell you that the overall agreement is more than 1000 pages long. So, a lot of elements need to be perfectly understood by our Member States...
The signature event is planned for the 22nd of June, together with Thierry Breton, myself and the EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA).
AE-What could be the very last points to be clarified with Member States?
Let me just mention one example. We have agreed that we are establishing a joint office in Brussels, which will host people from the Commission, from ESA and EUSPA on the Galileo/GNSS parts. This joint office, of course, needs to be established.
Now the questions begin: how many people are there? What are the terms of preferences? What is the relation between the organisations? What skills are needed? You know all these levels of details which are not written in the agreement itself, but go hand in hand with it.
How much progress have you made on the 2022 Space Summit?
We have held a lot of discussions with both 'Brussels' (EU institutions, NDLR) and ESA Member States. It is unlikely to be a full-fledged head of State/Government Summit with all the 27+3 Heads of State or Government participating.
Some leaders who have a clear interest in space and in defining an ambition for Europe will be there. I expect they might draft a declaration, which will state what is needed, but without having to go through the whole formality and endorsement process. This is the most efficient way and it might allow for higher ambition.
It could serve as a political guideline or as a political input into the wider discussions on our side in ESA, certainly to prepare the ESA ministerial conference at the end of the year 2022, but also on the EU side.
I would assume that the space summit next year is not the end. This may trigger a follow-up summit, maybe a year and a half later.
Involving significantly more ambition in terms of cash, is that the aim of this Summit?
You are referring to the money, the most difficult of all discussions. What I really want to create is an awareness of what space means literally for politicians in Europe. And it is much more than the space sector. The space sector is feeding a huge segment of our economy: the satellite manufacturing economy and the launcher sector together represent less than 6% of the space economy worldwide. In other words, this sector is crucial to develop the fast-evolving market on satellite-derived services, data or ground equipment.
There is also the strategic dimension. Whether Europe does something or not, the US and China will not stop investing. Europe has to realise that if we are not investing, putting cash on the table, we will be left out. Some people say, if you're not a superpower in space, you cannot be a superpower on the global political landscape, and I think there's a lot of truth in it.
If we don’t invest, the same will happen as happened to Europe in the Dotcom, artificial intelligence or supercomputing domains.
AE-You mentioned in the agenda 2025 that one of your main priorities is to strengthen cooperation with the EU and for the ESA to become the implementing authority. Does it mean that you agree to put a kind of hierarchy into place between the Commission and the ESA in the long run?
I think hierarchy is not the right word, I would rather call it partnership. Sometimes there has been – and still is – some confusion as to who is doing what. I want the ESA to be the technical reference for space activities, so I want to be the agency that develops, implements and operates space programmes.
But I do not want to be a political player. I'm not a politician. I'm a scientist myself and we have many engineers in ESA. This is our strength. For the political part, the Commission is much better placed.
AE-There are a few programmes in the pipeline on the part of the European Commission. One of them is a secure connectivity constellation. What is for you the best formula that could set the European project apart from some of its direct competitors, such as the OneWeb and Starlink ?
So what I've asked my people, i.e. the experts in the Directorate of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications, in particular, is to see how we can support this initiative from an ESA perspective. We had subscriptions from the last ESA Ministerial in this domain. We will see how we can contribute or participate in Europe’s objectives by aligning these activities along an overall framework of secure connectivity, of course always in agreement with our member states. Now, we are defining the next ESA Ministerial at the end of 2022 and, again, I want the ESA to provide a strong support to the secure connectivity initiative of Thierry Breton. This of course will need more discussion with Brussels on the overall ambition of the framework.
AE-Breton is pushing for a European launcher alliance. In your agenda, launchers are a big point and you highlight the use of reusable launchers. Some say that the market is too small for reusable launchers, in Europe at least. What is your point of view on that?
The reusability makes sense if you have a certain volume of launches. We need to increase the number of launches for the constellation, for example. The secure connectivity constellation, for example, serves its own purpose, obviously, but also has a very welcome side effect of increasing the number of required launches. So, this addresses two problems at once.
AE-What do you think could be the formula of this launcher alliance?
We plan to have a joint meeting with the European Commission to discuss exactly that. This is one of the results of the reinforced cooperation between Brussels and ESA. You may remember that the Commission has issued a questionnaire in the past, without ESA involvement, but now we have agreed that on this topic, we work together.
And in fact, the Commission agreed with ESA to organise a workshop in the coming weeks. I'm aiming to have a high-level meeting, hopefully before the summer break, with the three countries with high interest in the launcher sector (Germany, France and Italy), plus Breton and ourselves, to address some of the main cornerstones of the alliance.
So, we hope to move closer together. For me, this is important, as we need to have a clear picture to prepare decisions for the ESA Ministerial next year. So, I would like to get this settled sooner rather than later, also taking into account the general elections in Germany. We would like to make sure that we are not in a position where we are blocked because of the transition of governments.
AE-Space traffic management is an up-and-coming topic. How long do you think it could take for Europe to get its own catalogue and what could be the process?
Europe has more and more space assets of its own. In order to protect them, we should build up a system to monitor objects in space. Even if Europe started today, building obviously on existing capabilities, it would take years to have a system comparable to that of the US. And this is only the technology part.
The second part is the political aspect and the need for strategic autonomy. Politicians are increasingly underlining this point.
So, yes, Europe should invest in both aspects. That's why it was raised by the Portuguese EU Presidency as an important topic. On the technical part, that's where the ESA can provide expertise, of course in coordination and as a complement to the Member States’ assets.