Space is gradually moving from a “trajectory” logic to a “territory” logic in which the European Union must position itself, according to André-Hubert Roussel, CEO of the ArianeGroup, during an exchange with a group of journalists, on Friday 9 July, at the ArianeGroup offices near Paris, alongside Stéphane Israël, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace.
Faced with increasingly aggressive international competition in the field of space launchers, particularly from across the Atlantic with the emblematic SpaceX, the two men hammered home the same message: the Union must have real political ambition to support the European space sector, otherwise it would risk mortgaging its sovereignty in the long term.
“I strongly believe that SpaceX is an instrument of US space domination, especially against China”, Mr Roussel told reporters. He emphasised the key role of States in the multilateral diplomatic game to counterbalance the dominance of one actor. He added: “We do not want to be dependent on the US or China for access to space”.
The competition is unfair, the two men point out. The US government has a policy of supporting its sector through the ‘Buy American Act’, which requires the purchase of domestically produced goods for direct purchases by the US federal government.
Unfair competition
“We don’t have a Buy European Act”, Mr Roussel regretted. He noted, however, certain provisions in the new Space Programme Regulation, which recently entered into force (see EUROPE 12726/10).
“The big difference is that NASA and the DoD [the US Department of Defense - editor’s note] buy 10 or 7 year contracts. For the last year, the US DoD has awarded contracts for 34 launchers”, he said.
Stéphane Israël, for his part, explained that the US government has limited the award of launches to two suppliers in order to make them more robust, particularly for export. In addition, he recalled that the estimated average price of a SpaceX launcher in this public order is $160 million. However, “this price has absolutely nothing to do with the price offered to commercial customers [commercial prices remain secret but are well below $160 million - editor’s note]. The launch of a Falcon Heavy in 2020 has even been awarded [a contract for] €316 million”, he said.
“So there is a clear discrepancy on the international market, that the Commission, as the first institutional customer, wants to rebalance”, said the CEO of ArianeGroup. He referred, in particular, to the order aggregation commitments of the Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, in connection with the future European ‘secure constellation connectivity’ (see EUROPE 12743/5).
Cost reduction
The other objective is to drastically reduce launcher costs by rationalising their construction and making them modular (the Ariane 6 boosters being the first stage of the small Vega-C launcher).
The future Ariane 6 launcher should thus cost 40% less than Ariane 5. Its production and assembly will be rationalised: assembly in Kourou (the Guiana space centre) will be reduced to less than 10 days, compared with 30 at present.
The objective is to be able to rapidly reach a production of 12 European launchers per year. However, the precise operation of the two launchers is to be discussed at a European Space Agency meeting on Tuesday 13 July.
In the medium term, ArianeGroup is developing a Prometheus engine, partly 3D printed, which should be on the test bench by the end of 2021. This engine will equip the future European reusable rocket stage demonstrator Themis. Commissioning is planned for the end of this decade.
European Launchers Alliance
Asked by EUROPE about the results of the first meeting between the space industry and the Commissioner for Internal Market (see EUROPE 12756/21), Stephane Israël said it was a positive “first step”, but that more would be needed.
For the latter, the ‘secure constellation connectivity’ has a role to play in filling the public order book. When asked how to secure new funding, Mr Israël pinned his hopes on, among other things, the European Space Agency (ESA) ministerial meeting in 2022 (see EUROPE 12735/9) and on a gradual expansion of market demand.
The need for international rules
“We are at the very beginning of the new space era”, said André-Hubert Roussel, who expects to see an expansion of economic and defence activity in the sector.
Before adding: “In fact, space is becoming a territory, like oceans or like America, which became at one point a new territory, where you have to have transporters. We are transporters in space”.
As space activity explodes with the deployment of vast constellations in low orbit (42,000 satellites for the US Starlink, 600 satellites for the Anglo-Indian OneWeb, more than 3,200 satellites for Amazon, etc.), the need to track objects in orbit and organise traffic in orbit is becoming increasingly urgent.
“If you have thousands of vehicles (in orbit), you have to organise them”, Mr Roussel said. He explained that the space sector was facing the same evolution as the automotive sector. “In the beginning, there were no stop signs or red lights”.
ArianeGroup has thus acquired a space surveillance system, coupled with the public catalogue of US objects. The group is currently expanding its network to provide more detailed monitoring of objects in orbit.
It has been appointed to coordinate a consortium of 24 partners in the SAURON project, which aims to develop sensors to characterise and identify satellites in orbit (see EUROPE 12752/26). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)