During a press briefing following the deliberations of the 300th ESA Council on Thursday, 21 October, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher explained the terms for the European Space Summit that will be held in the first quarter of 2022 and how it would be conducted.
Questioned by EUROPE during a press briefing, the director general confirmed that preparation for the summit (see EUROPE 12693/10) was discussed during the Council. He explained that the terms were clarified by the French delegation on Wednesday: the event will be held in Toulouse on 16 February 2022. France will, in fact, be the host country given that it will hold the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU and the co-presidency of the ESA Council.
As for how the summit will be conducted, it will follow, on the whole, a fairly standard format. In the morning, EU Member States will meet in the ‘Space’ Council format; this will be followed by a working lunch during which various projects will be presented. Then, it will be ESA Member States’ turn (as well as that of observer countries) to meet during the afternoon.
The day will end with a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron, who will provide a summary of the summit.
Copernicus and Brexit
Mr Aschbacher confirmed to EUROPE that the issue concerning the Copernicus Earth observation programme funding (see EUROPE 12807/15) that is preventing a memorandum of understanding from being signed between the UK government and the European Commission was discussed when an update on the framework convention was given during the meeting. The director general indicated that ESA was helping the European Commission find options as quickly possible should it not be possible to reach an agreement before the 30 September deadline.
Appointment of three new directors
The ESA Council appointed three new directors on this occasion. Géraldine Naja was appointed to head the new Directorate of Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement. Her objective, according to a statement, will be to help European companies establish themselves among the world’s leading companies in the space sector. She will take up her post on 1 November.
Simonetta Cheli, the head of interinstitutional relations (see EUROPE 11902/17), was appointed Director of Earth Observation Programmes (a post previously held by Josef Aschbacher). She will take up her post on 1 January 2022. Finally, Francisco Javier Benedicto Ruiz was appointed Director of Navigation. He will take up his post on 16 February 2022, that being the day of the space summit.
European space mission to bring extraterrestrial life back to Earth
During this meeting, Mr Aschbacher presented the High Level Advisory Group’s recommendations, which are structured around three “accelerators”. The first concerns establishing a rapid European response to crises. The second is dedicated to environmental and climate issues. The third aims to protect European infrastructure in space.
In addition, he introduced two “inspirational ideas” coming into play in the outlining of the future of European space policy. For instance, he mentioned one focused on developing European manned spaceflight and another devoted to a space mission to go collect samples from an icy moon in the solar system (notably mentioning Enceladus, which orbits Saturn) and bring them back to Earth. The aim is to detect a primitive form of life (hoping for traces of bacteria) and, if possible, to detect possible nucleic acids.
To find out more, ESA has put a new dedicated platform online: https://bit.ly/2XyWe8B (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)