In a report published on Thursday 23 March, a 12-member independent advisory group led by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Europe could not afford to miss out on human space exploration.
“Let’s be bold, let’s put Europe at the forefront of space exploration”, Rasmussen said in a speech, before going on to say that “if we don’t, we will fall behind and become dependent on others”.
The experts, therefore, ask the European Space Agency (ESA) to prepare scenarios to increase Europe’s ambition in space exploration.
The report, entitled “Revolution Space: Europe’s Mission for Space Exploration”, states that Europe does not have an independent astronaut launch capability and is therefore dependent on non-European partners to send humans into space, threatening its future as a credible player on the global economic and geopolitical stage.
According to the experts, Europe needs to “significantly” increase its investment in human exploration and develop its own human spaceflight capabilities in order to reap the full benefits of a booming space economy. They call for the preparation of a plan to go to the moon in the next 10 years.
Experts also call for more financial investment in space exploration. In their view, this would attract the best talent, maintain European excellence and unite Europe around a grand vision. The average GDP share of space investment in Europe is only one-fifteenth of NASA’s exploration budget.
The report also highlights the exponential growth in the total value of global space. It states that “the cost of inaction would far outweigh the necessary investment to establish Europe as a strong and independent space actor”. The current global space economy is estimated to be worth between €350 and €450 billion; independent forecasts predict it will reach €1,000 billion by 2040.
The group also calls for a new procurement model.
ESA has set up a working group of its Council to examine the report’s recommendations and to prepare for the next Space Summit on 6 November in Seville.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/5z6 (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)