On Thursday 9 January, the Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), Josef Aschbacher, said that Europe needed to step up its ambitions in space, given the fact that the Agency’s budget is three times smaller than that of NASA.
“Our Member States and the European Commission can be proud and pleased with what ESA has done and delivered with the funds it has. Europe must increase its ambitions”, he explained to the media. Europe invests just 0.06% of its GDP in public space programmes, compared with 0.26% for the United States and 0.17% for Russia.
The Director General pointed out that space was becoming increasingly strategic and had a role to play in terms of security. “It is in the countries’ interests to ensure that funding increases accordingly”, pleaded Mr Aschbacher.
ESA’s budget for 2025 is €7.7 billion, of which 22.3% comes from the EU and 62.6% from the 23 ESA members - Slovenia joined the Agency in January (see EUROPE 13435/17). Among the members, France is the biggest contributor (1.074 billion, or 21.3%, ahead of Germany with 951.6 million and Italy with 800 million).
ESA has a busy programme for 2025, a year which will be marked by the Ministerial Conference on 26 and 27 November in Bremen. The Agency’s strategy for 2040 is due to be published in the first half of this year. This strategy, which will succeed Agenda 2025 (see EUROPE 12735/9), will cover the Agency’s objectives for this year and the next. These include protecting the planet and the climate; ‘exploring and discovering’, including the Moon and Mars; strengthening Europe’s autonomy and resilience, including measures to assess and prepare for a possible European resilience initiative from space; stimulating growth and competitiveness; and ‘inspiring Europe’, including the launch of a new networking initiative with European higher education institutions.
This year should also see the launch of six Earth observation satellites, including four Copernicus Sentinels.
After several years of “launcher crisis”, Ariane 6 and Vega-C are expected to provide five and four launches respectively in 2025, and the ESA is expected to launch the European launcher challenge call for tenders in February, with the aim of having the funding proposals ready for the ministerial conference.
The first data from the Euclid telescope should be published in the first quarter (see EUROPE 13214/28) and the Iris² programme will continue its development (see EUROPE 13546/14). Similarly, the Galileo public regulated service is expected to reach its initial operational capability in the third or fourth quarter of 2025, and the Galileo satellite emergency alert service is expected to be operational in the same period.
The year got off to a good start with the publication on 9 January of images of the BepiColombo mission’s sixth flyby of Mercury the previous day. This was the last gravity-assist manoeuvre needed to place it in orbit around the planet at the end of 2026. The spacecraft flew 295 kilometres above Mercury’s North Pole and the images show potentially icy craters, with the ground permanently in shadow, as well as the vast sunlit plains of the north, according to the ESA.
The Director General also hoped that defence integration in space would increase this year, but pointed out that it was up to the Member States to decide. He explained that the Agency not only had the necessary legal framework, but also the capacity to deal with decisions taken by the Member States. “The ESA is ready to commit”, he added. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)