European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher announced that during their ministerial council meeting in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday, 11 and 12 June, ESA member states asked ESA “to make sure that Europe is increasing its resilience and autonomy for its very own purpose to make sure that we have the technologies [...] that we need in the near future.”
“Not only in exploration but also in science, earth observation, and many other domains, [...] we want to increase our resilience [and] autonomy for the missions and activities that we require”, he added when speaking to the media.
Taking the example of the ExoMars astromobile project—whose rover has been named Rosalind Franklin—that could be affected by NASA’s budget cuts, Mr Aschbacher explained that NASA had offered to supply not only the launcher but also the radioisotope heater unit and the braking engine “because, today, we do not have this technology in Europe”. “That’s why, of course, we will engage in Europe to develop these technologies. It will take time”, he stressed.
During their council meeting, [ESA] member states discussed the impact of the American budget proposals that concern NASA and the potential consequences on European activities, which ESA is in the process of evaluating (see EUROPE 13639/26 and 13634/22).
“We have done our homework, and we are doing our homework and analysing what [...] the impact [is] and what [...] options and measures [...] we could take in order to make sure that the investments that have been made by our member states are utilised in the best possible way, maybe redirected if needed, or even new activities that are being [...] initiated”, explained Mr Aschbacher, who also acknowledged that certain activities would have to be frozen in the event of American cancellations.
“We have about 19 missions in common with NASA [...]. We’ve analysed all of those, and we believe that with good planning and with the capabilities we have within our programme, we can potentially mitigate impact there for about 16 of those”, explained ESA Director of Science Carole Mundell. In her opinion, should the American budget proposal be adopted in its current form, recovery measures would be needed for the following missions: LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), EnVision (a future space mission to explore Venus), and NewAthena (which was expected to be the largest X-ray observatory ever built). (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)