On Wednesday 26 November, the Director General of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, proposed a budget of €1.35 billion for 2026-2029 for a dual-use programme called ‘European Resilience from Space’ (ERS), developed in cooperation with the European Commission (see EUROPE 13740/14). This represents 5% of the budget requested by ESA for the next three years.
“ERS, with its three equally important components - Earth observation; positioning, navigation and timing (PNT); and secure connectivity - will provide a joint crisis response and intelligence infrastructure”, explained the Director General.
Of the €1.35 billion, €750 million is requested for the Earth Observation component (ERS EO), €400 million for the PNT and €200 million for secure connectivity.
The first pillar, ERS EO, will provide high-performance Earth observation capabilities for crisis monitoring and rapid response, complementing European commercial and national capabilities. The second pillar is the functional connection of the ERS constellation to IRIS², the future European constellation for secure multi-orbital connectivity. Finally, the third pillar is the accelerated and reinforced implementation of Celeste, the preparatory phase in LEO-PNT orbit of the FutureNAV programme.
Earlier in the day, Mr Aschbacher told journalists that countries would have a further year to join the Earth observation part of the ERS. “We have had discussions with many countries and their defence ministers. (...) They are not yet familiar with ESA and we need to explain how it works and familiarise them with it. In many countries, it is probably already too late to transfer budgets from traditional defence spending to ESA”, he explained, adding that this could perhaps make it possible to raise additional funds throughout the year. This is not the case for other ESA programmes.
Mr Aschbacher pointed out that the ERS will enable critical data to be planned, observed, merged and disseminated. “ERS will therefore develop a European system-of-systems architecture to allow pooling and sharing of national assets, and to be enhanced by European ones”, he detailed, adding that the Member States will always retain full control of their national security resources. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)