The year 2024 is crucial for European space policy, as the EU deploys its new generations of launchers to maintain its position in an intensifying international competition. Grégoire Lory interviewed the Director General of the European Space Agency, Joseph Aschbacher.
Between the launch of a new satellite by the European Vega rocket, and, last July, the take-off of Ariane 6, the launcher crisis seems well and truly over according to Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency. The agency is “on the right track to emerge from (this) crisis,” he believes. “ESA is keeping its commitments. We successfully put Ariane 6 into orbit, and that is not nothing, because these rockets put into orbit satellites that we need in our daily lives. It is really fundamental. So it is a big step and a very big success for Europe. Recently, we launched Sentinel-2C, with the last flight of Vega. I think Europe can be very proud and very happy about this uninterrupted series of successes.”
**”**Europe is certainly making a comeback in the space race. We had a bit of a launcher crisis for almost a year, we didn’t have our own launch capacity, but with Ariane 6 back on the launch pad, and with Vega successfully launching Sentinel-2C, and Vega-C arriving at the end of the year, 2024 will certainly mark the end of the space launcher crisis in Europe.”
The head of the European Space Agency notes in this regard that “the main partner (of the EU) in the United States, NASA, had to rely on Russia for ten years to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. This is no longer the case, thanks to Space X and Crew Dragon, and the United States once again has its own capacity in terms of human spaceflight.** But finding itself at the bottom of the wave during a long series of launches is not (something) totally unusual.”
Europe has therefore regained part of its strategic autonomy in the space domain, according to Josef Aschbacher, emphasizing that “Europe is really good in a number of areas. (…) If you compare Europe to the United States, Europe represents one sixth of the world’s public investment in space. The figures show that the United States invests about six times more in this sector; in the space industry, global public investment was almost €108 billion for 2023, of which 64% is in the United States and 11% in Europe. Even though we invest much less than the United States in space, through NASA and the Space Force, Europe is still very good. And some of our programmes are among the best in the world. Copernicus is an example of this: we have built this programme over more than 25 years, and it is one of the best space programmes in the world for observing the Earth. We provide 300 TB of data to all citizens, all over the world, to agriculture, forestry, emergency services, civil protection, ship routing and many other areas, because this data is used in all areas of the economy. So this is a fantastic new programme. The other major programme that Europe has been developing for over 20 years is Galileo, which today provides the most accurate navigation signals in the world, more accurate than GPS in fact.
Of course, there is still work to do to catch up on other programs, as we are in the process of doing with launchers.”
As far as the security field is concerned, “In the United States, about 65% of public investment is devoted to defense and security. In Europe, this percentage drops to about 12%. Again, the share devoted to (this issue) is much lower than in the United States, within the framework of a much smaller budget. (…) But these are political decisions, it is not up to me to decide on these investments. And it is expected that investments will increase in this area.”