Space industry: what are the scientific and geopolitical challenges for Europe?

On 14 April, JUICE (one of the Euro­pean Space Agen­cy’s most ambi­tious space explo­ration mis­sions) left on board one of the last Ari­ane 5 rock­ets bound for Jupiter. After 8 years of trav­el­ling through the Solar Sys­tem and 3 grav­i­ta­tion­al assists near the Earth and Venus, it will final­ly reach its des­ti­na­tion: Europa, Ganymede and Cal­lis­to, the icy moons of Jupiter. Its main objec­tive is to ver­i­fy the exis­tence of the inter­nal oceans of these nat­ur­al satel­lites and to bet­ter under­stand their char­ac­ter­is­tics in order to deter­mine their rel­e­vance to the search for life out­side Earth.

This excit­ing mis­sion to Jupiter is just one of Europe’s many space projects. But where does Europe stand in rela­tion to its Amer­i­can, Russ­ian and Chi­nese com­peti­tors (and some­times part­ners)? What issues is it cur­rent­ly tack­ling, and what chal­lenges does it need to antic­i­pate for the future? The answer depends very much on what we call ‘space’…

« Doing more with less » is Europe’s cre­do when it comes to design­ing, build­ing and send­ing high-tech mis­sions into space to dis­cov­er the Universe. 

From 2019 to 2024, the bud­get of the Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA) has been set at a total of 14.4 bil­lion euros (the price of a cin­e­ma tick­et paid each year by every Euro­pean cit­i­zen). For the same peri­od, the total bud­get of the US Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA) is around 123 bil­lion dol­lars, more than 8 times as much. The dif­fer­ence in fund­ing between the two agen­cies has always been enor­mous, but this has not pre­vent­ed Europe from shin­ing with its sci­en­tif­ic mis­sions. The least we can say is that our cur­rent knowl­edge of the Solar Sys­tem has ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from all the Euro­pean explo­ration missions.

NASA’s bud­get is 8 times that of the ESA.

The Sun (Ulysses, Solar Orbiter), Mer­cury (Bepi Colom­bo), Venus (Venus Express), the Moon (SMART‑1), Mars (Mars Express, Exo­Mars TGO), Sat­urn (and the land­ing of the Huy­gens mod­ule on Titan), comets (Roset­ta): all these bod­ies have been observed, analysed, mon­i­tored and probed by teams of sci­en­tists and engi­neers from the Euro­pean Space Agency. And the future already holds a wealth of new mis­sions. The Bepi-Colom­bo probe, launched in 2018, is on its way to Mer­cury; the JUICE probe, which left Earth last April, will reach Jupiter in 2031; and final­ly the HERA mis­sion will take off at the end of 2024 to observe the impact crater that the Amer­i­can DART probe cre­at­ed by deflect­ing the small aster­oid Dimorphos.

Plan­e­tary explo­ration is just one part of Europe’s sci­en­tif­ic explo­ration pro­gramme. The dis­tant Uni­verse can some­times only be observed from space, by plac­ing tele­scopes far from Earth. XMM-New­ton (X‑rays), Inte­gral (gam­ma rays) and Gaïa (vis­i­ble light) are all spe­cialised instru­ments that have rev­o­lu­tionised our under­stand­ing of stars and galax­ies. In July 2023, the Euro­pean space tele­scope Euclid will be sent 1.5 mil­lion km from Earth to tack­le the entire Uni­verse and the famous mys­tery of dark ener­gy, respon­si­ble for its expansion.

But the major space agen­cies can­not sup­port all the pro­grammes they launch on their own, which also encour­ages their com­peti­tors to enter into fruit­ful part­ner­ships. For exam­ple, Europe par­tic­i­pat­ed in the devel­op­ment of the famous James Webb space tele­scope, there­by sav­ing obser­va­tion time for its sci­en­tif­ic teams. In the Artemis pro­gramme, half of the Ori­on space­craft (its ser­vice mod­ule) was man­u­fac­tured in Europe, as were sev­er­al mod­ules of the future Gate­way lunar space sta­tion, guar­an­tee­ing Euro­pean astro­nauts places in this vast pro­gramme to return to the Moon.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion also means being depen­dent on oth­er coun­tries and being sen­si­tive to geopo­lit­i­cal uncer­tain­ties. Fol­low­ing the war with Ukraine, Rus­si­a’s with­draw­al in 2022 from the Exo­Mars pro­gramme (planned land­ing on Mars of the first Euro­pean Mars rover) has sig­nif­i­cant­ly delayed this mis­sion. The time need­ed to man­u­fac­ture the part of the probe that was ded­i­cat­ed to Rus­sia has now passed, and the launch is not sched­uled before 2028.

Not every­thing is going well for Europe in space. On the sci­en­tif­ic front, things are look­ing up, but on the indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial front, things are more uncer­tain. Fol­low­ing a num­ber of delays, the future Ari­ane 6 (which was ini­tial­ly due to be launched before Ari­ane 5’s final lift-off, to pro­vide a tech­ni­cal link between the two) will not actu­al­ly be able to leave before 2024, leav­ing at least one year with­out Europe being able to use its launch­er to pur­sue its space pro­grammes (sci­en­tif­ic, com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary). In the mean­time, there is a risk that some pri­vate cus­tomers will turn to oth­er solu­tions for access to space (Amer­i­can or even Indi­an), seri­ous­ly threat­en­ing Europe’s auton­o­my in this area.

The emer­gence on the oth­er side of the Atlantic of a new com­mer­cial­ly aggres­sive and agile pri­vate space sec­tor, based on the use of new tech­nolo­gies and greater (eco­nom­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal) risk-tak­ing, is also push­ing the com­mer­cial organ­i­sa­tion of Euro­pean space to its lim­its (where New Space also start­ed, but lat­er, and has devel­oped less than in the Unit­ed States).

The inter­nal work­ings of the Euro­pean Space Agency are also being called into question.

In Decem­ber 2022, ESA signed a €33 mil­lion con­tract with Ari­ane­Group (France) to devel­op a reusable (oxygen/methane) space­craft called Themis, pow­ered by its new Prometheus engine. Tests are due to take place in Kiruna (Swe­den) by 2024, then in Kourou (French Guiana) in 2025–2026. Will this new Euro­pean reusable tech­nol­o­gy be ready in time? Will it find its place in Europe’s com­mer­cial offer­ing against oth­er nations? Only time will tell.

But more gen­er­al­ly, the inter­nal work­ings of the Euro­pean Space Agency are also being called into ques­tion. The prin­ci­ple of « geo­graph­i­cal return », for exam­ple, where­by Europe invests in each Mem­ber State (in the form of con­tracts award­ed to its indus­try to car­ry out space activ­i­ties) an amount equiv­a­lent to that coun­try’s con­tri­bu­tion. The idea is to enable the coun­try’s com­pa­nies to win cer­tain con­tracts and acquire new tech­nolo­gies. But the oth­er side of the coin is that this sys­tem gen­er­ates polit­i­cal dis­agree­ments between the lead­ers of each state, in addi­tion to being man­aged by a cum­ber­some and slow administration.

Will we be able to pri­ori­tise sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal inter­ests at the expense of polit­i­cal inter­ests? The next strate­gic deci­sions will be tak­en in 2025, at the next ESA min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing. In the mean­time, we are wit­ness­ing major eco­nom­ic, geopo­lit­i­cal and strate­gic changes, and the response of Europe in space is await­ed by many with inter­est… and impatience.