ESA Agenda 2025: Vision time

Space is about more than fancy hardware or the thrill of boots on the Moon – modern society needs political will to match the technology

In calling on Europe to have a frank discussion about its ambitions in space over the next ten or 15 years, Joseph Aschbacher is certainly doing his job. But the new director general of the European Space Agency is doing much more than calling on European nations to provide his organisation with clear guidance at a moment in history when the space ambitions of other global players are ramping up for a dramatic new era of exploration.

By publishing his “ESA Agenda 2025” position paper, Aschbacher is asking – forcing, maybe – the European Union to recognise, at the highest political and institutional levels, two well-known but often ignored truths. One is that Europe spends too little on space and moves too slowly to keep pace with the USA, China and even a surging India. As Aschbacher noted in a press briefing on the document, total US public spending on space is about four times as great as in Europe, though the economies are of similar size. Chinese figures are hard to establish but Aschbacher noted that China’s Earth observation programme has similar goals as Europe’s Copernicus scheme but works with twice as many satellites developed in about half the time.

Hello, Brussels? Paris HQ here: what are we doing next? (ESA/S. Corvaja)

The second truth is that space is no longer about space. Surging commercialisation is making space a huge business which commands technologies that are increasingly essential to modern society. In Agenda 2025, Aschbacher cites forecasts that a global space industry worth some $350 billion today could generate $1 trillion in revenue by 2040 - but “if Europe wants a slice of this growing pie, it will need to contribute to the baking.” The commercialisation wave that started in Silicon Valley is “now mirrored in Japan, China and India, but only to some extent in Europe.” And Europe, he adds, “missed the boat in the dotcom, Big Tech and AI domains [but] can still avoid the same fate in space.”

That is, autonomous, sovereign command of space-enabled technologies and the capabilities (launch, space situational awareness, etc) that support them is rapidly becoming an indispensable condition of any global first-division player. As Aschbacher writes in Agenda 2025: “In the 21st century, investing in space is investing in the future of Europe through smart answers to complex cross-disciplinary questions and challenges. Investing in space is investing in people and in the science and technology required to be a global actor.”

Meanwhile, space bears on any serious discussion of security. China, Aschbacher observed in his Agenda press briefing, “has declared space as a priority...in order to reach superpower status especially towards the 100th anniversary of the Chinese revolution.” Aschbacher didn’t discuss the Western response in any detail, but simple reality is that the USA, France, Japan, the UK and NATO all now consider space, like land, sea and air, to be an operational domain. One of the unspoken driving forces behind the USA’s Artemis programme must, surely, be a determination to beat the Chinese to a modern-era human Moon landing.

In inviting ESA members and the EU to a heads-of-state-level “space summit” next year, Ashbacher is explicitly looking to establish what his paper calls a “common European space vision and ambition”. With any luck that vision and ambition will set the stage for the next ESA ministerial-level budget and priorities conference, in late 2022; ambitious goals – and budgets – set there would see ESA through to 2025. From the vantage point of 2025, the 2030s will be just around the corner; if Europe is to develop critical next-generation technologies or join any prospective expeditions to Mars, now is the time to decide to do it – and to fund it.

Aschbacher is right, too, to warn Europe’s leaders of the perils they would court by failing to set out a serious vision and then back it up with both public funding and the political will needed to attract ample private funding. Europe, he stresses, has a great talent pool but risks a brain drain; good people will follow vision and funding, leaving poorer countries or departing Europe altogether rather than abandoning their own ambitions.

In listening to Aschbacher outline his Agenda paper, it was impossible to not feel a sense of urgency, even anxious urgency. As he sees the situation, something must change if Europe is to remain a “global player” in space, and it is not in ESA’s power to make that happen: “This is a task that goes beyond the capabilities of ESA. It is a technical body, it's not a political body. Therefore ESA is ready and willing to support the political process with its capabilities, with our analysis, with our technical knowledge.”

But does this view understate the space agency’s influence? A career spent with ESA – most recently as director of Earth observation – and the European Commission has given Aschbacher a keen understanding of what makes these institutions work. No one will succeed as head of ESA who is not a good politician and Aschbacher will have plenty of opportunity to prove himself on that count. But with Agenda 2025 he is perhaps taking a step further, into the realm of statesmanship. Anyone who cares about ESA and about Europe should wish him good luck.

At least he can see where he's going (ESA/NASA)

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Dan Thisdell adds: I write about European spaceflight: industry, politics, science and money. After a fruitful mid-career at Flight International, I am preparing to launch a newsletter for space industry investors: Geoconomy. Watch this space and contact me via LinkedIn - especially if your company should be profiled.