Meanwhile, NASA has big ambitions, including sending astronauts back to the moon by 2024 under a project to be assisted by Musk's SpaceX and Bezos' Blue Origin. But the downtime is not a good look for the EU or ESA, given its insistence in securing autonomous access to space independent of American technology. “To some extent, having such an incident during such a phase is unfortunately part of the process,” Pierre Delsaux, a deputy director general at the European Commission, told MEPs. EU officials are quick to point out the constellation remains in its trial phase and the U.S. "It’s good for mankind.”īut Galileo was hit this summer by an embarrassing almost weeklong outage, understood to be partly due to a software update at a ground-based station near Munich. "To have free and open data access is the right way," ESA Director General Jan Wörner said earlier this year. Global Positioning System, while billions of euros have been spent on Copernicus, an Earth-observation system countries can use to monitor everything from climate change to natural disasters. EU countries have put around €10 billion into the Galileo geo-navigation constellation, a more accurate alternative to the U.S. and China, Brussels has pitched the bloc's investments as part of a plan to become the good guy in orbit. Instead of going toe-to-toe with the U.S. "We need to set in motion a process to define Europe’s vision for space" - Elżbieta Bieńkowska, European commissioner for the internal market military space program) and China is splashing around $8 billion each year on its own space industry. NASA’s annual budget is over $20 billion (which doesn't include a sizeable U.S. That's tiny in comparison to what others are doing. The European Commission's proposed space spending of €16 billion is spread from 2021 to 2027, and aims to cover satellite programs and new projects like a secure government communication system and measures to address orbital debris. The big issue for Europe is whether it wants to pay to play in the top leagues of space. “We need a robust answer to the challenges in space but I see this as a job for the European Space Agency and the EU,” Thomas Jarzombek, an MP with Germany's ruling Christian Democratic Union and the government’s coordinator on aerospace, said last month.Ī December summit of NATO leaders is expected to designate space as a new domain in warfare, raising the thorny issue of whether an attack on a satellite belonging to an alliance member is enough to trigger the pact's Article 5 collective defense provision. But while Berlin has co-funded surveillance satellites built for the French military, the German government is not enthusiastic about solo efforts to project force in orbit. Meanwhile, India this year tested a new satellite-destroying missile, while both China and Russia are investing in everything from orbital drones to satellite jamming.įrance, a country whose aerospace industry is crucial to both the national ego and the economy, this summer outlined plans for deploying weapons in orbit, arguing it needs to equip its satellites with machine guns and laser systems to counter threats.Īnnouncing the plan, French President Emmanuel Macron talked up the need for “strategic autonomy” in space. President Donald Trump announced plans to set up a "space force" as a distinct pillar of the military to police orbital threats. President Donald Trump sounds desperate to create a space force | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images More than 2,000 are operational at the moment, with thousands of pieces of space junk also floating around. The total number of registered satellites in orbit (both military and civilian) will likely surpass 5,000 this year, according to the U.N. “Launch prices have come down and access to space becomes more affordable for smaller players," said a spokesman for Airbus, Europe's largest aerospace company. Just a few million euros can cover the costs of procuring and launching a small satellite into orbit, a figure within the realms of private enterprise. That's in addition to entrepreneurs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Tesla's Elon Musk and Virgin's Richard Branson funneling private wealth into commercial spaceflight programs. Whereas in the 1960s, only the two superpowers had the means to launch satellites into orbit, now more than 70 countries have their own space agencies, Fuchs said. but later on there was a commercial wave." Crowded space At first it was the Spanish, Portuguese, British and Dutch. "It’s not just a political race between the Soviet Union and United States but it’s a broader race, like when people first landed in the Americas. “We are now restarting a space race," said Marco Fuchs, the CEO of Bremen-based aerospace company OHB.
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