Europe will never catch up with the US without radical changes in the space sector - ESA head
Kyiv • UNN
The head of ESA called for a threefold increase in space investment to overcome the gap with the US. This is necessary to ensure Europe's strategic autonomy.
Europe risks falling permanently behind the US in the space industry unless it undergoes large-scale changes in its approaches to financing, management, and coordination. This was stated by the Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), Josef Aschbacher, as reported by Politico and relayed by UNN.
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According to the head of ESA—an international organization that coordinates the space programs of European countries—Europe possesses strong technologies and successful space projects, but is losing to the US due to insufficient funding, slow decision-making, and a fragmented system.
"If we don't make big changes, we will never catch up with the US. We will always be behind, and that, of course, is a big risk,"
He emphasized that the dominance of American companies, primarily Elon Musk's SpaceX, in the fields of rocket technology, satellites, and artificial intelligence has already become a strategic challenge for Europe.
Separately, the head of ESA mentioned Russia's war against Ukraine as an example of critical dependence on American space technologies, specifically Starlink.
"This should serve as a wake-up call to seriously think about what Europe needs for its own autonomy,"
Aschbacher called Europe a "sleeping beauty" with "excellent capabilities," citing the Galileo and Copernicus programs as successful examples of European space projects. Galileo is the European satellite navigation system, and Copernicus is the Earth observation program.
At the same time, he emphasized that the US provides about 60% of global government funding for the space sector, while Europe accounts for only 10%.
"I would ask decision-makers to increase our investments at least twofold, and perhaps even threefold,"
He added that Europe has no alternative to strengthening its own space autonomy.
"There is no other option. For me, this is not a Plan B,"