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Countries in the European Space Agency have agreed for the first time to fund a programme explicitly designed to serve military as well as civilian requirements, as they clinched a record budget increase for the agency’s next three years.
The agency’s proposed European Resilience from Space (ERS) project secured almost all the funding it had sought. It aims to create a military-grade “system of systems” pooling national space assets to deliver secure surveillance, communications and navigation capabilities, as well as earth observation for climate purposes.
Josef Aschbacher, ESA director general, said the agency — whose convention drawn up in the 1970s specifies it should develop technology for “peaceful purposes” — had received “a clear defence and security mandate from its member states”.
While this accounted for only about 5 per cent of the ESA budget, the move was “probably the beginning of more to come”, he said.
The shift comes as concerns mount over increasingly assertive activities in space by both China and Russia, while Russia’s war in Ukraine has highlighted the critical importance to national security of communication, navigation and observation capabilities delivered from space.
The ERS proposal secured about €1.2bn of the €1.35bn it had sought at a ministerial summit in Bremen. It will seek a further tranche of about €250mn from European defence ministries in February.
It is the first explicitly military-grade capability being developed by ESA, and was being developed in close collaboration with the European Commission, Aschbacher said. Elements of the programme were oversubscribed, meaning “the mandate is crystal clear”, Aschbacher said.
After two years of discussions and two days of frantic last-minute negotiations, ESA member states agreed in Bremen to increase the agency’s overall budget to €22.1bn, just €200mn shy of the sum it had requested. That amounted to a 32 per cent increase, or 17 per cent in inflation-adjusted terms.
Germany, which has separately pledged to invest €35bn in military space capabilities by 2030, widened its lead as ESA’s biggest funder, and in return secured a pledge that a German astronaut would be the first European to fly with Nasa’s Artemis moon missions. France held onto second place, closely followed by Italy, while Spain overtook the UK to become the agency’s fourth-largest supporter.
Aschbacher said the support from its 23 member states — which also include non-EU countries such as the UK — for almost 100 per cent of the ESA’s budget request was unprecedented.
The agency received strong backing for science missions, such as the search for extraterrestrial life, and for developing commercial rocket and cargo services to space.
Maxime Puteaux, principal at space consultancy Novaspace, said the agency was “buying time to secure remaining funding” by staggering the fundraising for the military-grade project. While the sums raised at the summit would ensure the project would start next year, it was “still politically fragile”, he said.
“The coming year will be decisive for whether Europe can truly stand up a sovereign, rapid-response intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance constellation,” he added.
Member states also rushed to fund ESA’s European launcher challenge, designed to develop reusable micro and mini rockets capable of eventually evolving to replace Europe’s heavy-lift Ariane 6.
Member states pledged more than double the sums requested, as part of a total transportation budget of €4.39bn, or 20 per cent of the total.
Aschbacher’s efforts to promote the development of competitive commercial space companies also received a boost, with member states agreeing to provide some €3.6bn for programmes that could be co-funded with industry.
A key mission for Europe — the Rosalind Franklin mission to send a rover to Mars — was now set for launch in 2028, after Nasa had confirmed this week it would meet its commitment to supply launch services and critical components.
ESA said it would also begin studies on a mission to Enceladus, an icy moon orbiting Saturn, which astrobiologists believe is the most likely place to find evidence of life beyond Earth.
