European space agency targets major budget increase

The agency’s Director General, Josef Aschbacher, told Euractiv that the ESA is preparing plans for a military-grade reconnaissance satellite network with the EU as part of a record €21 billion budget spend.

The war in Ukraine and geopolitical tensions with the US have dispelled the ESA’s reluctance to invest in defense, prompting Aschbacher to discuss spending plans at a meeting with EU officials in Warsaw on Tuesday.

“We have a package that we are preparing already… it is in the order of magnitude of plus or minus around €21 billion today,” said Aschbacher.

The space agency is not part of the EU but has a partially overlapping membership, including the UK and Switzerland. Every three years, space ministers from ESA member states meet to determine and share spending on a range of science and exploration programs.

At the last summit in Paris in 2022, the capitals pledged a record spend of €16.9 billion.

National budget constraints were expected to hamper efforts to further increase the budget at the next ministerial meeting in Bremen in November.

But Elon Musk’s threats to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink and a more belligerent White House have upended those assumptions, focusing attention on developing space assets as part of a broader European defense push.

As part of the Bremen plan, Aschbacher is working to develop a reconnaissance satellite constellation program that will beam ultra-high-resolution optical infrared imaging from anywhere in the world to militaries and governments on demand every 20 or 30 minutes.

A number of EU companies, including Finland-based ICEYE, which provides commercial satellite services to Ukraine, have called for such a program to boost the bloc’s startup scene.

Regarding the plan, Aschbacher said, “This is exactly breakthrough, we don’t have this in Europe. I know that China is developing it, the US is developing it too.”

The Austrian space chief said that with all programs combined, the final ESA budget figure to be presented to ministers in November will be over €21 billion.

Europe is still a relative minnow in this area, spending a fifth of what the US allocates to its space programs each year.

The new German government, which overtook France as the largest contributor to the ESA budget last time and is a hub for rocket ventures, has made it clear that it intends to further increase its spending at the Bremen summit to help the mission catch up.