Image: European Space Agency
Stopgap measures expected as EU-UK row leaves Earth-observation programme short of €750 million
The head of the European Space Agency has said a €750 million hole in the finances of Copernicus—the EU’s Earth-observation satellite programme—remains “unresolved” but that he hopes an agreement will be reached with the European Commission within weeks.
The funding gap is a result of delays to the UK joining EU research programmes, Esa director general Josef Aschbacher (pictured) said on 18 January.
UK association to EU programmes including Copernicus was agreed in December 2020, but has still not been finalised due to political disputes between the sides over the terms of trade involving Northern Ireland. This has left the UK contribution to the Copernicus budget up in the air.
The programme is due to receive €5.4 billion from the EU for 2021-27, but Aschbacher said in January 2021 that this left a €2.3bn hole to be filled.
Esa, which counts the UK as one of its 22 member states, is independent of the EU but coordinates the delivery of the bloc’s Copernicus satellites as part of the EU’s Space Programme.
In his traditional January press conference this year, Aschbacher said that while the missing funds are “still an unresolved issue”, he hoped a solution would be reached “in the next couple of weeks”.
Copernicus is set to expand with six more missions, and Aschbacher said the Commission and Esa member states were unwilling to dial back the plans. Instead, he said there are “several options that allow us to buy a bit more time” that involve pushing decisions into the future, although the €750m would ultimately still need to be found.
Expansion plans
Overall, Esa’s budget is set to increase by 10 per cent in 2022 compared with 2021, totalling €7.2bn.
In November 2021, the agency announced plans to expand European ambitions in space, with three ‘accelerator’ programmes focusing on sustainability, natural disasters and space security, and two ‘inspirator’ programmes focusing on the hunt for extraterrestrial life and human space exploration.
But Aschbacher lamented that European investment in human space exploration is tiny compared with that of the United States. In 2021 Esa invested just €735m—just 7 per cent of the $12.2bn (€10.7bn) invested by Nasa.
Nonetheless, Esa has collaborated with Nasa on key projects such as the recently deployed James Webb Space Telescope, which Aschbacher said was a “very big success for Europe”, as well as plans for the US agency’s next moon mission.
“What is not yet agreed and it is under negotiation is a European astronaut touching the moon’s surface,” Aschbacher said.
Political will
Aschbacher declared it was “quite amazing” that unlike the US and China, Europe does not have its own means to explore the “next economic zone” of the moon and beyond. “We don’t have enough money, [it’s] very simple,” he said, adding that ultimately this was a political matter.
On 16 February the European Space Summit will be held in Toulouse, coinciding with the French presidency of the Council of the EU. Aschbacher said the summit would be a “very important milestone at political level” although decisions on budgets would not be made.