Europe redesigns space strategy amidst Russia's war in Ukraine

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has the European Space Agency pushing for a record budget increase in an effort to boost autonomy and end reliance on Moscow's space technology, agency Director General Josef Aschbacher told POLITICO.

“Because of the crisis, we need to be independent and autonomous in space,” said Aschbacher, likening the rush to detach from Russia on orbital projects to Europe's attempts to end its reliance on Russian natural gas supply.

Since the Kremlin launched an all-out war on Ukraine in late February, ESA has dramatically scaled back its cooperation with Russia and the country's national space agency Roscosmos. For example, the agency decided in March to suspend work on ExoMars, a rover mission to the red planet supposed to launch from Kazakhstan this month.

Russia also withdrew its engineers from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, from where its Soyuz rocket had been used alongside the Europe-built Ariane and Vega systems since 2011. That means alternative ways of getting projects such as the Euclid research mission into orbit need to be worked out.

“We have been depending significantly on Russia — ExoMars and Soyuz are two examples, but also when it comes to many components, raw materials and even ion thrusters,” Aschbacher said. “We have terminated this cooperation [with Russia] ... So we need to establish a more resilient, autonomous and strategically independent industry."

Aschbacher said his draft plan, pending last-minute changes, is to ask ESA's 22 member countries — which mostly overlap with the EU’s own membership — to contribute approximately €18.5 billion at the ministerial summit set to take place in Paris on November 22 and 23.

That's an increase of nearly 30 per cent on the €14.4 billion agreed by ministers at the last ESA summit in 2019.

The new funding will be used to finance projects on everything from boosting existing satellite programs such as Galileo and Copernicus to a European plan to develop human spaceflight and research schemes on deep space exploration.

For example, as part of the overall budget, the space chief said he’ll ask ministers to contribute an estimated €750 million to an entirely new communication satellite constellation project pushed by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton. That scheme is aimed at establishing a new European network to provide secure high-speed internet services as a rival to the likes of SpaceX's Starlink.

The November meeting of space ministers will also address an alternative plan for ExoMars, potentially looking to replace Roscosmos with NASA. Ministers will also assess options for getting satellites into orbit without Russia's Soyuz as Europe's Ariane 6 rocket is still months away from a debut.

Over the coming weeks, Aschbacher said he is also closing out the selection process for the next generation of European astronauts; the plan is to announce the final names to replace the current team, which includes France's Thomas Pesquet and Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti, at the Paris summit.