Yesterday October 9th, the European Space Agency has hosted the sixth edition of the High-Level Forum with Industry, at the presence of high-level representatives of the European space institutional and industrial communities.

Jan Woerner, ESA DG, underlined the substantial evolution expected to occur in the various fields of space activity and the different roles that players and stakeholders, and primarily the Agency’s activities and programmes will be called upon to play in the coming years, and presented his proposals to contribute to a United Europe in Space by carrying out the Agency’s programmes and activities and related Downstream Activities starting in 2020 around and within the following four pillars:

– Science and Exploration: Space Science and Human and Robotic Exploration;
– Safety and Security: Space Safety, Safety and Security Applications, and Cybersecurity;
– Applications: Telecommunication, Earth Observation, Navigation; and
– Enabling and Support: Technology, Space Transportation and Operations.

Jean-Loic Galle, Eurospace President, underlined how the significant growth of resources recently proposed by the European Commission in the EU MFF 2021-2027 Space Programme needs to be sustained by a significant intensification of investments on Member States side, through ESAin order to keep-up on the long-term with the sharp growth taking place in other space powers. In this regard he said: “we recommend a set of initiatives, to be decided at next ministerial Council in 2019 in order to meet several societal challenges, to implement a true space economy; but also because Europe shall have new flagship programmes, after Rosetta or ExoMars or Galileo and Copernicus. New flagship programmes are needed to catalyse massive investments and to result in a competitive leap forward. ESA is the place where these new adventures can be born”.       

Jan Woerner and Jean-Loic Galle shared the need for the European space sector to have at disposal resources commensurate with both EU and Member States political ambitions and Industry competitiveness challenges. In this regard – they said – next ESA ministerial Council in 2019 will be a turning point for the perspectives of the European space sector and for the value it will be able to generate for Europe in the years to come.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *