Europe’s role in the new space economy

When we talk about com­mer­cial space ser­vices, what are we refer­ring to?

Stefaan De Mey.  Today, space – or rather LEO (Low Earth Orbit) – is 90% com­mer­cial and 10% insti­tu­tion­al. The com­mer­cial part includes everything that con­cerns tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, nav­ig­a­tion, broad­cast­ing, and their applic­a­tions. Bey­ond that there are also insti­tu­tions who fund infra­struc­ture and satel­lite con­stel­la­tions. For example, the US Depart­ment of Defense has fun­ded the GPS and the European Uni­on fun­ded the Galileo nav­ig­a­tion sys­tem and Earth obser­va­tion satel­lites known as Coper­ni­cus. Even though they are gov­ern­ment-fun­ded, these infra­struc­tures are used for com­mer­cial applic­a­tions. As such, they rep­res­ent a large volume of eco­nom­ic activ­ity – an exten­sion of the ter­restri­al eco­nomy in space, with com­mer­cial applic­a­tions on the ground.

We are now at the stage of integ­rat­ing the Moon and human space­flight into that eco­nomy – some­thing which is start­ing to hap­pen with the arrival of space tour­ism. At ESA, we also want sci­ence and research to be part of this eco­nomy, con­sid­er­ing that space provides an envir­on­ment for sci­entif­ic work. Micro­grav­ity makes it pos­sible to pro­duce things in space not pos­sible on Earth, such as cer­tain types of crys­tals, spe­cial mater­i­als, or arti­fi­cial organs. The anti­vir­al Rem­desivir, for instance, was tested in an “ICE Cube” (Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Exper­i­ments), a sci­entif­ic exper­i­ment con­tained in a 10-cen­ti­metre cube sent on board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS).

Are large explor­a­tion infra­struc­tures still fun­ded by insti­tu­tions and agencies?

This situ­ation is chan­ging. Over the past 20 years, gov­ern­ments have inves­ted heav­ily in the ISS. But now the private sec­tor is tak­ing over. In the United States, com­pan­ies are already build­ing mod­ules that attach to the sta­tion and serve as bases for future private sta­tions. On a smal­ler scale, this is what the European Space Agency is pro­pos­ing with pub­lic-private part­ner­ships in which the private part­ner provides an all-in-one ser­vice, includ­ing trans­port to the space sta­tion, install­a­tion of the mod­ules (which are stand­ard­ised) and basic resources such as a broad­band link for data trans­mis­sion, power sup­ply or sample recov­ery. It is a part­ner­ship that opens access to the ISS, optim­ises its oper­a­tion and speeds up research.

Europe has basic infra­struc­ture for con­duct­ing sci­entif­ic exper­i­ments in space, but it is not fully util­ised thus present­ing a viable oppor­tun­ity for a private part­ner to cre­ate a com­mer­cial ser­vice by offer­ing this infra­struc­ture to cus­tom­ers when it is not being used by the agency. That being said, industry part­ners can also build new infra­struc­ture to add to that.

Bar­to­lomeo is an example of an ‘integ­rated’ ser­vice that we have developed in part­ner­ship with Air­bus Defence and Space. The devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion of which are entirely run and fun­ded by industry, with ESA provid­ing resources avail­able such as trans­port­a­tion, data exchange between Earth and space, and space on the Colum­bus mod­ule. This plat­form is docked to the European Colum­bus mod­ule and labor­at­ory out­side the ISS. It allows com­pan­ies and research centres to con­duct exper­i­ments and work in space in the form of pay­load mod­ules, designed to devel­op new mater­i­als, test tech­no­lo­gies, or observe Earth or out­er space. In addi­tion, cus­tom­ers but can approach Air­bus dir­ectly – who provide the end-to-end – ser­vice without going through ESA.

What does ESA expect from such com­mer­cial services?

We have three object­ives. Firstly, we want the sci­entif­ic com­munity to carry out work on our micro­grav­ity plat­forms to facil­it­ate ter­restri­al research and to open up this tool to new com­munit­ies such as indus­tri­al R&D. Secondly, as an agency, we need to con­tin­ue learn­ing how to pre­pare our plat­forms for future explor­a­tion mis­sions to the Moon and then to Mars. It is import­ant to men­tion that, in a com­mer­cial con­text, the agency becomes one of many cus­tom­ers, with oth­er users (sci­ent­ists and industry) pro­cur­ing the ser­vices they need dir­ectly. Finally, we want to avoid a situ­ation where only Amer­ic­an com­pan­ies are present in low Earth orbit and our com­pan­ies and research­ers must go through them. This is a new mar­ket where we want to be present by build­ing on our exper­i­ence of the ISS.

Today, the cus­tom­er buys a turn­key, end-to-end ser­vice. NASA, for example, buys from SpaceX the trans­port of n tonnes or four astro­nauts to the sta­tion. The US cur­rently dom­in­ates the trans­port­a­tion mar­ket with reusable launch­ers. Europe needs to think about the next phases and pre­pare for the ‘post-Ariane’ era. We developed the Auto­mated Trans­fer Vehicle launched by Ariane 5, which has resup­plied the ISS five times and was one of our con­tri­bu­tions to the part­ner­ship, allow­ing us access to the sta­tion. To repos­i­tion ourselves in today’s space mar­ket, we need to innov­ate and devel­op new services.

What ser­vices does ESA offer (or plan to offer)?

We cur­rently offer three com­mer­cial ser­vices in low Earth orbit and are pre­par­ing oth­ers for what we call the ‘future lun­ar eco­nomy’. In addi­tion to Bar­to­lomeo, Space Applic­a­tions Ser­vices SA mar­kets ICE Cubes. These cubes, with a stand­ard size of 10 cm on each side, con­tain vari­ous sci­entif­ic, tech­no­lo­gic­al, or even artist­ic exper­i­ments. Research­ers have an Inter­net con­nec­tion to mon­it­or and con­trol them in real-time. ESA is respons­ible for trans­port­ing the cubes, installing them, and return­ing them to Earth after four months. The Biore­act­or Express is also a turn­key ser­vice for exper­i­ments con­duc­ted for one year in the Kayser Italia Kubik labor­at­ory con­tain­er. For the ‘post-ISS’ era, we are explor­ing the pos­sib­il­it­ies for industry to build and mar­ket a com­plete plat­form in LEO offer­ing sci­ence and hab­it­a­tion func­tions as a ser­vice. In addi­tion, ESA is devel­op­ing sev­er­al pro­jects in the frame­work of the Moon explor­a­tion pro­grammes, for example with the Ger­man satel­lite man­u­fac­turer OHB, which provides a trans­port ser­vice to the lun­ar sur­face. On the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions side, we are cur­rently expand­ing the capa­city of the Goon­hilly ground sta­tion in the UK to provide com­mer­cial deep space com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices on the Moon and bey­ond. To com­ple­ment this ground sta­tion, we are pre­par­ing a con­stel­la­tion of four satel­lites in lun­ar orbit. These Com­mer­cial Lun­ar Mis­sion Sup­port Ser­vices (CLMSS) will be used for future explor­a­tion mis­sions to nav­ig­ate around the Moon.