Can European space industry compete with American domination?

Jean-Marc Astorg. The European space industry is now a mature industry that has developed con­sid­er­ably since the 1970s, both in the field of launch­ers and satel­lites and in that of space applic­a­tions – for example, in the use of Earth obser­va­tion­al data. And this for vari­ous sec­tors of activ­ity (mari­time, mobil­ity, secur­ity, envir­on­ment, insur­ance and urb­an plan­ning, to name but a few). Well-known and import­ant play­ers include Arianespace for launch­ers, and Air­bus Defence & Space and Thales Alenia Space for satel­lites. These com­pan­ies employ around 30,000 people in the space man­u­fac­tur­ing industry in France and 60,000 across all sec­tors, gen­er­at­ing a turnover of around €10bn.

The space sec­tor is cur­rently under­go­ing an intense and rap­id trans­form­a­tion due to vari­ous factors:

• the arrival of private Amer­ic­an entre­pren­eurs who have been able to devel­op new space sys­tems – launch­ers, con­stel­la­tions – with the help of NASA using con­sid­er­able resources and new meth­ods. The glob­al space sec­tor has been com­pletely turned upside down and, in my opin­ion, we are only at the begin­ning of this transformation.
• tech­no­lo­gic­al innov­a­tion (digit­al­isa­tion, reusable launch­ers, con­stel­la­tions, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence), which demo­crat­ises the use of space data through a drastic reduc­tion in costs.
• the rise of con­flict­ing interests in space, which is a con­sequence of the increased use of space resources.
• and finally, the reviv­al of pro­jects to return to the Moon and Mars in the con­text of a new race between the United States and China, this time with the aim of estab­lish­ing a per­man­ent base on the Moon.

In this con­text, the United States has become a world lead­er, togeth­er with China, in the field of launch­ers (Fal­con 9, Star­ship, New Glenn), con­nectiv­ity con­stel­la­tions (Starlink) and manned explor­a­tion. How­ever, Europe is in pole pos­i­tion for when to comes to Earth obser­va­tions – for example, to sur­vey cli­mate-related changes across the globe.

Europe, how­ever, does suf­fer from an excess­ive frag­ment­a­tion of its space industry, which is still seg­men­ted into dis­tinct indus­tri­al sec­tors – for launch­ers, satel­lites, applic­a­tions and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions oper­at­ors. This situ­ation calls for rad­ic­al measures:

• The first is to defend our stra­tegic autonomy and to pri­or­it­ise Europe, with the aim of safe­guard­ing our own satel­lite launch cap­ab­il­ity and con­tinu­ing to secure inde­pend­ent communication.
• The second is, of course, to increase these cap­ab­il­it­ies to be able to com­pete with Amer­ic­an com­pan­ies such as SpaceX.

We are wit­ness­ing the emer­gence of “News­pace” in Europe. Start-ups that are mainly privately fun­ded and exploit new devel­op­ment meth­ods are there­fore more flex­ible than the longer-stand­ing play­ers. There are now sev­er­al hun­dred start-ups estab­lished in Europe, but, again seg­men­ted for dif­fer­ent activ­it­ies: launch, obser­va­tion and con­nectiv­ity. Since these start-ups have only been cre­ated in the last few years, they do not yet have the crit­ic­al mass needed to face Amer­ic­an competition.

Part­ner­ships between long-stand­ing play­ers and new entrants is inev­it­able, but they will have to be accom­pan­ied by spe­cif­ic meas­ures so that the best com­pan­ies can devel­op and grow. Ini­tial invest­ment in start-ups is less prob­lem­at­ic because fund­ing is avail­able, but it becomes more com­plic­ated when it comes to rais­ing, say, a hun­dred mil­lion euros. There is a sig­ni­fic­ant lack of private fund­ing in Europe com­pared to the United States. This is prob­ably due to cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences, inso­far as ven­ture cap­it­al is still a rather an Amer­ic­an concept.

Restruc­tur­ing will take place, with regroup­ings and mer­gers, because, as men­tioned, the European space sec­tor is overly frag­men­ted. Today’s mar­kets are glob­al mar­kets, so sig­ni­fic­ant con­sol­id­a­tion at the European level will be neces­sary to pre­vent cer­tain com­pan­ies from dis­ap­pear­ing. It should also be men­tioned that European industry is very sens­it­ive to mar­kets: approx­im­ately 40% of the European space industry’s turnover comes from the com­mer­cial sec­tor. This fig­ure is much high­er than in the United States.

Stra­tegic autonomy pro­jects in Europe will there­fore be cru­cial, in par­tic­u­lar the devel­op­ment of a European con­nectiv­ity con­stel­la­tion. In this sense, these pro­jects will have to be applied across all space sec­tors. Solv­ing the prob­lem of dif­fer­en­tial invest­ment between the United States and Europe is also cru­cial; the United States has a pub­lic budget of around 70 bil­lion dol­lars per year (although this may change with the new Trump admin­is­tra­tion) while in Europe it is just 12 bil­lion dol­lars per year.

In this con­text, we can men­tion the IRIS² pro­gramme, which is an autonom­ous and sov­er­eign tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice and whose con­ces­sion con­tract was signed last Decem­ber between the European Com­mis­sion and a European con­sor­ti­um of tele­com oper­at­ors (Eutelsat, SES, His­pasat). This new infra­struc­ture will com­ple­ment the Galileo nav­ig­a­tion con­stel­la­tion and the Coper­ni­cus Earth obser­va­tion programme.

There is also the Amer­ic­an Artemis explor­a­tion pro­gramme, for a sus­tain­able return to the Moon. Launched by Pres­id­ent Trump’s first admin­is­tra­tion, it could be called into ques­tion by his new admin­is­tra­tion. If the pro­gramme is sig­ni­fic­antly mod­i­fied, this will inev­it­ably have con­sequences for Europe, which is par­ti­cip­at­ing in it. In his inaug­ur­a­tion speech in Janu­ary, Trump stated that Amer­ica should plant its flag on Mars. The United States there­fore wants to pri­or­it­ize Mars and go there alone. This is a rather dif­fer­ent approach to the Artemis pro­gramme, which is an inter­na­tion­al col­lab­or­a­tion. In fact, Star­ship (from SpaceX) should be used to send probes to Mars dur­ing this dec­ade, to set up exper­i­ments there. Manned flights will be more likely dur­ing the next dec­ade, which means that per­haps by 2035, there will be Amer­ic­ans on Mars.

In real­ity, there is no eco­nom­ic interest for going to the Moon or Mars, even if some say that there are min­er­als that can be mined on the Moon. In my opin­ion, the Moon has a become a geo­pol­it­ic­al sub­ject – a race between the United States and China.

As for Mars, the plan­et is first and fore­most of sci­entif­ic interest. We must go to Mars, prefer­ably with probes, to under­stand why water dis­ap­peared from the Red Plan­et, why the Earth and Mars exper­i­enced fairly com­par­able growth at the begin­ning of their evol­u­tion and why Mars became unin­hab­it­able while life was able to devel­op on Earth. Was there ever life on Mars? These are sci­entif­ic ques­tions, but we don’t need to send humans to the plan­et to answer them. Elon Musk’s vis­ion is to make Man a multi-plan­et­ary spe­cies, a vis­ion that is not neces­sar­ily shared by the United States, and cer­tainly not by Europe.

In short, we have all it takes in Europe to keep our place among the world’s lead­ing space powers: an excel­lent edu­ca­tion sys­tem, high-per­form­ance industry, aca­dem­ic research at the highest inter­na­tion­al level and high-per­form­ance space infra­struc­tures (launch­ers, satel­lites, ground facil­it­ies). We must also defend the val­ues that are dear to us: pro­tect­ing the plan­et, com­batting and adapt­ing to cli­mate change, trust­ing sci­ence, and inter­na­tion­al cooper­a­tion for a safer world. Europe was built on these val­ues. And in the future, it is import­ant that we hold onto these.

Interview by Isabelle Dumé