Space: restoring European autonomy and competitiveness

Faced with sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion over the last decade and recent U‑turns by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Europe is seek­ing to (re)gain its auton­o­my and com­pet­i­tive­ness in the space indus­try, despite temp­ta­tions at nation­al lev­el for coun­tries to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing their own capa­bil­i­ties. Lionel Suchet, inter­im CEO of the French Nation­al Cen­tre for Space Stud­ies (CNES), analy­ses the chal­lenges of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion for France and the continent.

Lionel Suchet. In coun­tries that pio­neered space explo­ration, such as the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia and France, space agen­cies devel­oped around two high­ly strate­gic and, as such, state-run pil­lars of activ­i­ty: research and defence. These appli­ca­tions remain high­ly rel­e­vant today. Research needs space resources more than ever. Take the mod­el­ling of cli­mate change, for exam­ple, where satel­lite obser­va­tion plays a cen­tral role. In the mil­i­tary are­na, space has not only become an essen­tial sup­port for the armed forces but is also emerg­ing as a new the­atre of conflict.

Over the past decade or so, a third pil­lar has devel­oped along­side the first two, respond­ing not to insti­tu­tion­al log­ic but to that of the open econ­o­my. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of Earth obser­va­tion mis­sions for sci­en­tif­ic pur­pos­es and the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, which has made it pos­si­ble to process satel­lite data on a mas­sive scale, have paved the way for a wide range of appli­ca­tions, attract­ing new pri­vate investors will­ing to take greater risks.

This is a very excit­ing time for the entire sec­tor. But it is also marked by increas­ing­ly fierce inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion and some ten­sions among Euro­pean coun­tries to devel­op their own space capa­bil­i­ties. Europe’s pri­or­i­ty is there­fore to strength­en its cohe­sion and sov­er­eign­ty in the mil­i­tary are­na, main­tain its lev­el of excel­lence in research, and build real com­pet­i­tive­ness at the con­ti­nen­tal lev­el in the com­mer­cial arena.

It’s impor­tant to keep in mind that France is by far the lead­ing space nation in Europe. Our space indus­try is extreme­ly well-devel­oped and high­ly skilled. France – and through it, Europe – has a strong indus­tri­al base thanks the invest­ments made by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments since 1961. Along­side estab­lished indus­tri­al play­ers, the French start-up ecosys­tem is prov­ing to be very dynam­ic. CNES has sup­port­ed its devel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly through France 2030. €1.3bn has been allo­cat­ed, and is now almost ful­ly com­mit­ted, to sup­port inno­v­a­tive initiatives.

But it would be point­less to pit the two mod­els against each oth­er, as they ben­e­fit from each oth­er. The start-up ecosys­tem is now enter­ing a phase of sta­bil­i­sa­tion, which will inevitably lead to some con­sol­i­da­tion. As for the large groups, although they are cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties due to the col­lapse of the mar­ket for pri­vate geo­sta­tion­ary satel­lites result­ing from com­pe­ti­tion from Star­link in the Unit­ed States, they under­stand they will have to make sig­nif­i­cant efforts to remain com­pet­i­tive. They have already tak­en steps in this direc­tion: major restruc­tur­ing plans have been announced, inspired in part by the prac­tices of small­er com­pa­nies that are begin­ning to grow, and joint projects with start-ups are devel­op­ing. And as you point out, they are look­ing into oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­sol­i­date their activ­i­ties, but no deci­sion has yet been made on either the prin­ci­ple or the approach.

France has tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant lead in this field in Europe. We have been work­ing for years to strength­en our capa­bil­i­ties, which we make avail­able to oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries. We have state-of-the-art obser­va­tion satel­lites, includ­ing CSO‑3, launched in March by Ari­ane 6, two next-gen­er­a­tion encrypt­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites thanks to the Syra­cuse IV pro­gramme, and space-based elec­tro­mag­net­ic lis­ten­ing capa­bil­i­ties, tech­nolo­gies that France is the only Euro­pean coun­try to have mastered.

The top pri­or­i­ty at the Euro­pean lev­el seems to me to be polit­i­cal: we must con­vince all Mem­ber States of the urgent need for gen­uine Euro­pean auton­o­my when it comes to defence, some­thing France has always advo­cat­ed. On the tech­ni­cal front, one vital issue was to regain autonomous access to space. The suc­cess­ful launch­es of Ari­ane 6 in July 2024 and March 2025, and the return to flight of Vega‑C at the end of 2024, are there­fore excel­lent news.

A major devel­op­ment is final­ly under­way in the field of direct action in space: it is regret­table, but this threat is very real. Today, we know that for­eign pow­ers are capa­ble of send­ing small manoeu­vrable satel­lites to spy on, jam sig­nals or threat­en satel­lites belong­ing to oth­er coun­tries. We must there­fore equip our­selves with the means to char­ac­terise these threats and even respond to poten­tial attacks. We are already work­ing on this with the YODA demon­stra­tor pro­gramme, two patrol satel­lites that will mon­i­tor the envi­ron­ment of our space sys­tems in geo­sta­tion­ary orbit and pave the way for the launch of oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties by 2030.

Space has long been seen, quite right­ly, as a mod­el for Euro­pean inte­gra­tion, and the Euro­pean Space Agency (ESA), found­ed in 1975, has played a key role in the devel­op­ment of Europe’s space pro­gramme. Geo­graph­i­cal return proved very effec­tive at a time when every­thing had to be built from scratch. But today it is becom­ing coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, as it amounts to dupli­cat­ing Euro­pean forces at a time when the indus­tri­al fab­ric on the con­ti­nent is already very dense and com­pe­ti­tion with the Unit­ed States, Chi­na and India is growing.

It is time to aim for greater Euro­pean com­pet­i­tive­ness and there­fore to move to a dif­fer­ent mode of oper­a­tion. But which one? We are call­ing for the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion itself to finance and man­age major space pro­grammes. Since 2009, it has had ad hoc legal author­i­ty, and its use of indus­try is based on com­pe­ti­tion rather than geo­graph­i­cal return. I won’t hide the fact that France is fair­ly iso­lat­ed with­in ESA on this sub­ject, which is under­stand­able giv­en its promi­nent posi­tion. But we are con­vinced that this is the way for­ward, and it seems that our views are being heard at Com­mis­sion lev­el: the Euro­pean Union’s space bud­get has been increas­ing steadi­ly since 2009, and the new Euro­pean Com­mis­sion­er for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubil­ius, has again men­tioned a three­fold increase in this amount for the next finan­cial framework.

This is indeed anoth­er pit­fall that must be avoid­ed, as ESA has devel­oped con­sid­er­able exper­tise in the man­age­ment of large pro­grammes. But it is entire­ly pos­si­ble that the EU could draw on ESA’s exper­tise to mon­i­tor and devel­op major pro­grammes at the oper­a­tional lev­el, while retain­ing its own rules on gov­er­nance and pro­cure­ment. This would not, of course, pre­vent ESA from con­tin­u­ing to fund and man­age cer­tain spe­cif­ic programmes…

It is time to aim for greater Euro­pean com­pet­i­tive­ness and there­fore to move to a dif­fer­ent mode of operation

To be hon­est, I am hope­ful that things will move in this direc­tion. Inter­nal dis­cus­sions with­in ESA and its dis­cus­sions with Mem­ber States show that it is begin­ning to accept the idea of becom­ing the exec­u­tive arm of a Euro­pean pol­i­cy led by the EU. This is noth­ing to be ashamed of: CNES, the exec­u­tive arm of French space pol­i­cy, is proof of this.

The Unit­ed States is a long-stand­ing and val­ued part­ner of France and Europe, par­tic­u­lar­ly on issues relat­ing to the envi­ron­ment and explo­ration. The old­est mea­sure­ment tak­en from space, sea lev­el, is the result of a his­toric col­lab­o­ra­tion between CNES and NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry. We are also involved in major manned and unmanned explo­ration pro­grammes – the lat­ter being of great inter­est to our sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty – to the Moon and Mars: Artemis, but also the US mis­sion to return sam­ples from Mars, Mars Sam­ple Return, and Exo­Mars, a Euro­pean mis­sion to explore the sur­face of the Red Plan­et with a rover, which was to be launched by a US launch vehicle.

At this stage, we have not received any offi­cial mes­sage from NASA ques­tion­ing these part­ner­ships. But the cur­rent sig­nals are indeed cat­a­stroph­ic, both in terms of rhetoric and in terms of lay­offs at NASA, JPL² and NOAA³. We must there­fore remain on high alert: it is not a ques­tion of Europe tak­ing the ini­tia­tive to halt col­lab­o­ra­tions, but of prepar­ing con­tin­gency plans in case the worst happens.

I don’t believe it is in Europe’s inter­est to aim for com­plete auton­o­my in these areas. While total sov­er­eign­ty is nec­es­sary in the field of defence, it is not nec­es­sary in the fields of research and exploration.

Our val­ues on this point are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from those of the Unit­ed States, for whom explo­ration is syn­ony­mous with nation­al con­quest. Europe, for its part, has always pro­mot­ed manned space­flight and explo­ration of the solar sys­tem as a tool for inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion. If the US pol­i­cy change is con­firmed, oth­er coun­tries could be affect­ed, with which we could con­sid­er coop­er­at­ing: I am think­ing in par­tic­u­lar of Japan and India, whose space capa­bil­i­ties are devel­op­ing rapid­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in low Earth orbit.

This sit­u­a­tion also makes a case for the Euro­pean Union to take the lead on major pro­grammes rather than ESA, which by its very nature lacks polit­i­cal vis­i­bil­i­ty and is nat­u­ral­ly guid­ed sole­ly by the indus­tri­al inter­ests of its Mem­ber States.

This is an emi­nent­ly polit­i­cal ques­tion. We have the tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties to do so, pro­vid­ed we have the nec­es­sary finan­cial resources: we have already launched ini­tia­tives to pro­duce car­go ships that auto­mat­i­cal­ly resup­ply space sta­tions, and it is entire­ly fea­si­ble to devel­op these for manned flights.

With regard to the pro­longed human pres­ence on the Moon, which is cur­rent­ly being con­sid­ered, it is impor­tant to bear in mind that estab­lish­ing a lunar base rais­es the ques­tion of land own­er­ship, which is not a neu­tral issue from either a legal or polit­i­cal point of view. In the future, the rules for using resources in situ and the leg­is­la­tion to be applied on anoth­er celes­tial body, which are new issues for human­i­ty, are like­ly to be dis­cussed only among those who will be liv­ing there.

We were very shocked by the dis­missal of trust­ed con­tacts with­in NASA. We are obvi­ous­ly ready to wel­come them if they wish to come.

Interview by Anne Orliac