Artist’s rendition of a satellite – paulfleet/123RF Stock Photo

The European Space Agency’s Ministerial Council met in Seville in Spain last week and agreed the organisations biggest ever budget of €14.338 billion covering the period of 2020. This matched the funding level that ESA was requesting at the meeting, and although there were some movements within the budget, overall ESA considers this a hugely successful outcome.

The Ministerial also referred to as Space19+, approved the strategic proposal “Space: The five Dimensions of Space 4.0” put forward by the ESA Director General Jan Wörner which will reorganise ESA’s activities into four pillars:

• science and exploration;
• safety and security;
• applications; and
• enabling and support

Safety and security will now include an activity referred to as ‘keeping the space environment operational’ and will have projects focussed around the removal of dangerous space debris, automated space traffic control (we wrote about the issue involving Aeolus and one of the Starlink satellites recently) and early warning systems for asteroids and solar flares.

The UK increased its commitment to €1.655 billion, equivalent to 11.5% of the budget overall – which is great news as there were rumours going around that the UK would not be doing this, although it’s not known how accurate these were. It was the fourth-largest contributor behind Germany, France and Italy. Germany committed €3,294 bn, almost double the UK, and in total is responsible for almost a quarter of the organisation’s total funds. The amount countries commit is critical, as the majority of ESA’s work operates on a geo-return principle; this means the value that each country has committed should result in companies based in that country’s receiving ESA contracts to the approximately equivalent value. Therefore, in value terms, over the next four years, Germany is likely to receive twice as much ESA funding than the UK.

Turning specifically to EO, there are many who are reporting EO was the big winner of the Ministerial as it received more money than ESA had originally requested – whereas other programmes did not receive the requested level of funding. A budget of €2.541 billion has been set aside for EO, higher than the €2.39 billion equating requested, and this accounts for just over 17% of the whole ESA budget and is the largest programme within ESA in the coming years.  Interestingly, again Germany leads the investment in this area, with 30% of the committed funds.

Alongside the new four-pillar restructure, ESA’s EO programmes will also be significantly reorganised in three sections:

• Future EO – formerly the Earth Observation Envelope Programme, this section will support the new Scout and Φ-sat missions and will encourage the use of artificial intelligence, big data analytics and High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS).
• Operational EO – covering the Copernicus and meteorological missions, and this will focus on the development of six new Sentinel missions and the related ground segment activity.
• Customised EO – will compromise of a number of activities proposed by specific partners, such as individual Member States, industry, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Within this programme, funding was confirmed for the UK-led Traceable Radiometry Underpinning Terrestrial- and Helio- Studies (TRUTHS) mission that supports climate adaption by establishing a space-based climate and carbon system supporting improved confidence in climate change forecasts.

Finally, and potentially slightly concerning for the UK industry, is ESA are encouraged to work closely with the European Commission and its Digital Europe programme to fully exploit the EO investments to build up a strong European data and knowledge-driven industrial and institutional ecosystem for Europe. Of course, how the UK would precisely sit inside this following Brexit is anyone’s guess!

Support for the International Space Station (ISS) was also confirmed up until 2030, and they are also committed to giving each member of the 2009 class of astronauts two missions, which could offer Major Tim Peake the opportunity for a second trip to space!

Overall, the Ministerial has been a positive one for the space industry and for EO in particular. Can’t wait to see the programmes and the data they’ll collect.