The Roadmap of Europe draws the lessons from the war in Ukraine and plays the card of greater autonomy in access to the inhabited space.
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Spatial has this in common with the chess game that it is generally preferable to always have one or more blows ahead. With deadlines that are counted in years, even in chandeliers, predict constitutes a figure imposed in the sector of exploration of the solar system and inhabited flights. It is therefore not surprising that, in the 2020s barely started, the European Space Agency (ESA) made public on Tuesday, July 5, its roadmap for the following ten years, a strategic plan baptized “Terrae Novae 2030 + “.
The “new lands” in question are not that much since it is a question of continuing to explore the low terrestrial orbit, the Moon and Mars. The real novelty is more in the unprecedented approach to ESA, which, after having long favored international cooperation, in particular with the United States and Russia, now plays the card of greater autonomy. As this roadmap expresses it in its preamble, the reason for this turnaround is to be sought in the geopolitical context, which “can become unstoppated. Consequently, any historic international cooperation, even that highly emblematic and peaceful of Robotic and human spatial exploration, can suddenly be questioned. “
International unstable context
Space Europe pays the war in Ukraine in fact. The international sanctions taken against Moscow had several harmful benefits, including two in particular. First of all, stopping Russian rocket fire Soyuz from the Guyanese space center in Kourou deprives ESA of an average launcher for its institutional flights. Second pitfall: The agency had to give up sending its Exomars mission to the red planet, which was based on two Russian elements, the Proton launcher and a descent and landing module. At the time it is, the departure of the Rover of Exomars is delayed by four years.
ignoring whether cooperation with Russia will one day resume and recognizing that “isolationism and economic protectionism are unfortunately a trend”, ESA aims for more independence. However, there is no question of calling into question his collaboration with the United States in the Artemis of Humans’ Return to the Moon or in the Mars Sample Return project of return of Martian samples. But when the agency’s document evokes its presence on the low terrestrial orbit after the international space station is put out of service (by the end of the decade), we can see the desire to play solo. Decaling the American model of “New Space”, ESA plans to entrust to the European private sector the management of a small orbital station (which would be partly financed by space tourism) and to develop the means to send there humans. This implies the commissioning of a rocket and a capsule qualified for the inhabited flight, which would be a first for Europe.
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