POLITICO Europe:
EUROPE’S NEXT BIG SPACE ENDEAVOUR
2021 is the year Europe needs to show it’s serious about building — and defending — its position behind the U.S. as the world’s second space power, the CEO of ArianeGroup, André-Hubert Roussel, told Playbook in an interview.
His company runs the development of the Ariane series of rockets, up there with TGV trains as a prized French engineering success.
He says priority No. 1 for the European Commission on space should be kicking on with developing a secure satellite communications network that will offer Europe a reliable network for digital services.
Such a program — which already has the backing of Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and a
€7 million study ongoing into how to make it work — would be Europe’s third big space services initiative after Copernicus, an Earth monitoring satellite system, and Galileo, a nascent GPS alternative.....
Next week, ministers, commissioners and industry folk will convene for the
European Space Conference, the bloc’s annual talking shop for all things orbital, to discuss the plan.
“We need an ambition in Europe to have more programs and projects to launch,” Roussel said. Getting straight onto a communications network program would mean a steady stream of new launches......