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Europe’s Great Space Race |
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(Source: Deutsche Welle German radio; issued June 28, 2004)
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(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a three-part series on Europe’s position and role in the race to space. With the success of its first Mars probe, the planned launch of the Galileo satellite navigation system, Europe is emerging as a global space power. But does it have a chance of beating NASA in the space game?)
PART 1: EUROPE IN THE RACE TO SPACE
Last Christmas, the scientists at the European Space Agency's mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, burned the midnight oil. Bleary eyes scanned flickering monitors for signs that the agency's first Mars lander had arrived safely. If things had gone according to script, the Beagle 2 would have sent back a signal playing a short ditty by the British group Blur. But instead of doing a celebratory dance to a pop tune, ESA scientists sat stunned as the computers broadcast nothing but an ominous silence
"It was very tense," David Southwood, the affable, white-maned head of science at the European Space Agency admitted. "We had really committed ourselves to something, and this was the first time the wrong thing happened and we had a null result."
A few weeks later, ESA gave up the search, declaring Beagle dead on arrival. But a guardian angel appeared to be watching over the scientists. Almost as quickly as the news of failure came, the agency chalked up its first Mars success. On Jan. 19, the agency, which includes 15 European member states, released the first spectacular images from the German-designed, high-resolution camera carried by its Mars Express probe, which began orbiting Earth's closest neighbor the same month.
"Seeing the pictures, I thought: We've really done it," Southwood said. On the next day the pictures, which had been beamed down from space, were splashed across the front pages of European newspapers. Four days later, ESA scored another triumph: Mars Express had detected frozen water on the Red Planet.
Over the past 18 months, Europe's space ambitions have begun to crystallize. Besides Mars Express, the agency has volleyed the comet-chasing Rosetta spacecraft halfway across the solar system, sent a probe to the moon and shuttled European astronauts to the International Space Station.
Behind the steady stream of projects tailor-made for National Geographic, something more profound is unfolding in Europe. In an increasing number of areas, ESA is starting to give the United States space program a run for its money.
"There's a recognition in the U.S. that Europe has very strong space capabilities," explained James Lewis, director of technology public policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We're in a crux period here as we are in other aspects of the transatlantic relationship about whether we will work cooperatively or competitively."
As the chairman of the European Parliament's Sky and Space Intragroup, Gilles Savary of France is an outspoken champion of an expanding European space program. He said rivalry with the U.S. is healthy: "It is competition, but competition is sometimes good because it stimulates technology and promotes performance."
Europe has many pots on the stove right now, including its slick solar system missions. But it's three other programs currently in development that are likely to have the most impact on everyday life.
ESA engineers are preparing for a 2008 launch of the Galileo constellation of satellites, which will eliminate Europe's reliance on the American military's global positioning system. The 2.7 billion euro Galileo project, which comprises about 30 modern-day Sputniks, will provide precise tracking information across the globe. It will help control traffic on Europe's streets and in the skies, as well as provide troops with precise positioning during missions.
Another cluster of satellites, Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security (GMES), will help Europe guard its borders and study climate and environmental changes. GMES can also help the EU monitor policy compliance, like ensuring that farmers are growing crops in sync with their subsidies or that countries are adhering to international treaties like the Kyoto protocol. Closer to home, the satellites provide real-time tracking of disasters like last summer's wildfires in France, the 2002 flooding in eastern Germany or human catastrophes like the recent escalation of violence in Kosovo.
A third program, eEurope, aims to bring satellite-based high-speed Internet access to far-flung corners of the continent, from Lapland to rural farmlands, reducing the digital divide and bringing services like telemedicine to places where hospitals don't have access to specialists.
Europe's celestial ambitions are already raising eyebrows in Washington. Some fear the technology gap in the Americans' favor -- something the U.S. has always encouraged -- is starting to close. Though Galileo and GMES are being launched with civilian intentions, both have dual-usage capabilities. "People who say Europe and China are a threat to the U.S. are translating military considerations," explained Laurence Nardon, a space policy expert at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. "There's a desire in Washington to always have the U.S. one generation ahead technologically than any competitors. Now, many see Europe as encroaching on U.S. capacities."
The Galileo program has long been a thorn in the side of transatlantic relations. The past two U.S. administrations have opposed the project, describing it as a threat to their own GPS signals and an unnecessary duplication of technology. But Europeans point out that the Pentagon deliberately scrambled its GPS signal for security reasons during the Kosovo war, thereby handicapping non-military GPS devices in many areas. Europe says that shows its lack of reliability for civilian uses. A deal has since been reached that will make GPS and Galileo compatible and also provide both sides with the right to scramble the other's signal in small areas, but never the entire system. Nevertheless, the sometimes acrimonious tug-of-war leading up to the deal will unlikely be forgotten.
"U.S. military space dominance began to be very clearly recognized with the first Gulf War," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Europe had very strong feelings during the first space war "about having to ask the U.S. for imagery, having to rely on the United States for providing navigation systems. Sometimes the U.S. was open to sharing and sometimes it wasn't."
Questions also persist about the future of ESA's relationship with NASA in the United States. For decades, the two agencies have worked closely together on scientific projects as well as the ambitious and expensive International Space Station. Yet even where there is cooperation, problems sometimes arise. Washington's desire to remain "preeminent in space" can sometimes appear like bully behavior to others.
"Europe participates in American initiatives in space science and in manned flight," a 2003 European Commission report stated. "However, as a general rule, and thanks to the size of its investment, NASA expects to remain in control of design, development and means of launch such that Europe contributes to the less strategic aspects of space missions."
Still, overall ties between the European and American space programs are robust. "ESA is the U.S.'s main partner in space today and, while we have achieved a great deal on our own, what most people don't realize is that almost every task now being undertaken in space, whether by us, by the Russians or by the Americans, is the result of co-operation," ESA Director General Jacques-Jean Dordain recently said.
Ultimately, ESA's close cooperation with NASA could also shape its own future.
President George W. Bush recently announced that the space shuttle fleet will be retired in 2010 and that construction of the International Space Station must be completed by then. The announcement has two major implications. The first is that Russia and Europe will have to take charge of getting astronauts and supplies to the station after the shuttles are mothballed. Second, European space experts will have to get more serious about the possibility of creating a full-scale manned space program in the future.
ESA is already getting started, beefing up a launching facility in South America and moving forward on its "Aurora" project, which would send humans to the Moon and Mars. But the 9 million EUROS invested in Aurora so far is only a drop in the bucket compared to the tens or hundreds of billions it would take to realize the project.
And that's ESA's biggest problem: Unless its members show more willingness to dig deeper into their pockets, such visions will never leave the drawing board.
The European Advisory Group on Aeronautics noted in a recent report that in 1999 U.S. aerospace companies posted revenues of 33.7 billion EUROS from space-related business, of which three-quarters was funded by the Department of Defense and NASA. By comparison, European companies had made less than 5.5 million euros, and only half came from government sources. Moreover, public funding for space programs in Europe averages less than 15 euros per head. The U.S. spends 110 euros per person.
Bureaucracy is proving another stumbling block for Europe. In the U.S., Washington determines funding and priorities for the space program, while the ESA must get approvals from as many as 15 different countries, depending on the project. It must also compete with a number of national space agencies for funding. Some of that could change as the EU funnels more money towards ESA for projects like Galileo or GMES, but expensive projects like Aurora will still be at the mercy of national decision-making bodies.
The European Commission has called for a more than doubling of its annual research budget, from the current 5 billion euros a year to 12 billion euros starting in 2007. Many of the EU's space proposals are depending on the extra cash infusion. But calls from Paris and Berlin to freeze the current EU budget and the costs of Europe's eastern expansion mean those additional funds are anything but certain.
"We now have come to a point where we need to drastically and radically reinforce this effort," Kurt Vandenberghe, a senior advisor to the European commissioner for research, told a space conference in Leuven, Belgium, earlier this year. "Otherwise we risk gradually losing the basis that we have. If we want to maintain the expertise, if we want to maintain the strength of our industry in Europe, we need to have a new and stronger look at space."
PART 2: ESA AND THE EU
In the past year, the European Union drafted its first space policy and even defined it as a fundamental priority in the draft constitution. Its new partnership with ESA could give new momentum to European space dreams.
The European Union has long had its eyes on the sky. It helped shape Airbus into the world's leading airplane manufacturer, and most commercial satellites that are launched into space hitch rides on Europe's Ariane rockets. Now, the EU has set its sights higher. Indeed, Europe's (draft) constitution states a primary goal is to make Europe's space program more competitive.
For three years the EU has been working with officials at the European Space Agency to define a general space policy for all of Europe, one that meets the EU's strategic, security and scientific demands. A series of high-profile reports culminated in November 2003 with the establishment of a cooperative agreement between the EU and ESA. The pact entered into force in May and the two bodies created a high-level panel of experts on space and security in June.
Though ESA will not become an official EU agency, the two bodies will be working closer together than ever before -- with Brussels defining the strategy for many pan-European projects like Galileo or the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative and Paris-based ESA managing their implementation.
"The European Union is taking a strong interest in space because we realize more and more that space is an indispensable tool in realizing our objectives," Kurt Vandenberghe, a senior aide to the European commissioner for research, told professionals at a conference in Leuven, Belgium, earlier this year. "Sustainable development, scientific and industrial competitiveness and security are important areas that involve space science." Vandenberghe noted that the EU already relies on satellites to monitor its agricultural, environmental and civil protection policies.
"Our intention is to make space a part of the EU political project by building further on what already exists today," he said.
A string of recent natural and man-made disasters have demonstrated that a unified European space program could not only save money, but lives as well.
Record summer flooding in eastern Germany in 2002 caused an estimated 15 billion euros in damage. Systems and data to help authorities forecast the event existed at the time, but individual EU countries had different tools, and none of it was centralized. "If we were able to build a cross-border system that allows public authorities to anticipate such events, we would be able to substantially lower the damages. That's what GMES is about," Vandenberghe said. The same holds true for the catastrophic 2002 Prestige oil spill off the coasts of Spain and France. "If data had been available in real time," he said, "a lot of this pollution could have been prevented."
Officials in Brussels have also identified space as a sector that could help fuel economic growth. "We believe we have convinced the heads of government that space can help relaunch the economy," Luc Tytgat, head of the European Space Policy unit at the European Commission said. Europe-wide civilian and defense projects could give a needed boost to European space contractors like EADS, Alcatel or Alenia Spazio, giving them a more reliable economic base than the highly cyclical commercial satellite launching business.
But the new EU-ESA ties could also give a boost to scientific projects. David Southwood, director of science at ESA, said he hopes the alignment with Brussels will help jumpstart space projects that are currently languishing due to limited funding, like the Aurora vision for manned space flight to Mars.
"I hope we will get Europe firmly using space in every possible way it can be used," he told DW-WORLD, "and the alignment with the European Union is a very important part of that. The EU is the best way to organize the very useful aspects of space, like navigation systems and environmental monitoring."
But projects like Aurora, he says, have even greater potential to foster European unity. "We're all still Italians, Germans or Dutch underneath and European second," Southwood says. "To get a grand program like this going you have to be European first. But that's also why taking on grand projects together and succeeding in them is part of Europe's realizing that together it can achieve more than it can as a bunch of isolated individual states."
With a single vision for Europe in Space, Brussels hopes, it will be possible to bring all 25 member states under a single, ambitious tent.
"We have an important and difficult job to do," ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain recently said in Brussels. "We have the new issue of border control in an enlarged Europe. We have the fight against terrorism. We have crisis management and humanitarian aid. Balancing these priorities will be difficult, but that’s what makes this exercise so important. ... This is an important subject for all of us, for every European citizen. Space must be part of the answer to our security challenges."
PART 3: SPACE AND EUROPEAN SECURITY
Long a taboo subject, European Union leaders now want to foster the growth of a Europe-wide defense industry. If Brussels succeeds in consolidating the sector, it could be a major boon for the space program.
Before the end of the Cold War, it would have been political heresy for Europe to pursue a space strategy with a major defense element. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall came new security challenges – like organized crime, mass migration, destruction of habitats and terrorism -- that could only be addressed with space-based intelligence.
A report on space security policy published in October by Rome's Institute for Foreign Affairs concluded that space-based Earth observation tools are also necessary for the European Union to fulfil the so-called "Petersberg" tasks -- the basic military duties including peacekeeping and crisis management laid out in the Treaty of the European Union. They would also be necessary for the operation of a rapid reaction force, the EU's proposed 60,000 strong contingent of troops that could respond quickly to global security crises.
"The distinction between defense-related and civil space systems makes little sense today," European Space Agency Director Jean-Jacques Dordain said. "The same satellites, the same systems can be used for both. In the U.S., defense is the main driving force behind the development of space systems that offer important civil benefits." In Europe, he said, the opposite is happening -- civil institutions are funding projects that will play a major role in security and defense.
Space policy experts are calling on the EU to centralize policy-making in Brussels not only for civilian space applications, but also for the defense side. That's already starting to happen, though at a snail's pace.
"Europe is now moving towards its own security research program," European Commissioner for Research Phillipe Busquin recently said. "The fact is that Europe has long been handicapped in this area due to the fact that security has been a 'no-go' area for us."
ESA's charter expresses that its work must be for "peaceful purposes," which kept it out of the defense debate for decades. However, its charter has recently been interpreted to mean that it can develop and launch defense and security related systems if it is asked to do so by "national or international bodies in charge of security and defense."
In the past, Europe has had less incentive to actively pursue that avenue, but the staggering prices of defense technologies are making greater cooperation a more attractive option for member states.
Before EU expansion this year, the original 15 EU member states spent about 160 billion euros a year on defense. With a few high-profile examples, like the Airbus A400M military transport plane, there has been little cooperation in research, development and procurement. Some estimates suggest national governments could save 5 billion euros each year, become more internationally competitive and create jobs by consolidating weapons research and procurement programs.
A recent report on space policy by the European Commission and the European Parliament warned: "Europe's limited commitment to defense-related space activities leads to technological deficiencies due to insufficient investments in some areas."
With an agreement in February to create a new EU "defense capabilities, development and acquisitions agency," Brussels is embarking on a path that eventually may fuel the growth of a networked European defense sector. The agency will be responsible for coordinating defense research and development, standardizing military requirements and encouraging member states to combine their procurement efforts at a European level.
According to Daniel Keohane of the Center for European Reform in London, during its early stages, the agency will neither have a procurement budget nor the ability to manage procurement programs. Instead, it will seek to coordinate cooperation between existing agencies. They include OCCAR, a defense partnership between Britain, France, Germany and Italy, which is responsible for administering the A400 project (photo). The second big player is the Western European Armaments Organization, a 19-member group that conducts international defense research and development.
Officials responsible for establishing the agency have indicated space would play an important role in its work. If it is able to generate procurement contracts for space-related defense applications, the trickle-down effect for civilian space projects would be considerable.
"The U.S.'s leading role in terms of aerospace and aeronautics boils down to the dualist concept," explains Gilles Savary, who heads the European Parliament's space policy group. "Its influence is driven by the huge defense budget. Military orders are so significant that the consumer applications are easy to develop."
The benefits of a political consolidation of European defense policy for the space program are tremendous, but whether or not the willpower exists in national capitals to hand the reins of sensitive security issues to Brussels is an open question.
Brussels played virtually no role in the diplomacy surrounding the Iraq war. It has also proven difficult in the past to coordinate cooperation between different European players. France and Germany have failed in two different efforts to launch joint military satellites. And an Institute for Foreign Affairs panel convened by ESA predicted it would take at least 15 years before defense space systems are brought together at the EU level.
Nevertheless, there is increasing willingness to at least explore the idea of creating a more U.S.-like defense industry structure. That would foster a more stable future for major European space players like the Franco-German EADS Astrium, France's Alcatel Space, Italy's Alenia Spazio and the hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses that work with them. It would also help cash-strapped national defense agencies that are being asked to do more with less.
-ends-
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