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WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency will request funding from member states for an Earth observation satellite system for security applications, blurring the line between the agency’s traditional civil focus and new defense work.
In an interview broadcast by Friends of Europe May 21, Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general, said ESA will seek funding at its November ministerial conference for a satellite system for “security and resilience” at the request of its member states.
“I’ve been asked to build up a system that allows a much better intelligence of the situation around the world in the sense of observing what’s happening any place in the world within very short periods of time,” he said.
He didn’t elaborate on the proposed system but suggested one key attribute will be a greatly improved temporal resolution compared to satellites operated by European national governments. “This is something that we don’t have today. Some countries have some national capabilities but they deliver maybe three, four images a day,” he said. “What security actors really need is something every half-hour or much more frequent observations.”
This would suggest a satellite constellation of some kind to provide frequent revisits of areas of interest. The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office is deploying one such system, working with SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, that has placed more than 200 satellites into orbit in two years.
The interview came a day after Aschbacher, in a social media post, noted “significant progress” in a joint task force of ESA and the European Commission examining “a future Earth Observation Government Service with the ESA Resilience from Space programme as a first implementation step for our November Ministerial Meeting.”
“The focus is on defining the right spatial resolution, revisit time, and a clear implementation plan,” Aschbacher wrote.
The European Commission has been studying a potential satellite system, called the Earth Observation Government Service, that would provide “security and defense” reconnaissance applications. In January 2024, it awarded one-year study contracts to OHB and Telespazio to perform feasibility studies of such a system.
ESA previously identified “rapid and resilient crisis response” as one of three areas where the agency sought to accelerate activities. “To save lives and livelihoods, Europe urgently needs space-based rapid and resilient response capabilities to reinforce ground-based systems that can become compromised by natural disasters or malicious actions,” it stated.
ESA has traditionally focused on civil programs, and ESA Convention, signed 50 years ago this month, states that the agency’s purpose is to develop space programs “for exclusively peaceful purposes.” However, some programs it has supported, like development of launch vehicles, can also have security applications.
In the Friends of Europe interview, Aschbacher noted that while defense programs make up 50% of government spending on space globally, in Europe it accounts for only 15%, and that European nations now recognize their spending on defense space activities needs to increase. “My member states of the European Space Agency have asked me to develop programs that are now responding to this, responding to security requirements,” he said.
The proposal that ESA will seek funding for at the November ministerial meeting, known as CM25, would be the first step in that effort that would be coordinated with the EU’s Earth Observation Government Service, he said. The European Commission has started planning for its next seven-year multiannual financial framework (MFF), which begins in 2028, that could support later stages of the program.
“While our teams have worked through the technical details, we now need a clear, compelling way forward for political decisionmakers,” Aschbacher wrote. “Europe must not miss this opportunity to secure a meaningful space budget in CM25 and the MFF – else we risk falling further behind global players like the US, China, and India.”
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