The European Union Shoots for the Stars

As the U.S. space shuttle program winds down, leaving NASA's future murky, the European Union is also reexamining its future in space--and seeing a much brighter picture. In fact, Europe has embarked on a mission to boost its huge but not always successful space program and chart a solid course for space exploration in the years ahead. The initiative is part of a wider array of efforts to boost the EU's innovation muscle. As EU Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani said in a statement announcing a new space policy, is strategic for Europe's independence, job creation, and competitiveness. Space activities create high-skilled jobs, innovation, new commercial opportunities, and improve citizens' well-being and security. This is why we need to reinforce European space policy to exploit its social and economic opportunities for industry and small and medium-size enterprises. In order to achieve our goals, Europe needs to keep an independent access to Tajani went on to outline a space policy targeting several objectives. Among them: increasing research to build European independence, fostering greater cross-fertilization between the space sector and other industry sectors, and boosting innovation as a driver of European competitiveness. That statement comes against the background of the world's leading space pioneers--the United States and Russia, both financially troubled--pondering their future roles in space, while China, flush in cash, plans to charge ahead. The new policy seems intended to ease a journey into space that has thus far been bumpy, to say the least. Its ambitious plans to catch up began with the Ariane rocket program, of which the first rockets failed. And the bloc's flagship initiative, the satellite navigation system Galileo, has suffered a number of setbacks. As the United States prepares to launch its third-generation global positioning system (GPS) and Russia and China push ahead with their own competing systems, the EU continues to face delays and soaring costs with Galileo, which it sees as its prestige project. In 2007, Brussels had to take over Galileo after a consortium of eight European companies abandoned it, having failed to convince their banks that costs wouldn't spiral out of control. Officials now calculate that the project will be fully completed by 2018--nearly a decade later than initially planned--and will cost taxpayers an additional 1.5 [euro] to 1.7 billion [euro]. The project was initially billed at 3.4 billion [euro] across 2007-2013. Despite these setbacks, the EU is determined to forge ahead in space. And for good reason: the European space manufacturing industry generates nearly 5.5 billion [euro] in annual revenue and has a highly qualified workforce of more than 31,000. The 11 major satellite operators in Europe operate 153 communication satellites, produce revenues of 6 billion [euro], and employ 6,000 directly with an additional 30,000 working indirectly in the supply chain. The EU estimates that between 6 and 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in Western countries, or about 800 billion [euro], is already dependent on satellite radio navigation, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) expects the world market for Earth observation commercial data to increase from $735 million in 2007 to $3 billion by 2020. That is one reason why Brussels appears determined to make Galileo happen, regardless of the initial cost. In the meantime, however, it has launched the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), the first pan-European satellite navigation system. Augmenting the U.S.-based GPS satellite navigation system, EGNOS improves the accuracy of satellite navigation signals in Europe for safety-critical applications such as flying aircraft or navigating ships through narrow channels. The EU is also seeking to exploit the potential of satellites to provide environmental and security data through its Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program, its second most important space policy initiative after Galileo. …