ESA Satellite (Artistic Impression)
Despite the financial crisis, European ministers have agreed to commit €10 billion (US$12.8 billion)to ESA (European Space Agency), a 21% increase on the sum promised at the last ministerial meeting in 2005. The funding secures almost everything that was on ESA's wish list, including a spending increase for its flagship science programme.
The summit allocated €831 million (to 2018) for a joint ESA–European Union (EU) programme dubbed the GMES/Kopernikus, a network of satellites that would make Europe the world leader in Earth monitoring. It also allocated €943 million (to 2020) for next-generation meteorological satellites; €1.37 billion to operate and carry out experiments on the International Space Station; and €357 million (to 2011) to start design studies for a series of more powerful European space launch vehicles.
No final decision was reached on ExoMars, an ambitious €1.2-billion plan to send a rover to Mars. But cancellation — which some had feared possible — was avoided. Ministers agreed to ESA's proposed postponement of the launch from 2013 to 2016, but gave the programme €850 million, enough for work to begin, while capping ESA's overall contribution at €1 billion up to its launch. A final funding decision will be taken in September 2009 following a technical review and discussions of how much NASA and other international partners can contribute to make up the shortfall in the programme's budget.
There had also been strong political impetus to make the meeting a success following an EU endorsement in September 2007 that space was an important priority. But political support has its price. Pécresse made it clear that governments want ESA's emphasis to be on space activities that benefit citizens, such as the Galileo navigation-satellite system and the GMES/Kopernikus programme.
GMES/Kopernikus will use several families of satellites to provide real-time data on, for example, air quality, water pollution and natural disasters, while generating cross-calibrated, long-term data sets on the state of the planet and its atmosphere.
The next phase of the project, the launch of the second wave of satellites, which was initially budgeted at €1 billion until 2017, was threatened a few weeks ago when Italy reduced its 25% stake to 14% (€120 million). Italy and France also argued that the costs of the secondary 'b-unit' satellites in each family should be borne by the EU.
ESA compromised by asking for €857 million, with Britain increasing its share from 1.5% to 10% (€87.5 million). The b-units will still be built by ESA, with the EU paying for their launch — delayed by a year to start from 2015 — and in-orbit validation.
ESA also won its requested 3.5% annual boost to its science-programme budget, slightly more than it negotiated in 2005. Southwood is satisfied with ministers' consistent support, which was so often lacking in the 1990s when space science was a frequent target for cuts.
This keeps all of ESA's planned science missions on track, including the Herschel/Planck space telescope and the BepiColombo probe to Mercury. It will also allow two more missions to launch around 2016. These will be selected in 2011 from four competitors: PLATO, a telescope to search for Earth-like planets; Cross-Scale, to study fundamental space plasma processes; the Euclid dark-matter mapper; and a solar orbiter.
Read More at Nature.com
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