Space: Europe speaks with one voice to become independent (but the road will be long)

A Gaullian heritage, passed from the national framework to the continental framework, European strategic autonomy is a very French hobbyhorse to which our European partners sometimes find it difficult to adhere, often for fear of weakening the American “umbrella”. Taking advantage of its dual presidency, of the Union and of the European Space Agency (ESA), France has therefore decided to advance the file in its space component. The success was unexpected: the subject was unanimously approved by the 30 European ministers – the 27 from the Union and the 3 from ESA who are not part of it -, who met on February 16 in Toulouse.

First of all, Europe will have a “sovereign” constellation for high-speed connections. It will not be a question of competing with the Starlink constellation being deployed by Elon Musk or his counterpart Kuiper in preparation at Amazon, nor even the Indo-British constellation OneWeb, made possible by Airbus and Arianespace, but to free oneself from it.

Indeed, the Covid pandemic, natural disasters and a few cyberattacks have made it possible to measure the dependence of our society and our economy on connectivity. This will intensify in the future. The digital divide must be reduced and the “white zones” erased, so that all European citizens have access to all services, all the time, and even when the terrestrial infrastructure is under attack. The satellite is the key.

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However, in Europe, it is hard to imagine ensuring these vital connections through an American or Chinese commercial system. In addition to secure government links, can we let citizens’ essential data pass through an extraterritorial system that would not be subject to European rules on their protection? It is also difficult to see how Brussels could try to impose its rules on the Gafam of tomorrow, if they hold the European economy hostage with their satellites. We therefore need a European system, made in Europe and using state-of-the-art encryption, and in particular quantum encryption.

250 satellites announced

Curator Thierry Breton, which led the project, has already found enough to put 2.4 billion euros in the pot, including 1.7 billion gleaned from outside the space budget, by appealing to funds provided for digital technology or for research and development (R&D). It remains to be seen whether the States will be able to unlock as much on their side. Several have provided for an envelope dedicated to connectivity in their recovery plan, which could be put to use. Finally, the private sector will also have to invest a similar amount, with the prospect of a return on the commercial uses of the constellation. About 250 satellites are announced, in a mix of low, medium and geostationary orbits, with first launches as early as 2024.

But space and frequencies are starting to run out around the Earth. France solved this question by bringing its “war chest”: portions of spectrum reserved for the International Telecommunications Union for industrial projects but also partly for its defense. On the other hand, the occupation of low orbit remains a zone of lawlessness, where the most aggressive can impose their law.

In the absence of international rules, Europe has decided to equip itself with the appropriate means of surveillance to once again free itself from foreign systems and ensure the follow-up of debris and other satellites on its own in order to be able to protect its space infrastructure. It will also define a series of rules and standards for the management of maneuvers, the prevention of collisions, the deorbiting of end-of-life satellites and the limitation of the generation of debris.

These rules will initially only apply to European programmes, but the aim is to repeat the success of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on the Internet. This European standard eventually spread to apply more and more widely outside the Old Continent. Here too, a regulation could be promulgated as early as 2024.

L'Express

There remains the last of the autonomy that Europe still lacks: that of sending its astronauts into space. There is no consensus on the subject and a kick-off in the middle of the French electoral campaign would have been misinterpreted. A council of wise men – external to the space world – must take up the question from the month of March, to deliver its opinions from the summer and finalize them at the start of 2023.