European space travel: at least bake small sandwiches

Success and failure in European space travel are closely linked not only technically but also politically. Research Minister Dorothee Bär was able to celebrate after the successful launch of the German small rocket “Spectrum” at the beginning of the week: “Germany can do space travel”. On the other hand, a lot went wrong at the first International Space Summit, which France and Germany invited to Paris. Chancellor Merz canceled his participation at short notice.

It didn't help that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tried to smooth things over with her first speech on space policy yesterday, Thursday. The stars are of great concern to the European Union; she bears it in her coat of arms.

The new space race has two central drivers. One is the technical-economic development of the industry segment called “New Space”. Many small start-ups are active here, building satellites and “micro-launchers” for low-cost entry into orbit or specializing in remote sensing applications.

The second, more political factor is called “technological sovereignty”: Europe must not wait for other powers to pave its way into space, but must create its own technological facts, according to the message from the Paris summit. “Europe is taking its destiny into its own hands, including in space,” said France’s President at the opening of the conference with 2,000 experts from all over the world who discussed the long-term security of space capacities, Earth observation and climate protection from space.

“We must invest and innovate to build a strong Europe, independent even in space,” stressed Macron, announcing the mobilization of 5 billion euros to strengthen the European space sector. In total, over 50 international projects and agreements were signed.

The governments in Berlin and Paris are currently at loggerheads over the EU satellite network IRIS2, which is to be set up as a European counterpart to “Starlink”, the satellite internet system from Elon Musk's space company SpaceX. France primarily wants to pamper its French space companies, while German medium-sized businesses are left behind, according to one point of criticism from the German side. The estimated costs (15 billion euros) and the timing are also out of control.

The message from German Space Minister Bär in Paris, on the other hand: “Small is beautiful”. The 28-meter-long rocket from the Munich-based founding company Isar Aerospace made it from the launch pad in Norway into the low Earth orbit of 500 kilometers and deployed five small satellites from university scientists there.

“This success is a milestone for our university research,” said Klaus Brieß from the space technology department at TU Berlin, which had a small satellite for photovoltaics research on board. “For us researchers, this will drastically shorten the waiting times for a launch site in the future.”