Europe entered a new space race with the unveiling of the continent’s first satellite launch complex in Arctic Sweden on Friday, bringing the European Union into a global push for a technology considered strategically vital for the future of telecommunications, navigation and warfare.
“Europe needs to catch up, and this is the way to do it,” said European Space Agency director general Josef Aschbacher at the inauguration in Sweden’s snowbound Esrange Space Centre, 200km north of the Arctic Circle.
“Europe needs independent access to space. Independent access to space is fundamental for our infrastructure, for security, but also for the services of daily life — from Earth observation to navigation, climatology to telecommunication,” he added.
The underdevelopment of key space technologies outside the US was underlined earlier this week with the failure of Britain’s attempted first launch of satellites into space by Virgin Orbit.
With the development of its own satellite launch capacities, the EU hopes to achieve a repeat of its success in launching the Galileo navigational system in 2016, a more accurate EU-owned alternative to GPS, which is the property of the US government and managed by its department of defence.
The invasion of Ukraine has spurred an international scramble for satellite communication technology from Stockholm to Taiwan, as it is considered to be the first war to demonstrate the value of high-speed internet in the trenches.
“It’s been an eye-opener,” said Mats Helgesson, chairman of the board of the Swedish National Space Agency. “The war in Ukraine has really highlighted the importance of space-based assets and capabilities.”
These are credited with helping Kyiv to fend off a larger but less modern army, through sophisticated tracking, co-ordination, surveillance and targeting technologies that allow army units to act quickly and with more autonomy on the front lines.
But it has also highlighted the strategic risks tied to the ownership of key strategic technology, because the Ukrainian military’s access to frontline internet was granted by SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk in response to a Tweet from Kyiv’s deputy prime minister.
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Concerns have grown that the billionaire has the potential to cut off access to the SpaceX Starlink satellite communications service just as suddenly as he provided it, after Mr Musk polled his Twitter followers over whether illegally annexed Crimea should become “formally part of Russia”.
The key breakthrough of Mr Musk’s Starlink is considered to be its use of a constellation of multiple smaller satellites, rather than traditional single large satellite providers, which have been associated with slow, overloaded connection speeds. A system based on multiple satellites is also more resilient to attack — an important consideration given their expected military uses.
Reusable rockets that would be a step towards competing with SpaceX are under development at the Esrange Space Centre as these make it less expensive to launch satellites, as well as reducing space debris — an increasingly important problem as the number of satellites in orbit is expected to increase from 5,000 to 100,000 in 2040.
Standing in front of a model Themis rocket, a prototype of the EU’s first reusable rocket, orbital launch and rocket test team project manager Pavithra Maghaipathy said the project would be tested this year and in 2024.
“The idea is that the rocket starts on the launch pad, goes up, puts the payload satellites into orbit, and comes back down. We’ve seen this being demonstrated a lot in the industry, but Europe doesn’t have its first commercial rocket yet that’s reusable,” said Ms Maghaipathy, an aerospace engineer.
“We can’t let SpaceX have all the fun.”
