Space for Europe

Space is an essential ingredient in Europe’s future. The European Union, EU and European Space Agency, ESA, are coming together to make that future happen: separate organisations with differing ranges of competences, Member States and governing rules and procedures, but increasingly converging their efforts along common objectives – to put space at the service of European policies, citizens and industry.

ESA is an international organisation with 22 Member States. By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, it can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country, and can harness its decades of experience to implement the continent’s most ambitious new space efforts. The EU is a supranational union of European states, possessing the sovereignty to set Europe’s space ambitions, with a dedicated arm – the EU Agency for the Space Programme, EUSPA – to provide reliable, safe and secure space-related services, maximising their socio-economic benefits for European society and business.

The EU and ESA together have already proved a formidable partnership, between them establishing flagship European space programmes: Copernicus, the world’s biggest Earth observation initiative; Galileo, the world’s most precise satellite navigation system; and EGNOS, a space-based augmentation system making European satellite navigation sufficiently reliable for aircraft and other safety-of-life users. Coming next: IRIS², Europe's new Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity & Security by Satellites.This new satellite constellation will offer enhanced communication capacities to governmental users and businesses, constituting a new space-based pillar for a digital, resilient and safer Europe to foster European competitiveness and societal progress – plus other flagship activities on the way, focused on both the space sector ‘upstream’ – the missions and infrastructure that go into space – and ‘downstream’ – the data and services that return down to Earth.