WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency announced Nov. 6 it will start a competition to develop commercial vehicles to transport cargo to and from the International Space Station by 2028, a step towards developing a crewed vehicle.
ESA’s member states, meeting in Seville, Spain, as part of the European Space Summit, endorsed a resolution directing the agency to take the first step in an effort patterned on NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program that would see European companies developing vehicles for cargo transport to the ISS and potentially future space stations.
“I’m asking for a small but very impactful step, the first step that enables a much bigger ambition,” Josef Aschbacher, ESA director general, said in remarks at the opening of the ESA Council meeting there. “I propose a competition between innovative European companies to deliver a space cargo return service to transport cargo to the International Space Station by 2028 and bring it back to Earth.”
Details about the competition have yet to be worked out. Aschbacher said at a media briefing after the ESA Council meeting that he will establish a small “tiger team” withing the agency to start the program. He envisioned a first phase where ESA provided study contracts to two or three companies in the near term with a total value of 75 million euros ($80 million), using existing funding.
Funding for later phases of the program would be allocated by ESA member states at the next triennial ministerial meeting in 2025, known as CM25. He did not disclose what he estimated the cost of the program might be.
While ESA officials did not explicitly state it, the effort is clearly inspired by NASA’s COTS program, which offered funding to companies to support development of cargo capabilities. When then-NASA Administrator Mike Griffin announced the COTS program in 2005, the agency envisioned spending $500 million (about $790 million in current…
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