BREMEN, Germany — European governments and launch companies hailed an agreement reached last week on the future of the continent’s launch industry despite questions about how one aspect of that agreement, a competition, will work.
Throughout the first day of the Space Tech Expo Europe conference here Nov. 14, officials praised the agreement, announced at the European Space Summit in Seville, Spain, Nov. 6, as a major change or “paradigm shift” in how Europe develops and acquires launch services.
The agreement provided near-term financial support for the Ariane 6 and Vega C rockets, including up to 340 million euros ($369 million) a year for Ariane 6 to allow production of a set of 27 vehicles, as well as commitments to purchase at least four Ariane 6 and three Vega C launches a year for institutional missions.
In the longer term, though, the European Space Agency intends to move to a services model, competing launches among multiple private companies rather than assigning them solely to Ariane 6 and Vega C. ESA, though, has offered few details about how that competition will work.
“Competition will be the method of choice in the launcher sector in the future,” said Walther Pelzer, director-general of the German Space Agency at DLR, in a keynote at the conference. That will protect, he said, from the ongoing “launcher crisis” in Europe caused in part by delays in the Ariane 6. “Monopolies imply a lot of risks.”
Germany was a major advocate of the launch competition concept, he said, presenting it at a meeting of the ESA Council in June, and getting “a lot of support” there.
“We collectively agreed that the new model, resting on competition and service procurement, will frame Europe’s launcher and, most likely, low orbit landscape in the future,” said Philippe Baptiste, chief executive of the French space agency CNES. “It’s the only option for Europe to regain its position as a global space…
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