| | Benefits for Europe
In concerted continent-wide efforts, ESA extends into spaceflight a long European tradition of supporting research and pre-competitive technology from the public purse. Europe’s relatively small nations have achieved much more by acting together than they might have done if working alone.
While spending much less than NASA, ESA has established Europe’s presence in all non-military areas of space activity, and has nurtured scientific and industrial competence in its member states.
Now it will ensure that Europe can meet the challenges of the 21st Century, when space will affect everyday life even more intimately and human activity will spread more widely into the Solar System.
|  | Countdown to launch | |
Access to space
During the past 25 years ESA has created Europe’s own launchers (Ariane 1 to 5) and established a convincing European presence in unmanned and manned operations in orbit. Scientists and technologists in Europe can now pursue their own ideas and inventions, without deferring to decision-makers in other parts of the world.
Access to space also establishes Europe’s credentials as a spacefaring power, able to join in international projects as an equal partner and to speak influentially about the lawful uses of space. With its own commitment to strictly non-military goals, ESA promotes peace in space by fostering global collaboration.
| | Artistic view of Galileo | |
Independence in applications
The Galileo satellite system, now under development by ESA, meets a perceived need for Europe’s own space navigation system. It shows why independence matters, in space applications. Europe’s remote-sensing experts and environmental scientists have been able to put onto ESA’s Earth-watching satellites the instruments that best reflect their ideas, skills and priorities for tackling global environmental issues. And building satellites for telecommunications and broadcasting has become big business for the aerospace industry.
European companies have a substantial but not yet proportionate share of the market, so ESA continues to strive to make the share larger by demonstrating timely innovations.
| | X-ray telescopes on ESA’s XMM-Newton | |
Competitiveness in high technology
Space technology ranks alongside aeronautical engineering, computer applications and biomedical technology as an advanced industrial skill of the kind that Europe should cultivate if it is to prosper in an increasingly competitive world. The American space industry receives much technological stimulation from the military space sector, which is relatively small in Europe.
ESA’s support for pre-competitive innovation in space applications has therefore been crucial for the development of the European space industry. Special stimuli for high technology come from ESA’s space science programme, because the quest for new discoveries repeatedly pushes technology to the limit, in daring ventures never attempted before.
| | Columbus Laboratory | |
Weightless wonders
Special chances for technological innovation come in ESA’s microgravity programme, which enables scientists to make discoveries or novel products in weightless conditions. The weird sights when materials and living things feel no force of gravity are familiar in pictures from space. Round balls of water wander like gas balloons and astronauts float in an invisible pool.
What interests scientific, industrial and medical researchers is that crystals form more perfectly, fluids flow undiverted by convection, and cultured organisms and tissues grow differently from their cousins on the ground. ESA’s Columbus laboratory on the International Space Station will support thousands of microgravity experiments.
| | Europe’s space industries already employ 40,000 men and women | |
Creation of new jobs
Fostered by the public funds channelled through ESA for a quarter of a century, Europe’s space industries already employ 40,000 men and women. Indirect employment is estimated at 250,000, and these numbers can only increase as the applications of space technology spread wider. Newly created multinational aerospace companies are big and skilful enough to secure their own future by innovations, and to relieve ESA of some responsibility for project management.
Space jobs in smaller companies and small countries are partly protected by ESA’s policy of directly returning most of each nation’s budgetary contributions, in the form of industrial contracts.
| | Some benefits from space systems | |
Quality of life
Early personal benefits to Europe’s citizens, pioneered in ESA’s space applications programmes, included better weather forecasts and satellite TV. On the way are smarter personal communications and surer space navigation. Health care, learning, transport systems, disaster relief, and search-and-rescue operations all benefit from space systems.
One aim of ESA’s solar science programme is to give early warning of solar storms that can disrupt power supplies and communications. ESA’s Earth-watching programmes make major contributions to the global effort to detect pollution and monitor environmental and climatic changes - and safeguarding the environment is fundamental to the quality of life.
| | A starry birth and death | |
Research and education
Europe’s scientists in universities and research institutes shape ESA’s programmes in Space science and Earth science, and feed in their latest ideas. As a result, ESA has achieved leadership in several key areas: solar-terrestrial physics, comet science, infrared and X-ray astronomy, and star mapping.
By serving space science laboratories and astronomical institutes across Europe, ESA’s programme prevents a loss of talented individuals to other continents and sustains the quality of university physics teaching. PhD students working on ESA missions often go on to quite different careers in industry or commerce, fortified by exceptional experience of a time-urgent, cutting-edge, multinational project.
| | The Young Lunar Explorers | |
Cultural benefits
In the constellation of values in European society today - freedom, admiration for philosophical, artistic and practical skills, and respect for the environment - unceasing discovery plays a central part. Space science and manned spaceflight push back the frontiers of knowledge and help to re-unify the physical, biological and earth sciences. Young people excited by space exploration may be attracted into careers in science or engineering and almost everyone wonders about his or her place among the stars.
Scientists working on ESA’s projects share their cosmic discoveries with schoolteachers, the media and the general public, in a continent-wide cultural adventure.
Last update: 18 December 2007 | |
