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With Pedro Duque as host, Seville hosts today and tomorrow the Ministerial Council of the European Space Agency (ESA) during which the ministers of the member countries in charge of space activities are expected to approve about 15,000 million euros of investment in this sector and decide the priorities for the coming years.

Spain is the only one that has already revealed its financial commitment: an increase of 586.7 million euros (which reaches a total of 1,543 million) for the period 2020-2026, as approved by the Council of Ministers on November 8. As detailed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities , this amount represents an increase in the annual contribution that Spain makes to the ESA, which would rise from the current 202 million to almost 250 million euros annually from next year.

The director of ESA, Jan Woerner , and the acting Minister of Science, Pedo Duque , have opened this morning the meeting, called Space19 + , which will put the finishing touch to the two years in which our country has held the presidency of the THAT. Portugal or France will take over. "It seems that this will be the ESA ministerial conference where all records of investment and momentum in space are broken," Duque said yesterday upon his arrival in Seville, Efe reports.

The 22 members decide where the money goes

These high-level meetings are held every two or three years and are important because in them the 22 ESA member countries announce the money they will devote to space programs.

On the one hand, they must make a mandatory contribution to ESA, the amount of which varies according to the GDP of each state and is intended for the general maintenance of ESA and certain programs. On the other hand, each member of the ESA decides on which optional programs to invest and what money they allocate.

In Seville, it will be decided how much space exploration programs are destined - among them, the participation of ESA in the future mission led by the US to return to the Moon-, the earth observation satellites , which are used to investigate climate change and help rescue teams in natural disasters, the Galileo navigation program , the maintenance of the International Space Station (to continue operating at least until 2025) or space surveillance missions - from the mitigation of space debris to monitoring of asteroids that may pose a threat to Earth.

In regards to lunar exploration, there are several missions on the horizon in collaboration with NASA . Among them, Gateway stands out, a kind of space station that will orbit the Moon and will support the astronauts of the Artemis program (with which the US intends to send manned missions to the Moon again).

However, the advance to 2024 of the first mission that will land has made NASA simplify the design that Gateway was initially going to have, the infrastructure in which ESA was going to invest the most.

Depending on how much money each country invests, ESA awards aerospace companies in its member states the development of its programs so that the health of the aerospace sector in each country is directly linked to the budget that its government allocates.

Currently, Spain is the fifth country with more weight in the agency, after France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The Spanish space sector invoices around 800 million euros annually . "We have gone from manufacturing parts for satellites to complete devices," Duque said.

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