Paris (AFP)
Arianespace President Stephane Israel on Friday criticized his private US rival Space X for wanting to "colonize the Earth's low orbit" with constellations of tens of thousands of satellites, and advocated a "sustainable space" against a "space" far west".
"We are for sustainable space, we are not for a space far west," said Arianespace's boss on France Inter, in charge of marketing the European launcher Ariane 5 and the future Ariane 6.
According to Stéphane Israël, the project of Space X, the main competitor of European launchers, "is no longer simply a launcher", but "to be the constructor, the launcher and the operator of 40,000 satellites, and therefore c "is a project of monopolization of the sector and colonization of the low orbit (between 500 and 1,000 km of the Earth, ed)".
"We refuse that the low orbit is monopolized by one actor who would ultimately harm all others," he said.
"The question that is put to us Europeans is how we will react to stay in the race", while the 22 members of the European Space Agency (ESA) meet next week in Seville to decide of its budget.
In the face of the constellation Starlink satellites of the California company Elon Musk, Europe "began to deploy a large constellation, + OneWeb +," said Stéphane Israel.
"There is room for constellations between the sanctuary space and the far west space, but we refuse to do anything, these satellites will then have to disintegrate in the atmosphere properly and that is our mobilization, so yes to constellations that will connect more and more Terrans, but no to a space that would become a kind of law of the jungle, "he concluded.
This Friday night, the Ariane launcher will fly from Kourou, French Guiana, to put into orbit two telecommunications satellites, for the 250th time since the first rocket fire forty years ago. "I'm always focused" at the time of a shot, because "a launch is the culmination of months, years of work," responded Stéphane Israel.
© 2019 AFP