Seville (Spain) (AFP)
The 22 member countries of the European Space Agency (ESA) voted on Thursday a budget of 14.4 billion euros to finance the new programs, a record sum, announced in Seville its director general, Ian Wörner.
"It's a giant step for Europe, fifty years after the landing on the moon," reacted to AFP Jean-Yves Le Gall, the president of CNES, the French space agency. The envelope is greater than the sum originally proposed by ESA to its member states (14.3 billion euros), welcomed Ian Wörner.
This budget, which will finance the new space programs over a period of three to five years, has reached a sum unmatched since the intergovernmental organization was founded in 1975.
Germany put the largest envelope (3.3 billion euros), ahead of France (2.7 billion), becoming, in the long term, the largest contributor to ESA. "But over the next three years, France remains in the lead," said the Ministry of Research.
"We broke all records in terms of financial commitments," said Le Gall.
ESA anticipates a surge in the sciences of the universe, exploration (missions to Mars on the Moon) and Earth observation including the climate change monitoring program, Copernicus, for which the space agency will provide new sentinels.
"This is a clear testimony of our common ambition for Europe," said French Research Minister Frédérique Vidal, who was co-chairing the ministerial meeting.
Regarding access to space, "we will continue to have two sovereign European launchers (Ariane and Vega, Ed)," said the Minister, highlighting the "complementarity" between Ariane and the Italian launcher.
© 2019 AFP