By BlueShift | 2025-12-08

The European Space Agency (ESA) has secured the largest budget in its 50-year history to fund its programs for the next three years, a record 22.3 billion EUR ($26 billion), as the continent seeks greater independence in space.

Meeting in the German city of Bremen on November 27, government ministers and high-level representatives from the ESA's 23 member states, associate members and cooperating states affirmed their support at the highest level yet.

Germany, which recently unveiled its first national space security strategy, was the biggest contributor to the total budget with more than 5 billion EUR ($5.8 billion), followed by France with 3.7 billion ($4.3 billion).

France rolled out a national space strategy on November 12.

"This is a great success for Europe, and a really important moment for our autonomy and leadership in science and innovation," said ESA director general Josef Aschbacher.

"In the face of a challenging geopolitical situation all the states contributing to the ESA budget ... have put their faith in ESA to keep delivering programs that will support European leadership in space," he said.

"While we celebrated 50 years of achievements this year, the work is only beginning."

The Bremen meeting was the first stage of the implementation of ESA’s Strategy 2040, setting the course for European space ambitions, according to the agency.

Goals include strengthening European autonomy and resilience and boosting growth and competitiveness.

The record new funding pledge demonstrates that space is an "economic sector that is growing very fast," Aschbacher said.

"It is also more and more important for security and defense, and it is a domain where Europe has to catch up," he added.

Boosting defense cooperation

The ESA also approved a plan to bolster defense cooperation and laid out plans for scientific space missions.

European Resilience from Space, an ESA initiative with both civilian and military applications that includes Earth observation, navigation and telecommunications, was at the heart of the discussions in Bremen, AFP reported.

The program has an estimated 1.35 billion EUR ($1.57 billion) budget.

Initial funding will go towards a system giving access to high temporal and spatial resolution satellite images, through pooling and sharing of resources and building a network to fill gaps in observations, according to the ESA.

This will be supported by new navigation services from low Earth orbit (LEO) and by secure connectivity, it said.

"The clear mandate for use of space applications for non-aggressive defense purposes signifies an historic change for ESA," the agency noted.

"Defense is always a matter of national sovereignty," Aschbacher said in Bremen. "But pooling and sharing assets also has a European dimension."

The ESA also signed letters of intent with Poland, to explore hosting a new center specializing in security and dual-use/multi-use applications; and with Norway, to evaluate the establishment of an ESA Arctic Space Center in Tromsø.

Future space missions

Europe briefly lost an independent way to launch its missions into space after Russia pulled its rockets following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Its new heavy lift Ariane 6 rocket launched in July 2024, but is not reusable. ESA plans to contract out the development of the continent's first reusable rocket.

At the ministerial-level meeting in Bremen, the European Launcher Challenge received more than 900 million EUR ($1.05 billion) in contributions -- twice what had been proposed, Aschbacher said.

Among the scientific projects the ESA has proposed is the first space-based laser observatory aiming to study gravitational waves, AFP reported.

Another is the X-ray telescope NewAthena, which would study extreme events in the universe such as supermassive black holes.

There is a plan to send a spacecraft to Saturn's moon Enceladus.

And the ESA has a joint proposal with Japan to send the Ramses spacecraft to study the asteroid Apophis as it passes Earth in 2029, hoping to learn more about how to fend off dangerous space rocks in the future.

At the meeting in Bremen, the ESA also announced that the first European astronauts to participate in NASA's Artemis program will be from Germany, France and Italy. Artemis aims to return humans to the Moon.