Europe's future in space

Lucerne offered a scenic backdrop to ESA’s space summit – the crucial ministerial meeting held every two years when the agency’s 22 member states spend 48 hours debating one subject – Europe’s future in space.

After posing for the family photo, the leaders of the European space sector closed the doors to begin debating the big questions – ExoMars and the International Space Station.

“You know, a ministerial council is never easy,” said ESA Director of Launchers Daniel Neuenschwander. “It’s my 6th ministerial council, it’s the first on the side of ESA, and I can tell you it’s never easy!”

“It is always difficult to find a consensus,” added the Chair of the DLR Executive Board Pascale Ehrenfreund. “We always do, as you know, that’s why we are always having a successful outcome, but the nights, and the days, and the very early mornings are always really really heavy.”

The run up to Lucerne wasn’t smooth – last month the ExoMars Schiaparelli probe crashed into Mars, when it should have landed gently.

With the broader ExoMars mission facing a 436 million euro shortfall, industry insiders admitted there was a risk this joint Russian and European project could be abandoned.

“Actually we had some doubts,” revealed the Vice President of Thales Alenia Space, Vincenzo Giorgio. “However the confidence was coming from the fact that everybody who needs to know knew that we are already on the way to continue. We have been working like all the funding was there anyway.”

That choice to continue building ExoMars was shown to be the right one, as the Italian government set the stakes high early by promising an extra 35 million euros.

“I don’t think it’s a question of conflict between countries,” said the Italian minister of education and research Stefania Giannini. “It’s a question of different points of view, because Italy has some priorities, and my intervention was absolutely grounded on this list of priorities – ExoMars is important for this.”

In the poker game of space politics ExoMars emerged a winner, with the UK and France also raising their stakes, guaranteeing the 2020 rover mission the financing it needs to completion.

That decision was underscored by these new high resolution images of Mars just taken by the ExoMars TGO spacecraft.

“You have challenges, things don’t always go right,” pointed out ESA Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration, David Parker. “You learn from them and move on. But I think being able to show that we are already getting value out of the first part of ExoMars certainly helped the story. But the story is also about the potential for the impact and excitement of this mission, and the real excellent science that’s going to come out of it.”

The other big ticket space project in need of cash in Lucerne was the International Space Station.

ESA struck a deal to finance it until 2024. But big questions remain about when it will be replaced, and what with.

“Germany made a contribution which al