A golden age for European space?

Josef Aschbacher believes Trump's victory is good news for Europe's space sector.

In POLITICO, Joshua Posaner writes that following Donald Trump’s election, Josef Aschbacher is feeling bullish about European space:

"Space has hit the top of the agenda in the U.S.," Aschbacher told POLITICO during a visit to Berlin, adding it was clear from Trump's victory speech — during which the president-elect glowingly recalled watching SpaceX's latest Starship test flight — that space would be a "priority" for the incoming administration.

Trump certainly seems to have a strong interest in space. During his first term, he launched NASA's Artemis program to return astronauts to the moon and founded the U.S. Space Force as a dedicated military wing to protect assets in orbit. SpaceX boss Elon Musk has also been a major part of the campaign for Trump's return to the White House.

While it remains unclear how Trump will define NASA's mission plan and incorporate Musk's commercial interests through SpaceX, his return to the White House will come just as European policymakers consider how to calibrate their own long-term investment.

In Space News, Jeff Foust reports that European space companies are seeking more competitive government contracts.

Companies and investors want European governments to take more risks and buy services from space startups, rather than awarding grants, to make the industry more competitive with American counterparts.

A long-standing challenge for European space startups has been access to capital, which was perceived to be more readily available in the United States. That was particularly true as companies tried to raise later, larger rounds to scale up their businesses.

“Europe has done all the hard work to get the companies up and running, but then when it comes to the growth stage, nobody’s there to support them,” said Daniel Biedermann, partner at Luxembourg-based NewSpace Capital, which focuses on growth-stage space startups, during a panel at Space Tech Expo Europe here Nov. 20. That causes companies to either stagnate as small businesses or to go elsewhere, like the United States, to continue to grow.

In Space News, Peter Juul of the Progressive Policy Institute argues that NASA, at risk of becoming a ‘glorified contracting agency’, remains ‘irreplaceable and indispensable’.

As Musk promises the American public “temporary hardship” as he looks to cut some $2 trillion from the federal budget — the equivalent of all spending outside Social Security, Medicare and interest on the national debt — Trump’s top space advisers talk openly about funneling even more public money to Musk’s SpaceX. If actually implemented, such proposals would give Musk a de facto monopoly over America’s commercial space industry, stifle healthy competition that fuels technological innovation and demoralize an already overtaxed NASA workforce.

Never mind that SpaceX remains well behind schedule when it comes to delivering a lunar lander derived from its Starship vehicle. Or that any lunar landing mission using Starship will require 17 launches of a booster rocket that has yet to complete one successful flight test. Or that it’ll need an as-yet untried on-orbit refueling method to reach the moon at all.

This reality makes it ludicrous to suggest, as Trump space advisor Gene Autry has done, that NASA simply contract out a human Mars mission to SpaceX. To put it bluntly, the company has not demonstrated the technical competence required to execute even less demanding missions.

In USA Today, Janet Leohrke says that solar events are playing havoc with satellites, pointing to the need for better protective coatings and materials for spacecraft.

The sun’s solar weather has caused several atmospheric events since entering its solar maximum phase on Oct. 15, according to NASA. The phenomenon happens about every 11 years as the sun's shifting magnetic field flips. The sun’s solar activity reaches its peak at the middle of this cycle.

According to NASA, the sun’s excess solar flares and winds wreak havoc on the Earth’s magnetic field. Earlier this month, the solar activity disrupted the orbit of three, small Australian satellites, causing them to burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere sooner than planned, according to ScienceAlert.com.

The sun's outbursts and plasma energy pouring toward Earth have also caused northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, to occur more frequently.

In Reuters, Tim Hepher and Andrew Gray write that European aerospace is urging governments to bolster the autonomy of their defence and space industries and take a clear position on trade.

Defence has surged up Europe's political agenda due to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and fears that Washington may cut commitments to European security, particularly after Donald Trump was elected for a second term as U.S. president.

Meanwhile, Europe's space industry has embarked on a fresh attempt to bring together parts of its loss-making satellites industry in the face of competition from Elon Musk's SpaceX and civil aerospace firms are fretting over possible new tariffs.

Guillaume Faury, the chief executive of Airbus, which has announced 2,500 job cuts in space, said on Tuesday that Europe's space industry needs to restructure and consolidate.

And lastly, The Moonwalkers, which chronicles the Apollo missions, is returning to London’s Lightroom.

Tom Hanks narrates an epic experience that offers a unique new perspective on humankind’s past and future voyages to the moon.

Telling the stories of the Apollo missions in intimate detail, The Moonwalkers also provides an insight into the impending return of crewed surface missions by going behind-the-scenes of the Artemis programme, including interviews between Hanks and Artemis astronauts.

Lightroom’s powerful projection and audio technology will transform the immense space into a vehicle for a spectacular immersive voyage to our closest celestial neighbour.

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