ESA to pursue crew transport and space stations as European launchers come online

8 min read · reported by NASASpaceflight

The European Space Agency (ESA) recently started investigating options for a European-led space station. The announcement follows “A Call to Boost European Space Exploration,” which ESA’s member states recently endorsed. The Call asks ESA to strengthen its position in human and robotic exploration of low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars through developing competitive capabilities, including crew transport.

Meanwhile, Europe’s next generation of launch vehicles has started coming online under ESA’s European Launcher Challenge (ELC). The program booked its first success with Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum reaching orbit on its second flight on Sept. 5. The new rockets complement Europe’s current launch vehicles, Ariane 6 and Vega C, which are ramping up flight cadence to meet an expected peak in demand around 2030.

The Call marks the latest development in establishing independent European access to space. Through increasing its ambitions and building out its own capabilities, the ESA member states want Europe to ensure its autonomy of access to space while also becoming a stronger partner for international collaboration.

“We have seen earlier this year that Europe was quite exposed in terms of investments that we made on projects and programs with other partners, who have changed their programs along the way,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher in an interview with NSF.

Preparing for the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS), currently scheduled to begin in 2030, ESA and other ISS partners are working to ensure sustained access to low-Earth orbit. Ultimately, ESA wants a European version of all capabilities required for human spaceflight, including not only rockets and a crew vehicle but also a launch abort system, space operations, science, and crew recovery. To that end, the Call names developing a European crew transport capability as a crucial step to strengthen Europe’s position as a central player in low-Earth orbit.

“We have estimated it would take about 10 years for a capacity to launch our own European astronauts with our own rockets and our own system. It would cost about 10 billion,” explained Aschbacher.

“But if we don’t do it, that means we would still want astronauts in space. We would need to buy this capacity in the United States, which is our partner today. That means both the flight opportunity but also the station opportunity in orbit, in space, and that cost us about five billion. So, for five billion extra we can do it ourselves and leave the money in Europe and therefore invest in our own capacity.”

Although ESA has not publicized partnerships for developing this capability, two European companies have already announced plans for crew vehicles. The Exploration Company (TEC) wants to develop a human-rated variant of its Nyx cargo capsule, and PLD Space is working on its own LINCE capsule to fly on the forthcoming Miura Next rocket.

With commercial interest in building European companies, ESA might follow NASA’s approach with its Commercial Crew Program, which supported the development of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner.

“The Dragon is a very modern capsule, and I enjoyed my flight up to space in the Dragon capsule,” said ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer in an interview with NSF. “This will be a minimum standard that I would like to have for a European capsule, but I think we can do better even. So, I would challenge my colleagues who design European capsules to say, like okay, that’s the baseline. Do at least as good but hopefully we can even go one step beyond.”

Before flying humans, Europe will establish its own commercial cargo delivery capability through TEC’s Nyx capsule. In September, ESA and TEC signed a contract for a demonstration mission to the ISS under ESA’s Autonomous LEO Accelerated Demo Docking to ISS Node (ALADDIN) program, formerly known as Leo Cargo Return Service (LCRS), which was first announced in 2023.

Nyx is set to fly its demonstration mission atop an Ariane 64 rocket, but its launch date remains unannounced. In 2025, TEC targeted 2028 for Nyx’s debut. ESA will fund the mission with 310 million euros as part of the ALADDIN contract, which totals 760 million euros. The remainder is designated for two more cargo missions to the ISS or a commercial successor.

With the ISS’s retirement in sight, ESA has initiated partnerships with companies working on commercial space stations.

Last month, the agency signed separate agreements with United States-based Axiom Space and Starlab Space, a joint venture between U.S. company Voyager Technologies and the European company Airbus Defence and Space. These agreements mark the first steps for Europe to obtain access to the future commercial stations.

The agency is already working with California-based space station company Vast, which plans to launch its prototype station, Haven-1, early next year. The first human expedition to Haven-1 will include ESA astronaut Arnaud Prost on his first spaceflight.

Additionally, Vast is organizing a private astronaut mission to the ISS, which will carry ESA astronauts Thomas Pesquet, Aleš Svoboda and Adrianós Golémis to the orbital outpost alongside a yet-to-be-announced fourth astronaut.

This week, ESA announced it had started a pair of studies researching the feasibility of establishing a European-led space station. The agency investigates this option in parallel with exploring partnerships with commercial stations.

“That is one of the options we are discussing: a station that would be built by Europe, with European industry obviously, probably co-funded with private money, where we would fly the astronauts,” said Aschbacher. “It may not be necessary that such a station is all around the clock occupied. That means we may use it for a certain time period, and for the rest of it we’re using it as a robotic station automated through the operations that we have.”

Two consortia, led by Airbus Defence and Space and OHB respectively, are conducting the studies on the feasibility of developing and operating a European space station. Initiated in June, the programs will run for approximately nine months. The studies will build on Europe’s previous experience with its various contributions to the ISS and the European Service Module (ESM), which it provides to NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

Beyond low Earth orbit, Europe wants to participate in lunar exploration. Previously, ESA’s main contributions to the Artemis program were modules for the Lunar Gateway space station, but a program reorganization scrapped the station in favor of a Moon base. As a result, ESA is currently renegotiating its contributions, ultimately aiming to land European astronauts on the Lunar surface.

“It is clear that Europe needs to step up its contributions in this partnership with NASA because a flight to the Moon’s surface, of course, is much more valuable than to the Gateway,” explained Aschbacher. “Therefore, we need to increase our capacity and our contributions to the lunar economy and therefore the Artemis program.”

In the meantime, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano will fly as pilot on Artemis III. Even though this flight will not go beyond low-Earth orbit, the mission will perform important tests involving the Human Landing System landers, SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2, as well as Axiom Space’s AxEMU spacesuit.

Although ESA hasn’t secured its seats to the lunar surface yet, Maurer explained that some Moon-related training has made its way into the generic training programs for ESA astronauts.

“We all have geological field training. We all have already done the first steps in helicopter training. That’s now a new type of training element that you don’t need for the International Space Station. But when you fly to the moon, you will land vertically. You will come down almost like a helicopter,” Maurer said.

In general, the Call desires a more ambitious European space program, backed by a competitive commercial space industry to provide cost-effective solutions. Although the call doesn’t explicitly mention launch capability, ESA and its commercial partners have made major progress on the next generation of launch vehicles.

This summer, ESA officially kicked off its European Launcher Challenge by awarding the first contracts to Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and PLD Space. The final company in the program is ArianeGroup subsidiary MaiaSpace, which is still negotiating its contract with the agency.

Since then, Isar became the first company to complete the program’s requirement of achieving an orbital launch before 2028. The company’s Spectrum rocket successfully deployed payloads in orbit after lifting off on its second mission in early September.

“The European launcher challenge is a huge success for Europe. It’s a paradigm shift of how we prepare the next-generation launcher,” said Aschbacher. “We need to prepare the future, when Ariane 6 comes to the end of its service, which is probably in the mid or late 30s. In order to have a new launcher ready, you need to start now.”

Although Ariane 6 and Vega C are steadily ramping up their launch cadence, Aschbacher expects it might not be enough to meet future demand.

“We have done an estimate of how many launches we need in the next couple of years, and we will have a peak around 2030 and the next years. That means we don’t have enough launchers in Europe to launch all our own satellites that we are developing at the European Space Agency, for the European Commission, and nationally,” Aschbacher explained.

“So there’s a lot of launches coming up, and that means we need to make sure that we can launch them. Of course, preferably with European launchers, and this is exactly why we need to ramp up, maybe even increase the ramp-up.”

With this projected increase in cadence, Europe’s legacy rockets and its next-generation launchers will have to operate in tandem to meet demand. Eventually, the industry will need to pivot fully to modern rockets that leverage reusability for Europe to maintain independent and cost-effective access to space.

“They [Ariane 6 and Vega C] are not reusable, and that is a disadvantage that we have today in Europe: that we do not have a reusable launcher,” said Aschbacher. “In order to really be even more competitive on the world market, we need reusability.”

Reported by NASASpaceflight. Reproduced unedited by Everything Space. View the original →