From managing climate change to emergency response and digitizing the economy, space exploration is becoming increasingly important to life on Earth. To help policymakers and businesses make informed decisions about investments in space, ESA (European Space Agency) has published plans to create robust and reliable data on the space economy in collaboration with international partners.
The growing importance of space means there is growing demand for reliable and timely statistics on the space economy. To meet this demand, ESA collaborated with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Eurostat and the European Commission’s Joint Research Center, as well as the US Department of Commerce and its Bureau of Economic Analysis.
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said: “For too long, the growing contribution of space to economic growth has been suppressed in official statistics. Creating statistical codes for space-related elements will reveal the full scope of the space economy and allow economists and policymakers to pinpoint how space creates prosperity on Earth.”
The space economy extends far beyond launch vehicles, spacecraft and satellites – it includes space products and services, such as satellite communications and navigation, on which many economies, people and devices depend.
Included are both direct contributions (for example, mining metal used to build a satellite) and indirect contributions (for example, value added by keeping people in remote regions connected), as well as people working in the space industry spending their wages fee. The space economy could expand to unexpected places, with space-based innovations emerging in medicine, healthcare, environmental monitoring, agriculture, transportation and manufacturing.
The code tables will allow economists to determine, for example, the value added from creating an electronic chip that uses the European Galileo satellite navigation system and is subsequently inserted into a person’s mobile phone or car, without taking into account the total cost of the mobile phone. phone or car in space data.
The codes cover areas such as: industrial products; information and communication services; professional, scientific and technical services; construction; government administrative and defense services; education; transportation and storage; financial and insurance services; and arts, entertainment and recreation services.
The tables are based on work started by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, which published the first attempt to create a set of accounts for the US space economy in 2020, as well as a two-year collaboration project between ESA, Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre.
The work consists of three areas: an internationally agreed definition of the space economy for statistical purposes; development of a methodology for constructing a thematic account of the European space economy at the national and aggregate European levels; and combining the results obtained from their fine-tuning and testing, which is still ongoing and will be published in due course.
ESA is also launching a competition that will initiate the first phase of European companies’ efforts to demonstrate a complete cargo delivery service to space stations in low Earth orbit and back by 2028.
At the recent Space Summit, member states agreed to launch a new competition for European companies to offer the first step towards cargo transportation to and from space stations in low Earth orbit. In this first phase, selected companies will be asked to undertake all activities required to achieve the first flight demonstration to the International Space Station by 2028; this should be part of the ESA Director General’s proposal to the next ESA Council at ministerial level in 2025, where representatives of the agency’s member states will take decisions on all ESA programs.
Today, Europe relies on its international partners to deliver its cargo and crew into space through a barter system. In the past, ESA has provided an automated transport vehicle (ATV) that delivered more than 30,000 kg of cargo to the International Space Station between 2008 and 2015; this and other contributions, including the European laboratory at Columbus Station, enabled European astronauts to fly regularly into low Earth orbit.
The ATV design is the basis of the European Service Module (ESM), which powers the crewed Orion spacecraft during NASA’s Artemis missions; the numerous ESMs required for the Artemis missions, as well as significant contributions to Gateway, will support current and future European astronaut missions and much more.
However, the landscape of space exploration is changing with increasing commercialization in low Earth orbit. The next decade will see the development of private space stations rather than institutional ones such as the International Space Station. Without a significant element of barter, ESA would have to buy a ticket to space in cash to continue its presence in low Earth orbit, rather than develop the industrial expertise to do so in Europe.
With this new initiative, European industry will develop a way to transport cargo to and from space stations in low Earth orbit by the end of this decade, giving Europe access to space, further prospects for barter and the opportunity to develop European industry. commercial services for the transportation of goods to low Earth orbit on the world market.
This cargo service could also be a springboard to one day developing the ability to transport crew to low Earth orbit and perhaps the ability to return cargo from the Gateway. This capability is the first step in ESA’s renewed ambitious space exploration program, supporting Europa’s continued journey into low Earth orbit and beyond to the Moon and Mars.