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Revealed: Europe's master plan for space technology (Forwarded)



 
 
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Old July 7th 03, 08:56 PM
Andrew Yee
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Default Revealed: Europe's master plan for space technology (Forwarded)

ESA News
http://www.esa.int

27 June 2003

Revealed: Europe's master plan for space technology

ESA and its 16 national delegations have come together with the European
Commission and more than a hundred separate industries to develop future road
maps for space technology research and development across the continent.

The new 'European Space Technology Master Plan' consolidates the overall process
for space R&D and highlights 20 separate harmonised technology areas. It was
discussed at a round table at this year's Le Bourget with key representatives
from the EC, European industry and ESA.

"Europe has a yearly budget of approximately 400 million Euro for space
technology research and development. ESA provides half of this budget, while the
rest is going through national channels," said Hans Kappler, ESA Director of
Industrial Matters and Technology Programmes. "It is very obvious this
investment has to be harmonised in order to avoid unnecessary duplications of
activities and fill strategic gaps."

The French Minister of Research and New Technologies, Claudie Haigneré, opened
the debate after receiving the first copy of the European Space Technology
Master Plan (ESTMP, second release) from Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director for
Launchers and incoming ESA Director General together with Antonio Rodota', ESA
Director General, and Hans Kappler.

"It is very important that we can have this harmonisation and common strategy
defined at European level on technology; it is an essential work between ESA,
Member States, EC and Industry," said Claudie Haigneré. "We have now an
instrument which is helping us to work efficiently and achieve concrete results
at European level."

The players and their views

"The ministerial conference in Edinburgh in November 2001 reaffirmed ESA mandate
to take up a coordination and harmonisation role, involving all stakeholders, to
establish the European technology strategy and policy," recalled Kappler.

The necessity to identify needs, to map European capabilities and to define
common European roadmaps for future developments were outlined and an overall
process established.

The new ESTMP refers to all the institutional actors, describing technology
activities in Europe, strategies and funding approaches, readiness level and
relationship with European partners, and includes a database of 1600 individual
European technology activities. The result: through a joint effort involving
ESA, EC, the 16 ESA delegations, more than 100 industries and about 500
professionals, 20 technology areas have been harmonised.

Kappler said: "A good example of harmonisation is the area of solar cells where
we had to deal with the different dimensions, the needs, the technology
availability, the competitiveness, and the harmonisation between different
national players."

There was a clear gap in the European market for multi-junction GaAS solar cells
before harmonisation, with the technology primarily procured in the United
States. Europe needed to invest in research to gain a competitive edge in terms
of performance, price and delivery.

Resources were concentrated on a common development programme, with the aim of
achieving a large-scale production capability. Today the result of the
harmonisation effort is that European multi-junction solar cells are now used on
the Herschel-Plank spacecraft. They are also being selected for Astrium
telecommunication satellites.

Why the need for technology harmonisation?

Geir Hovmork, Chairman of ESA's Industry Policy Committee, explained: "The
national delegations finance their countries' participation in ESA as well as
national programmes and they have limited finances available. In certain
technology areas we find the same kind of industries competing for the same
limited market. It became quite obvious both for industry as well as for
governments that we needed some kind of concerted approach to get the most out
of our budget."

Alain Gaubert, Secretary General of Eurospace, recalled that Eurospace has 55
European companies as members representing 90 per cent of the European industry
turnover; they have to face a very serious crisis. The telecommunication market
is going down. "There is a manufacturing capability of 35 satellites per year
while the total number of orders will not be more than 12 this year, and we will
be happy if we just get half of these. In this situation, there is need for a
more coordinated approach in all R&D field and core innovation."

This point was agreed by Luc Tytgat, the EC's Head of Space Unit: "We want to
improve and increase the strength of Europe, and it is absolutely necessary to
implement a tool which helps to coordinate this, so this harmonisation effort is
definitively something we welcome. We have in front of us an enlargement process
where new association countries needs visibility on what are the objectives of
the European Union and this type of instrument (i.e. the Master Plan) is
absolutely a significant, strategic and visible contribution to our requirements
to coordinate and harmonize technology activities in Europe."

"If we want to be ambitious in Europe and want to launch new space programmes we
will have to allocate more resources but at the same time to make the best use
of the money. We have to ensure that all national research centres, the
different institutes and even the private sector try to build up together an
independent approach for the technology we need in Europe."

It is part of the harmonisation process to find a balance between maintaining a
healthy competition and to concentrate the limited resources available to
support the Industry competitiveness. "This is one of the real challenges in the
harmonisation process," Kappler emphasised.

All speakers at the round table underlined the constructive and positive spirit
of this European initiative, the momentum acquired and the already concrete
results achieved.

The step forward

The process of defining a European strategy and policy for space technology R&D
is highly dynamic with active feedback throughout its various phases and
frequent interaction with all parties involved. The technology requirements and
the ESTMP itself will be updated on a yearly basis, the harmonisation being more
a continuous process addressing approximately eight technologies per year, with
the objective of revisiting the technology roadmaps on a three to four year basis.

"Technology is paving the way. The harmonisation approach and results will
continue to further expand toward industrial policy and space programmes,"
Kappler concluded.

More information

* Harmonisation of European space technology
http://ravel.esrin.esa.it/docs/harmonisation.pdf

Related links

* EC's European Space Policy
http://europa.eu.int/comm/space/doc_...n-paper_en.pdf
* Green Paper on European Space Policy
http://europa.eu.int/comm/space/doc_...s_sourisse.pdf
* European Strategy for Space Technology
http://www.estec.esa.nl/conferences/...ations/002.pdf
* ESA 2001 Annual Report
http://esapub.esrin.esa.it/annuals/a...1/A-techno.pdf

[NOTE: Images supporting this article are available at
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEML...D_index_1.html ]


 




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