ESA Vision

Accelerate the use of space

Europe faces global challenges stemming from climate change and a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape. Space is well placed to help tackle these challenges – but many organisations have yet to realise its full potential.

ESA is inviting all Europeans to accelerate the use of space.

More than 150 potential partners have already been engaged and work has begun.

ESA has elaborated three “accelerators” that contribute to sustainability and resilience on Earth and in space. They will provide decision makers, industry, and society with the support they need to reach policy objectives and to tackle wider societal challenges more effectively.

The accelerators create opportunities for people from outside the space industry and from within it to cooperate and develop new tailored space-based solutions to global challenges.

Working together, partners will identify new ways to use existing space technologies while developing new space technologies to increase the impact of space, including scaling these to new products, services and industries.

The “Space for a Green Future” accelerator will help people not only to monitor, understand, model and predict climate change, but – crucially – to act, mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The “Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response” accelerator will save lives and livelihoods by creating a space-powered system for real-time crisis management. Combining Earth observation and space communications with AI and cloud computing, it will reinforce terrestrial systems that can become compromised by natural disasters or malicious actions.

The “Protection of Space Assets” accelerator will keep the satellites on which people rely for daily life safe and secure from natural hazards such as solar storms and space debris, and protect infrastructure such as electrical grids from the damaging effects of space weather.

 

Download the factsheets

Space for a Green Future Accelerator

Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response Accelerator

Protection of Space Assets Accelerator

Space for a green future

Mission statement: The Space for a Green Future Accelerator is a co-governed & independent non-profit partnership of Green Transition actors united under a common banner, engaging governments, businesses, multilateral institutions, civil society groups, end users and citizens to develop practical space-based solutions supporting carbon neutrality and greening of society by 2050. We partner with stakeholders and users, aggregate the priorities of Green Transition sectors and seed solutions that address the real needs. We accelerate the use of space by mobilising resources and scaling solutions to full sectorial and global levels.

Rapid and resilient crisis response

Summer flooding across Europe killed 242 people in 2021 and cost more than €30 billion. Thousands of people needed to be evacuated from their homes due to multiple wildfires burning across Greece that destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest and arable land. Similar wildfires in 2007 caused estimated total damage of close to €3 billion (1.3% of nominal GDP). The Ukraine humanitarian crisis induced by geopolitical instability has impacted migration of over 8 million refugees, with one-quarter of the country’s population displaced. Meanwhile the digital economy increasingly depends on secure and resilient information in many industries, including manufacturing and transport, with cybercrime inflicting an estimated €10 trillion damages by 2025. To save lives and livelihoods, Europe urgently needs a space-based rapid and resilient response to reinforce terrestrial systems that can become compromised by natural disasters or malicious actions.

Protection of space assets

Tens of thousands of new satellites, many in constellations, are being launched globally, generating a stark increase of collision risks. ESA already receives hundreds of collision warnings every week for its own fleet of spacecraft. The current approach consisting of manually assessing collision risk and designing appropriate avoidance manoeuvres will soon prove to be an overwhelming task. Furthermore, space debris mitigation and remediation actions are yet to be sufficiently mastered. Every year, several dozens of objects are not properly disposed and an average of ten unwanted break-ups is observed. This poses huge challenges to the long-term sustainability of the outer space environment and therefore to current and future spacecraft operators. Europe’s vulnerability to disruptions caused by space hazards (debris and space weather events) is growing in parallel with the increasing reliance of our society on satellite services. Even a moderate solar event could cost Europe more than €13 billion in damage and lost services. Such an event happened in 2012, but closely missed the Earth. Will we be so lucky next time?
24.11.2023

Collaboration is key to providing security during crises

Representatives of the space industry came together with individuals from ESA member states, user communities and academia on 22-23 November to discuss how space data are being made more secure and accessible in response to an increasing number of crisis situations, such as climate-change related natural disasters.
24.11.2023

Experts meet in Madrid to define new Space Data Space

As the impact of geopolitical tensions and climate change challenges continue to be felt around the world, key players in Europe’s space sector came together in Spain this week to define the requirements of a future Space Data Space system for Europe. The two-day workshop, co-organised by ESA and the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) and hosted by the EU Satellite Centre in Madrid, was convened in light of the central role played by space-based data in preventing, mitigating and responding to these crises.
06.11.2023

Ministers back Europe’s sustainable and competitive space ambitions

Europe will harness space for a greener future, take decisive steps in exploration, and ensure autonomous access to space while preparing a paradigm shift towards a more competitive next generation of launchers, following decisions taken today at the ESA Space Summit in Seville.
06.11.2023

New dossier showcases how space is driving a greener future on Earth

The role that space can play in a greener future for us all is high on the agenda at today’s ESA Space Summit. A new ‘green dossier’ to be released alongside the event in Seville on 6-7 November showcases how ESA’s flagship business-to-business programme is fuelling an unprecedented growth in green and sustainable space-enabled commercial activities to address the challenges of climate change.
06.11.2023

ESA and EC to unite on climate action from space

ESA and the European Commission are joining forces to accelerate the use of Earth-observing satellites and the information they provide to address the pressing challenge of climate change. This landmark initiative signifies a firm commitment to advancing our understanding of Earth’s climate system and enhancing our ability to take timely and informed actions to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change, particularly encompassing the European Green Deal
06.11.2023

World-first Zero Debris Charter goes live

More satellites were launched in the last few years than the entire six decades of space exploration. 130 million pieces of space debris larger than a millimetre orbit Earth, threatening satellites now and in the future. Once a week, a satellite or rocket body reenters uncontrolled through our atmosphere. Behaviours in space have to change.
01.11.2023

ESA’s Zero Debris approach

Space debris is defined as “All non-functional, human-made objects, including no longer functioning spacecraft or fragments of them, in orbit or reentering Earth’s atmosphere.”