Europe's space ambitions on the right trajectory, ESA Director General says

After years of difficulties and setbacks the European Space Agency is delivering a new generation of rockets that it believes will put Europe back in the vanguard of an increasingly competitive industry. Its Director General, Josef Aschbacher, spoke to Grégoire Lory for the Global Conversation about the ESA's ambitions and the challenges ahead. He began by asking Aschbacher if the agency was emerging from a launcher crisis with the successfull Vega and Ariane 6 missions in recent months.

"We are on the best way to get out of the launcher crisis," Aschbacher says. "But, I really would like to say that ESA delivers. We have, delivered Ariane 6, successfully into orbit and this is not a small thing, because these rockets deliver satellites into orbit, which we need for daily life. And this is really fundamental. So really a big step for Europe, and, very big success for Europe. And just, recently we launched Sentinel-2C, with the last flight on Vega. Vega was the ESA rocket in the smaller segment, which we developed some more than 10 years ago. And I think Europe can be very proud and very happy of this continuous series of successes which we deliver," he adds.

Aschbacher concedes the agency did have significant problems: "We had a small crisis with launchers for about one year, we did not have our own launch capability but with Ariane 6 back on the launch pad, with Vega now having launched successfully the Sentinel-2C, with Vega-C coming at the end of this year, certainly 2024 is the year when Europe gets out of the launch crisis. But let me just put it a bit in context because sometimes we hear negative news and Europe in the launcher crisis and yes, this was all true, but also our big partner in the United States, NASA,