Davos, Switzerland — Applauding the UAE’s Hope mission to Mars and the “excellence” of its space program, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher hopes to intensify cooperation with the UAE in the coming months. In this regard, he has had some meetings with the UAE’s leaders and will be dispatching a team there to boost ties.
Speaking to TRENDS at Davos 2023, Aschbacher talks of how exploration of outer space will heat up in the next ten years and how commercial space stations will become a reality, and the moon will become a new frontier, a new continent to be developed.
Excerpts:
Cooperation in a fragmented world that doesn’t resonate well. I mean, It’s very relevant for space exploration. How do you see that cooperation between different agencies?
International cooperation is the essence of working in space. At European Space Agency (ESA), we have 500 international agreements with different partners and this is showing that we cannot do it alone.
Of course, every nation has a strong space capability, but ESA is always working with other partners as much as we can and I would be more than happy to intensify our cooperation with the UAE. In fact following some meetings I had with the politicians of the UAE and myself, I have decided to send a group of people from my European Space Agency team to UAE and sit down and see which domains of cooperation we can intensify. This will happen in the next few months and then based on this we will then define where we intensify our cooperation.
#wef23#European #Space Agency seeks to have a stronger relations with the #UAE, its chief Josef Aschbacher tells #TRENDS on the sidelines of @wef.@Davos #risks @ESA_euro @AschbacherJosef pic.twitter.com/5MU5OseDYz
— TRENDS (@mena_trends) January 19, 2023
But let me say one last word of the large admiration for the excellence of the UAE space program. They have been flying with the Hope Mission to Mars, they have been launching astronauts already and they still have astronauts in the training.
In fact, some of the astronauts trained in the ether facilities at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne and we are having some cooperation, but I wish personally that we can do even more and this is part of the steps which I’m taking to intensify this cooperation.
In today’s world that we live in, there are a lot of issues and problems. Why do you think that the space exploration is more necessary than ever now?
Space exploration not only makes people dream, but it also unifies people, because you have big projects, big programs where people work together. It brings people closer together, on the common dream and the common project. Unifying people is one of the beauties of space exploration, in addition to developing technology, attracting young talents, fostering stem education, economic growth and economic activities. There is a large scale of benefits from space, but the unifying factor is the strongest and that’s something very powerful.
In the next 10 years, what are themajor projects that are coming?
In the next 10 years we will see the exploration of outer space. That means commercial space stations will come and the moon will become a new frontier, a new continent, where infrastructure and facilities will be developed.
Our plan is to have a big transport vehicle going to the moon. We call it argonauta. We just got decision and money from our member states last November.
Also, another program, quite exciting, is to establish navigation and communication around the moon and on the moon surface, just like having a mobile phone on Earth. You can in the future also do mobile calls between astronauts or within robots on the moon surface, and this is needed also to navigate them, and that’s something that we plan to do within the European Space Agency program, so there’s many things to come.
Commercialization is certainly a big factor that the industry will drive many of these innovations. And yes, I’m very excited to see this all happening.
Private players or government players? I mean private players are good for the space?
Absolutely, private players are necessary, but always in combination with public institutions, because public institutions set the frame, they act as anchor customers also develop technology, but also the private sector will play more and more an important role.
Now about Davos, what have you been hearing? What are your interactions? What people are saying about space experiment?
What I hear, and this is quite a new trend, that space more and more becomes part of business and economy. Yesterday I had a dinner discussion with the CEO of McKinsey, and he said that I’m talking to a lot of CEOs in different countries of different disciplines, from chemicals to tourism, to transport or energy, agriculture and so on. And he said, I’m always asking these CEOs is space part of your portfolio and if the CEO of that company says no then he said you have a problem. You have to make sure that you are well positioned for future technologies and make space part of your future portfolio. And I think that’s a very powerful message, not coming from me, but it is coming from an economic adviser, and I think they know very well what the potential of space is for many.
Is James Webb a big turning point?
James Webb is fascinating. It is inspiring not only for space people, but for everyone and every country, not only the United States or in Europe, but also Africa, Asia and the UAE. I think every single person who has seen these images, he would be inspired of what space can do, and how interesting our universe is. And yeah, simply It makes you dream and makes you think about, how powerful this tool is to really get people’s attention to the power of space.
We are living in a very young world where there are a lot of young people especially in some countries. What is ESA doing In terms of developing and instilling the space spirit in the young works.
This is one of my big challenges, within ESA, because a lot of my colleagues are retiring in the next few years. So we would lose 1/4 of the workforce in the next few years, thus I have to attract young people to get the workforce into ESA.
I’m putting a huge emphasis on inspiration, education and inspiring people by not only telling them how wonderful space is, but also making sure that ESA, as an organization, is fit and is of interest to young people. That means focusing not only on climate change but also ondigitalization and things that young people do very differently from let’s say the older generation.
So yes, I’m reorganizing the way how ESA works to make sure that they feel comfortable at home working with us and in the space community in Europe.