The ESA is Europe's main space agency, with 23 member countries and a 50-year history. At its 2022 triennial gathering ministers agreed a budget of €17bn; at its late 2025 gathering its leaders hoped for at least €22bn ($26bn). European government spending on space is around $10bn a year, compared with $77bn for the American government. The ESA has signed agreements with 72 investors, including venture-capital firms, banks and public institutions, to boost interest in Europe's private space industry. In 2024 European space startups raised over €1.5bn, 56% more than in 2023. From 2019 to 2024 the share of global private investment in space captured by European companies grew from 3% to 22%, thanks largely to interest from defence customers.
The agency is responsible for Copernicus, an Earth-observation programme, and Galileo, a satellite-navigation system more accurate than America's GPS. In December 2024 the EU launched a €10.6bn initiative to develop iris², a satellite constellation intended to reduce dependence on SpaceX's Starlink. But iris² will have only 290 satellites against Starlink's 9,100, and will be operational in 2030 at the earliest. France's Eutelsat, which runs OneWeb, a Starlink rival, also operates in Ukraine with German funding, but cannot match Starlink's scale or prices.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.