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It looks like the French Ariane will continue to be their workhorse for larger payloads, Soyuz is also contracted to work from Kourou in French Guiana in S.America, Italy has designed Vega to launch small payloads, there might be other Rocket activities from Spain, Norway and Sweden. Most of ESA's money goes into Launchers, Scientific Spacecraft Programs and then Earth Observation Sats. Germany, France and Italy provide the largest finacial contributuions to the space agency.
The ESA seems like it will continue depending on other space agency for manned exploration, I do Not believe ESA will be in a position to lead any human mission to Mars. ESA will continue buying rockets from NASA, Russia, the United States private companies like SpaceX...and who knows in the future maybe even buying into experiments on the Chinese station and India's manned program, ISRO for example I believe has two collaborative satellite missions with the French Agency CNES? In the future years 2020-2050 I don't see any true emphasis on manned colonisation missions, I see studies but no real future manned base nor a true vision for putting people on Mars. They do have plans for a Mars Rover and a MSR but the previous two landers from the ESA failed, so in a ways ESA might risk falling behind both NASA and even China, the Chinese already are ahead of Europe with a manned rocket, their own station and sucessful Mars landers. ESA does have some positives, it has robotic missions to Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and the Sun it may continue to study ion drivers and some form of ion propulsion, already ESA's BepiColombo with the Japanese agency JAXAs uses ion thrusters in combination with swing-bys to get to Mercury, Venusian atmospehere might be studied with EnVision ESA Venus mission. Russia might send Nuclear-Powered 'Space Tug' into space so it is possible Europe might be paying the Russians to truck future payloads. Hera is another project but I'm not sure what it is, there is also an Earth planetary defence mission called the 'Hera-Project' it may fire a laser at a Comet or an Asteroid or investigate it or it could be an Asteroid re-direction test.
ESA may have new Propulsion and transportation ideas and new telescopes? Gossamer is a proposed de-orbit solar sail, intended to be used to accelerate the deorbiting of small (less than 700 kilograms) or (1,500 lb) artificial satellites from low Earth orbits, perhaps this could be used to help break payloads to places like Mars and Titan or dealing with future issues like Space Debris. They do have plans for other Space telescopes like some kind of high enegry Gamma Ray or X-ray mission, the Gravity Field Explorer Satellite uses Ion propulsion and a gravity gradiometer to study Earth in its Earth sciences misison. Sometimes the British Space Agency and French Agency have launched their own independent missions outside of Europe, for example Helen Sharman's private mission to the MIR or the French telescope 'CoRoT'. The ESA have Lagrangian spacecraft missions planned for example a mission Gaia made largest and continues to make most precise 3D space catalog ever made, totalling approximately 1 billion astronomical objects. Gaia spacecraft mapped 1.8 billion stars in the Milky Way. https://blogs.esa.int/gaia/2013/07/12/g … ion-stars/ I feel like ESA's number 1 partner will continue to be NASA although they also operate projects with Canada, Japan, China and Russia. ESA already took part in the Hubble with NASA and the Cassini-Huygens and it seems their most sucessful missions have been working with the United States. They have plans for a Solar Telescope in Europe some sort of coronagraph, they will take part in the JWST, an Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, Euclid a Dark Matter mission, they still have plans to one day launch the LISA mission which NASA cancelled a mission that was to study gravity waves, another space telescope a Planetary Transits mission called PLATO.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration … ion_themes
A call for ideas for Voyage 2050 was issued in March 2019, generating close to 100 diverse and ambitious ideas, which were subsequently distilled into a number of science themes.
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-voyage-es … ssion.html
Topical teams, comprising many early career through early scientists from a broad range of space science expertise areas, carried out an initial assessment of the themes and reported their findings to a senior science committee.
ESA is probably going to Venus again, I think it will try Mars with the 'ExoMars' mission, it looks like it wants to go to Jupiter. How will Brexit affect missions in Europe and influence Britain’s role in the European Space Agency?
It's difficult to know what will get supported and funded but once an ESA mission gets backed it will rarely get cancelled, the launched mission however could still end in failure. ESA has also unveiled plans for a network satellites around the Moon and a plan to set up some kind of Solar Flare warning system.
European Space Agency (ESA) JUICE explorer to arrive at Jupiter
http://brainstormingbox.org/10-most-exc … a-and-esa/
The probe initiated from ESA will not only explore one moon but three moons of Jupiter,
Callisto
Europa
Ganymede
This along with the gas giant.
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-06-11 13:56:32)
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New Engine
Ariane 6 targets new missions with Astris kick stage
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-ariane-mi … stage.html
JWST will launch on the old Ariane 5 which is set to retire
Seems ESA will continue some near term projects like the ISS and missions to Venus and Mars. However as for Manned Transport it seems they will continue using NASA, Russia or the US Private Sector for manned missions, will they also buy from China or buy from India if it gets a space program moving? They continue to study Mars with Orbiters and have Robotic plans for the ISS. ESA will also continue to study Venus and other planets alongside NASA JPL missions.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration … dying_Mars
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I must have missed ESA using NASA for a human mission...when was that?
New Engine
Ariane 6 targets new missions with Astris kick stage
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-ariane-mi … stage.htmlJWST will launch on the old Ariane 5 which is set to retire
Seems ESA will continue some near term projects like the ISS and missions to Venus and Mars. However as for Manned Transport it seems they will continue using NASA, Russia or the US Private Sector for manned missions, will they also buy from China or buy from India if it gets a space program moving? They continue to study Mars with Orbiters and have Robotic plans for the ISS. ESA will also continue to study Venus and other planets alongside NASA JPL missions.
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration … dying_Mars
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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For Louis re #3
Thanks for another thought provoking question!
Google came up with a list of ESA astronauts ... here is a snippet ...
European Astronaut Corps - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › European_Astronaut_Corps
The European Astronaut Corps is a unit of the European Space Agency (ESA) that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members on U.S. and Russian ... Tim Peake · Andreas Mogensen · Alexander Gerst · Luca Parmitano
(th)
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ESA is a partner in the ISS project so we have had a few over the decades of its use.
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ESA’s Rocket Tank Made of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic Is a Real Game-Changer
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/esas … 66630.html
European Space Agency prepares for back-to-back flybys of Venus: Solar Orbiter and BepiColombo will make space history next week
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech … Venus.html
As for manned flights
I don't think they will do a manned spacecraft ...yet
China now has its station, its possible some will want to do a joint mission after the ISS. If India or Brazil or South Korea made a spacecraft would ESA also buy flights?
Having no manned launcher means they lack independent access to space
Interesting read here about how much has been achieved by political means or buying private space flight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Astronaut_Corps
Ten Europeans became astronauts within the Soviet Union's Interkosmos program, which allowed citizens of allied nations to fly missions to the Salyut 6, Salyut 7 and Mir space station.
NASA trained and flew astronauts from allied nations on the Space Shuttle, especially as payload specialists for scientific missions such as Spacelab. Prior to the foundation of the ESA astronaut corps, both the French CNES and the German DLR had selected their own rosters of astronauts, notably in preparation for the introduction of the ISS. The following people flew on various Shuttle missions
The European Astronaut Corps is a unit of the European Space Agency (ESA) that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members on U.S. and Russian space missions. The corps has 13 active members, able to serve on the International Space Station (ISS). The European Astronaut Corps is based at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. They can be assigned to various projects both in Europe (at ESTEC, for instance) or elsewhere in the world, at NASA Johnson Space Center or Star City.
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