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Ambitious plans for European missions to the Moon and Mars are being considered by the French government.
It wants to kick-start a revolution in space by letting EU politicians not bureaucrats decide on priorities for the European Space Agency (Esa), as BBC reports.
The French say that if Europe fails to change its approach to space, it will fall behind Japan, China and India.
Paris is seeking an alliance with the UK to drive the agenda forward during the French presidency of the EU.
President Nicolas Sarkozy's well-known admiration for all things American now extends to space exploration. Speaking to the BBC, a senior official involved in French space policy said that it was time to shake up the European Space Agency and make it more like the US space agency (Nasa) by giving it a new, politically-led direction.
The French take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on 1 July and are planning to make space policy a key area for reform.
The official said that Europe was in danger of becoming redundant in global space terms and it needed an agency that followed a clear political agenda.
"The United States, Russia, China and Japan would not do what they do in space without a political motivation; Europe has only had a scientific motivation until now. So what we are saying is, let's get the same chances as the others.
"Beside the scientific pilot, let us have a political pilot, too, which will be the EU, because there is only the EU that can speak at that level."
But Alan Cooper, European space policy implementation manager with Esa in Paris, says that comparisons with Nasa are unfair.
"Nasa has the reputation it has on the strength of the programmes it has delivered," he told BBC News.
"It spends seven or eight times as much as Esa spends in a year. Its profile you would expect then to be seven or eight times higher than Esa. If you want the European space programme to have the same impact, it will need a higher profile and the investment to match those goals."
The European Space Agency was formed in 1975, and its seventeen member-states include countries outside the EU - Switzerland and Norway. Canada also takes part in some projects under a co-operation agreement.
Its mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability. Its objectives are scientific and industrial; and the latter is reflected in its funding arrangements. The agency invests in the space industry in each member-state roughly equal to the amount of money the member-state pays into Esa.
Esa has had many significant successes in space exploration. It has developed a launch site in French Guiana, become a major player in the business of commercial satellites, trained an astronaut corps and has contributed the Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station. It is also developing its own, controversial, global navigation system called Galileo.
But critics of Esa say it belongs to another age when European space activities were seen as a bridge between the American and Soviet space racers; and it is time it lost its dependence on others. Europe has no means of getting its own astronauts into space, for example.
Now, documents seen by the BBC indicate that the French plans for an overhaul of Esa are at an advanced stage. The papers say that a politically-led space enterprise is necessary for Europe to be taken seriously in the international arena.
The documents talk about the manned exploration of Mars and the need for Europe to play an "indispensable" part.
// 02.07.2008 11:09
News URL: http://news.mediaport.info/eng/world/2008/4199.shtml
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