The European Space Agency has been cleared by the Ministers for a record budget of €14.4 billion over 5 years, of which €12.5 billion has been committed over the next 3 years. ESA has become a must Although it was born almost 15 years after its American counterpart, has about a quarter of its annual budget and depends on the collective decisions of ministers from 22 nations, ESA is still making its mark on the minds and history of space exploration in 2019. ESA today operates the only probe ‘en route’ to Mercury (BepiColombo, in collaboration with the Japanese) and two probes in Mars orbit, the largest of which (ExoMars TGO). It manages heliophysical missions (Soho, Proba-2), telescopes in orbit (Hubble, Integral, XMM-Newton) including the star cartographer, Gaïa. In the last 5 years ESA was involved on Cassini around Saturn, on Rosetta around the 67p comet, on Venus Express, a review that only NASA can eclipse today. There are missions about to take off that have enormous potential. For instance, the small CHEOPS telescope, the first to be able to characterize exoplanets in orbit. Or the Solar Orbiter probe, a real flying solar laboratory, which has little to envy and will complement its cousin, the Parker solar probe. ESA is setting up the scientific component and the implementation of the programmes decided by the European Union, in particular for Copernicus, which has led to this programme (and its Sentinel satellites) becoming a world leader in observing climate change and providing images in the event of emergencies and natural disasters. All this while testing new technologies for Earth observation in orbit, such as the Aeolus laser, Swarm geomagnetic mapping, etc., including participation in innovative CubeSats projects. ESA is also about manned space sector. 7 active astronauts in the "2009 class", including one in orbit today for its second mission (Luca Parmitano), but also ground preparation centres in Cologne and ESTEC and cooperation agreements with all the major agencies. It is also ESA that helps European satellite manufacturers to develop new reconfigurable "all-digital" satellites (Quantum), electric propulsion (SpaceBus Neo) and laser communication (EDRS) programmes. And of course the launchers to send them into orbit. ESA has subsidised and continues to inject billions into the Ariane programme to ensure European independence of access to space and to try to remain competitive in the sector with Ariane 6, Vega C and their future improvements. It also supports European microlauncher projects and reusable projects. And last but not leas, ESA has also approved a large budget for the modernization of the CSG, that particular point makes GTD very happy.
