With China, European Space Agency leaves politics to governments

AllAfrica

22-07-2025

The European Space Agency (ESA) has a comprehensive internal system in place to ensure that its collaboration with China will not raise security concerns or be affected by geopolitical changes, according to a senior director interviewed by Asia Times.
After the ESA said in January 2023 that it would not send astronauts to China's Tiangong space station, it continued to work with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on two scientific research programs.
One of the two programs is the Einstein Probe (EP), a China-led X-ray space telescope mission. China launched the EP satellite to low Earth orbit (600 kilometers above the Earth) from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre on January 9 last year.
Another mission is the Solar-wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE), a 50-50 mission between the ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The SMILE satellite is scheduled to be launched from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, located in northeastern South America, in 2026. It will operate in a highly elliptical orbit similar to a Molniya orbit (40,000 kilometers above the Earth).
With SMILE, scientists can understand the Sun–Earth connection by measuring the solar wind and its dynamic interaction with Earth's magnetosphere.
Carole Mundell, Director of Science at the European Space Agency (ESA), stated that there is no immediate risk to the ESA-China programs.
'I don't believe there's an immediate risk of that, in the sense that ESA is governed by its member states, and those 23 countries guide me as director of science on how to run the program,' Mundell told Asia Times in an interview on the sidelines of the UK Space Conference in Manchester on July 17. The X-ray telescope of the Einstein Probe Photo: ESA
'I have permission from our member states to collaborate with China, and that's how we've worked on Einstein Probe,' she said. ' It's how we've worked on SMILE.'
'We have robust security processes, and apply them to each national country's government. If components are coming, say from the UK or Belgium, we go through their normal export license control processes, and that is how we satisfy the international regulations.'
She said any political challenges between the United States and China are between their governments, which are not ESA member states. She said when collaborating with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the ESA also follows its processes and US rules and regulations.
'We are a technical agency and an international civil service. We are not political, and we don't make decisions on policy,' she said.
Mundell took up her current position at the ESA in March 2023. She gained her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Manchester and postdoctoral research fellowships at Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK, and the University of Maryland in the US, specialising in the physics of accreting supermassive black holes and their role in galaxy evolution.
She became the first woman Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2018 and first Chief International Science Envoy in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office until 2021. She was elected President of the UK Science Council in 2021.
In March 2019, representing the UK government, she spent two weeks visiting scientific institutions and technology firms in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing, as well as the China National Space Agency (CNSA) and the National Space Science Center (NSSC).
At that time, Wang Chi, the Director General of NSSC, briefly introduced the SMILE mission to her. China and the ESA targeted launching the mission in 2023. However, the launch date was postponed to 2026 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the past six years, the world's geopolitical environment has faced drastic changes, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the trade and chip wars between China and the US, and rising political tensions between China and the European Union (EU).
On July 18, the EU approved the 18th round of sanctions against Russia, which targeted Russian energy and military firms, as well as two Chinese Banks. Beijing slammed the EU for its sanctions. Carole Mundell, Director of Science at the European Space Agency (ESA) Photo: Asia Times, Jeff Pao
Mundell said the ESA can avoid falling foul of international politics due to its independent organizational structure.
'Twenty-three countries are contributing their funding to us this year. Their ministers will all come together and set our budgets in November,' she said. 'We're a membership organization in the same way that CERN is.' (CERN stands for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research in English.)
While the ESA and the EU are separate organisations, they work closely together in many programs, including: the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (Iris2) to promote digital autonomy and provide a strategic asset for the EU;
the EU's Galileo system, with a 28-satellite constellation and global ground stations to provide a global positioning service;
the EU's Copernicus Earth observation satellites to mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security.
Under the Financial Framework Partnership Agreement signed in 2021, the EU will provide the ESA with about €9 billion (US$10.52 billion) of funding from 2021 to 2027. Last year, the ESA's full-year budget was €7.79 billion.
China has not officially announced its investment in space exploration. According to Statista.com, China's government expenditure on space programs totaled $19.89 billion in 2024, compared to the United States' $79.68 billion and the EU's $3.71 billion.
Mundell said that, as a scientist, she would not mind if other places invested more in climate monitoring than the ESA.
'During the pandemic, sometimes political leaders asked me, 'Who's got the best vaccine?' My answer was always: The competition is not about my vaccine being better than yours. It's about the best vaccine to prevent death and illness,' she said.
'For climate monitoring, the Earth is a complex system. We all have limited budgets. If you want to compete to get the best data on Earth observation, it's not a bad competition. That's fine. Go for it,' she said. 'It's better than being blind to the changes on our planet.'
She hopes that other organizations will share their data and contribute to climate monitoring, following the example set by the ESA's Copernicus program. The EU and the ESA sent Copernicus Earth observation satellites to mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security. Photo: ESA
'The Copernicus program has set a gold standard for Earth observation,' she said. 'In terms of data transparency, we share our data. We also add value by helping people who might not know what to do with them to get extra information out of them.'
'When I was in the UK Government, it was very interesting visiting one of the NSSC's climate institutes, because there was some local data which was then fed back into some of the UK models, which then helped build the global climate models,' she said, highlighting the importance of boosting international collaboration.
The Paris-based ESA, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year since its establishment on May 30, 1975, continues to explore new collaborations with Asian counterparts.
In March this year, the ESA signed a letter of intent with Singapore's Office for Space Technology & Industry (OSTIn) to promote deeper collaboration.
In May, the ESA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) signed a joint statement of intent on cooperation for human space exploration, focusing on low Earth orbit, and in a secondary stage on the Moon.
In July, the ESA announced that it would sign a framework agreement to strengthen cooperation with South Korea's newly established Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA).
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