Originally published by Space Intel Report on September 1, 2025. Read the original article here.
(Source: ESA)
LA PLATA, Maryland — The European Space Agency (ESA) has set a Sept. 30 deadline for industry input on how to develop a European constellation of Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites for military and civil use.
The constellation, which ESA calls European Resilience from Space (ERS), is a three-year precursor for a wider ISR program, called Earth Observation Governmental Service (EOGS) that the European Commission expects to propose for its next seven-year budget, which starts in 2028.
ESA has made its ERS precursor as a key component of the three-year funding package it will present to its 23 member governments at its ministerial conference, to be held Nov. 26-27 in Bremen, Germany.
A Sept. 30 response to ESA’s request for information from industry on a still-undefined ERS/EOGS does not leave much time for debate before the ministerial conference, especially given that ESA Director-General Josef Aschbacher has suggested a three-year budget of 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion) for ERS.
ESA usual gives its member states months of preparation for major programs.
European Defense and Space Commissioning Andrius Kubilius has stressed the urgency of a European ISR program wants to take advantage of ESA’s ministerial to begin building it without waiting for the Commission’s budget window in 2028.
But this sense of urgency comes at a terrible time for France, which is in the middle of a budget crisis that threatens to topple the current government, which has called for spending cuts that the opposition finds unacceptable.
(Source: ESA)
ESA has multiple member nations that are developing their own dual-use Earth observation programs, but it’s difficult to see a major ERS program get started without a large French contribution.
France’s budget stress may ultimately serve the interests of European companies that sell imagery to European governments, including ESA and the European Commission. These companies worry that a billion-euro ERS program leading to the Commission’s EOGS would undermine their businesses by creating a government-owned infrastructure.
ESA officials have said they can structure the program so that its budget is back-loaded, starting with a relatively modest commitment in 2026 and then growing in the following two years.
That could be the opening the commercial geospatial imagery industry needs to prove its ability to meet government military requirements including rapid tasking and image delivery, and a willingness to give priority image access to governments.
ESA and the Commission have talked about a network that returns data to government users within 30 minutes after the image is taken, compared to the current rate that, depending on the circumstances, delivers imager three or four times per day.
What ESA wants from industry by Sept 30 is a sense of what technologies the private sector could furnish for ERS, and what technologies need to be developed in preparation for EOGS.
What industry wants from ESA is a clear idea of possible image/data procurement approaches and how they can minimize conflicts with industry’s existing commercial contracts for the first iteration of ERS.
Originally published by Space Intel Report on September 1, 2025. Read the original article here.
