News – FR – CNES celebrates 60 years of the space revolution

2020 has been a good year for the European satellite industry but more complicated for launchers The rationalization of the sector remains at the heart of the European debate The President of CNES realizes that the upheavals of the private sector are disrupting the game

Everything except connected ships On the occasion of the Back to School conference, the president of the French National Center for Space Studies, Jean-Yves Le Gaal, reiterated his belief that there is no reason in space to pit the success of the private sector against the public sector

Facing the American operator SpaceX, which completely changed the spatial situation by drastically reducing the cost of access to space, Jean-Yves Le Gal stressed that the success of SpaceX depends on the Merlin engine developed by NASA in the years 1990, et de ce National Center for Space Studies, Who appointed a leader in France for the space recovery plan 365 millions of euros, redistributed more than 80% of its budget in contracts with private parties «If there is an area in which the PPP works, this is the space domain», pleads the president of CNES, which feeds on Succession ambitions, but the government has not yet decided

Jean-Yves Le Gal admits that if 2020 confirmed French excellence in the field of satellites, with many successes for Airbus for defense and space, Thales Alenia Space – and in particular the launch of the first constellation of «the Internet of Things Kineis» and impressive advances in electrocardiogram propulsion – the situation in the launcher market has changed

«The Ariane missile 6 identified in 2014 will arrive on the market in 2022, but now everyone recognizes our interest in reuse and therefore our interest in our work for the Prometheus reusable motor, which will carry out its first bench tests next year, and for the Callisto and Themis projects, launchers. Recoverable

Callisto is one of the demonstrators in the field of launches in which the French space agencies participate, from Germany and Japan. The device in question must return to its control panel and be reusable 5 times and his first flight is scheduled for 2022. Themis must recover Show the progress of Callisto and Prometheus to predict what will be the modified version of Ariadne 6, after the space scientist realizes that it is now necessary to move forward with incremental improvements and not through «major programs» planned upstream

All this publicly funded research calls for a rationalization of the European launch industry. “We must succeed in bringing the industry back to the battle”, did we explain to Percy. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has agreed with his German counterpart Peter Altmaier to submit proposals this spring A government source explains that “the important thing is coordination because the market is not gigantic”. With ongoing miniaturization, the satellites to be launched are getting smaller and smaller, which worries Paris about Ariane's future order book 6, as launch projects multiply.

For now, Berlin maintient son soutien à Ariane mais précise qu’elle devrait également encourager les constructeurs privés, comme OHB ou Isar Aerospace, qui souhaitent développer leurs missiles. Paris souligne au contraire que nous ne pouvons pas financer la recherche ni tenter de coordonner le salon. Industriel ne serait-ce qu’en intégrant le moteur Prometheus dans les futurs mini-bombardiers allemands ou en faisant la promotion du port spatial de Kuru, qui développe son plus petit point de lancement, Diamant, pour ce genre de petit missile entre concurrence et subventions, l’équilibre à trouver est compliqué

Parmi les principaux événements du CNES, qui fêtera cette année ses 60 years, Jean-Yves Le Gal cited the landing on Mars to persevere in mid-February, Thomas Pisquet's return to the International Space Station, the launch of the new Italian rocket Vega C, and finally the launch of Kourou by Ariane 5 for the famous James Webb telescope, which will revolutionize space astronomy by this summer, the research institute must also renegotiate its targets and contract performance with the State

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CNES, Thomas Pesquet, European Space Agency, Jean-Yves Le Gall, NASA, Mars 2020, 2021, Space exploration, space