Year: 2021

Author: Piero Messina

ISSN: 2736-5816

DOI: 10.53121/ELFPP6

From the vantage point of Earth’s orbit in outer space, over the last 60 years we have learned to observe, to understand, to connect, and to protect our planet. We’re now able to monitor its environment, enforce policies, and enable our economies as well as their green and digital development while preserving the safety and security of our citizens. On Earth, investments in space industries and downstream sectors, depending on the space applications, are a recipe for creating highly-skilled jobs, high-tech, and high-added-value business and economic growth to ensure global European competitiveness.

Autonomy in space applications would be a means to allow Europeans to remain masters of their data and secure Europe’s role in the world. This policy paper aims at summarising the role that mastering space technologies has played and will continue to play—not only in the previous century but even more so in the 21st century—in the global and geo-political competition.