by WASHINGTON – The head of ESA’s science programs says she is seeking a “very modest” increase in its budget to fund work on future missions at the agency’s upcoming ministerial meeting.
During an online town hall meeting on January 23, ESA Science Director Carole Mundell emphasized the need for additional funding to enable future missions, such as a flagship mission to Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, while also noting that the agency aims to efficiently are in his expenses.
“The increase we are asking for is actually very modest,” she said of the proposed increase, which she later described as 1% of the total ESA budget. “Because we have created these efficiencies, you get a lot of bang for your buck when you invest.”
ESA member states approved a 13% increase in science funding at the previous ministerial meeting in November 2022, a few months before Mundell took over as scientific director. “Unfortunately, we have entered an unprecedented time historically,” she said, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and high inflation. “It really meant that our program continued to have consistent purchasing power.”
This made ESA more efficient in managing scientific programs. She cited a case in which the agency released funding that had been held in reserve for the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission launched in 2023, allowing ESA to extend ten other science missions.
However, efficiency alone is not enough to support ESA’s plans for future scientific missions, as set out in the ‘Vision 2050’ strategy adopted in 2021. “I’m asking for funding to help us start this strategy,” she says. said.
One example is a mission to land in the south polar regions of Enceladus, where plumes could allow a spacecraft to sample material from a subsurface, potentially habitable ocean of liquid water. That mission wouldn’t launch for nearly two decades, but Mundell argued that ESA needed support now to start developing key technologies for it.
“We need to land on Enceladus in 2052 because that’s when the south pole will be illuminated by the sun, which means we’ll launch in 2043, which means we’ll take over the mission in 2034,” she said. “We need to keep the investments flowing into 2025 because we have a lot of technology development to get that mission ready to be successful.”
Funding to support the Enceladus mission and other missions included in Vision 2050 is part of ESA’s science budget proposal for the ministerial conference, she said, including a “significant international cooperation wedge” to enable ESA to participate to NASA and Japanese space missions. Agency JAXA. Another part is continuing work on missions already in development.
The science budget is part of broader preparations by ESA, led by Director General Josef Aschbacher, to develop a proposal for the agency’s ministerial conference at the end of November, where members will set funding priorities for the next three years. “We have gone into this proposal in great detail internally to give Josef the confidence that he can present this proposal in detail to the ministers,” she said.
Unlike most other ESA programs, funding for ESA science is considered “mandatory” by the agency because all member states contribute based on their gross national product, rather than subscribing to specific initiatives at their desired level. In 2025, ESA will spend 654 million euros ($686 million) on science, 8.5% of the agency’s total budget for that year.
An increase therefore requires that all ESA’s now 23 member states agree to spend more on science. “We need unanimous support, but that is why we are working with all our Member States to understand what they need to help us achieve that,” she said, noting that she had visited 22 Member States to discuss ESA science . programs with scientists and ministers and will visit ESA’s newest member, Slovenia, in the coming months.
During the town hall meeting, she encouraged scientists to make their own case for the science program. “If you have contact with an interlocutor, whether it is your neighbor, whether you are in the elevator with a minister, speak out for the program because we are all building this together,” she said.
