{"id":685090,"date":"2026-05-21T11:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/685090\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T11:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T11:54:08","slug":"europe-must-make-big-changes-to-compete-with-us-space-chief-warns-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/685090\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe must make big changes to compete with US, space chief warns \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The war between Russia and Ukraine has illustrated the dependencies. SpaceX \u2014 whose dominance in low-Earth orbit through systems such as Starlink has raised concerns over wartime connectivity for countries relying on it like Ukraine \u2014 should be \u201ca wake-up call to really think about what Europe needs for its own autonomy,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Aschbacher referred to Europe as a \u201csleeping beauty\u201d with \u201cexcellent capacities,\u201d citing Galileo and Copernicus \u2014 the EU\u2019s satellite navigation and Earth observation programs \u2014 as successes, but said Europe needs more funding, faster decision-making and \u201cdefragmentation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He pointed to the U.S. accounting for 60 percent of global public space funding, with Europe trailing behind at just 10 percent. \u201cI would ask the decision-makers to multiply our investment by a factor of two, at least, if not three,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no alternative. We have to do it. This is not, for me, a plan B,\u201d Aschbacher said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The war between Russia and Ukraine has illustrated the dependencies. SpaceX \u2014 whose dominance in low-Earth orbit through&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,10829,10830,2709,21040,3120,4217,27620,5474,20410,128,285,5525,1055,2013],"class_list":["post-685090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-communications","tag-companies","tag-connectivity","tag-critical-infrastructure","tag-elon-musk","tag-infrastructure","tag-intelligence","tag-investment","tag-satellites","tag-science","tag-space","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}