The European Space Agency announced Thursday it had secured a budget of €22.1 billion to fund its programmes for the next three years, as the continent aims to ramp up its space efforts.

The amount is five billion euros more than the ESA’s 23 member states committed in 2022 — and is almost all of the €22.2-billion-($25.7 billion) budget proposed by the agency.

“This has never happened before,” Josef Aschbacher told the ESA’s ministerial council meeting in the German city of Bremen.

Ahead of the meeting, experts had expected a budget of around €20 billion.

The new pledge demonstrates that space is an “economic sector that is growing very fast,” Aschbacher said.

“It is also more and more important for security and defence, and it is a domain where Europe has to catch up,” he added.

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The ESA, which is 50 years old this year, coordinates civil space projects between its member countries and also works with European Union bodies.

The space industry has changed significantly in recent years as private companies such as billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX have dominated the space launch sector.

Europe also briefly lost an independent way to launch its projects into space after Russia pulled its rockets following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In the United States, President Donald Trump has targeted the space agency NASA with stiff budget cuts since returning to the White House in January.

However, the ESA said this week that NASA has confirmed it will contribute to Europe’s Martian rover Rosalind Franklin. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2028, aiming to probe the surface of Mars for signs of extraterrestrial life.

AFP