The European Space Agency’s (ESA) ministerial meeting in Bremen, Germany, on November 26th has hit its first snag. The meeting was due to approve an overall €22.5 billion budget including expenditure for a major satellite constellation which would have seen a global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaisance project started.

Now the 27-nation ministries have an additional year to come up with the cash.

The formal program is the Europeaan Commission’s European Resilience from Space Earth observation program, ERS-EO, which was hoped would in 2028 then be passed back to the European Commission for a constellation called the Earth Observation Governmental Service (EOGS).

The problem seems to be the cash. Reportedly on October 14 the ESA published its first draft in an attempt to measure the various government’s response. A later version was published on November 20.

ESA director general Josef Aschbacher said that ESA’s spirit was good. “We are in really good shape. We are on a good track, and we are working very well.”

He said that part of the problem was the need to explain to government departments the role of the ESA, and that the new scheme needed budgets to be switched from a nation’s defence spending towards ESA. Additionally there are clear national priorities some of which differ from the Commission’s aims.

“The commitments that are to be made today are commitments they have for the money they have available. There may be future commitments coming from some countries and if they see we could do something meaningful in their interest, ministers of defense in particular, they might decide during the year to allocate some additional funding. We do not know,” said Aschbacher.

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