The CEO of Arianegroup, which produces the European Ariane 6 rocket, denounced on Friday the “centrifugal movements” which would undermine Europe’s space sovereignty, reacting to the rapprochement between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and American billionaire Elon Musk.
“Our culture is European sovereignty. It is clear that the somewhat centrifugal movements that can exist in Europe are something that concerns us,” declared Martin Sion, the boss of Arianegroup, a Franco-American company. German company created in 2015 and owned equally by Airbus and Safran.
“The notion of European preference must be at the top of the agenda of the different European countries. Because if there is no European market, there will be no sustainable initiatives in which there is development with private investment”, continued Martin Sion during a meeting organized by the AJPAE, association of aerospace journalists.
“When European states make decisions to launch institutional satellites on non-European launchers, it is frankly something that weakens our activity,” he added.
In the wake of Ms. Meloni’s whirlwind visit to President-elect Donald Trump in Florida on Saturday, Italian media reported that the government was in advanced talks with SpaceX for a 1.5 billion euro contract to supply the ‘Italy of secure telecommunications.
Ms. Meloni denied Thursday having discussed with Elon Musk a cybersecurity contract between Italy and his company SpaceX, but acknowledged that SpaceX had presented to the government “a technology allowing secure communication at the national level but especially at the planetary level, which for us above all means guaranteeing secure communications with our diplomatic representations and, for example, our military contingents abroad.”
Faced with space powers like the United States and China, “for Europe to maintain its rank as a world power, at some point, we will have to find the path to cooperation,” underlined Martin Sion.
While waiting for Ariane 6, whose inaugural flight took place successfully in July, Europe was deprived of access to space for a year while the Russian Soyuzes were no longer used after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The next flight of Ariane 6, its first “operational” with the French military observation satellite CSO-3, initially planned for December, will take place “between mid-February and the end of March”, declared Friday Caroline Arnoux, head of ‘Arianespace, a subsidiary of Arianegroup.
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