What to know about Europe's push to compete in space and what it still can't do without America

About 120 delegations gathered at the Grand Palais on Wednesday for the two-day International Space Summit, convened by President Emmanuel Macron to work out how Europe competes in a market the United States currently owns.

"Europe is taking its destiny into its own hands, including in space," Macron said in a message on X, calling for the innovation and investment needed to build a Europe that is independent in orbit as well as on the ground.

Several of the people the summit most wanted in the room stayed away. SpaceX and Blue Origin cancelled, the French government said. Reuters reported that four American space firms pulled out in total, including Stoke Space and Starcloud, scrapping a handful of planned announcements. Politico reported that the White House had urged US companies not to attend, on the view that doing so could look like an endorsement of European Union policy. Underlying the friction is Brussels' proposed EU Space Act, which US officials argue would disadvantage American firms.


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The European turnout was also thinner than organisers hoped. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose country is officially co-chairing, cited other commitments. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also stayed away.

"There can be tensions, as well as technological competition between major powers, particularly the United States and China," a French presidential official told the Associated Press, speaking anonymously in line with the presidency's customary practice. "We do have strengths, but we can see that things are accelerating and that much more money is needed."

Why Europe is worried

The push for sovereign capability dates to 2022 and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which exposed how far Kyiv depended on Elon Musk's Starlink and how much that dependence could turn on one company's decisions. There were early doubts about whether Musk would keep funding the service, and reports that he declined to allow Starlink to be used in support of an attack on a Russian naval base in 2022.

The EU's answer is IRIS², a sovereign constellation intended to give the 27-nation bloc secure communications independent of Starlink. It is not expected to be fully operational until 2030. Paris and Berlin are not aligned on it: Macron backs IRIS², while Germany is planning a secure network of its own, and has appeared less willing than France to shut the door on SpaceX.

A second warning came this year, when the American satellite imaging firms Planet Labs and Vantor began withholding imagery of the Middle East conflict zone after the Iran war broke out, apparently to stop adversaries from using it against the US and its allies.

"For Europe there's a lot at stake," said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency. "Satellites are really being utilized day in, day out. It's what we call a critical infrastructure, therefore extremely important for every citizen."

That episode has moved buyers. Emiliano Kargieman, chief executive of the Argentina-based operator Satellogic, which signed a deal this year to supply Portugal with two high-resolution imaging satellites, said the conflict has pushed countries to seek their own imaging capability.

The launch problem

Europe's rocket flagship, Ariane, carries the Galileo navigation system, the Copernicus Earth-observation programme, and military and scientific payloads, alongside commercial work. Its most powerful version, Ariane 64, has put 100 Amazon Leo satellites in orbit across three launches this year, part of a contract for 18.

But the programme is unwieldy by design. The core stage is assembled in France, the upper stage in Germany, with hundreds of subcontractors across the continent, and components then travel by cargo ship across the Atlantic to Europe's spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana. The rocket is expendable, which makes it costlier to fly than reusable rivals. Europe manages a handful of launches a year. SpaceX flies its Falcon 9 more than a hundred times.

Musk has signalled that SpaceX intends to wind down Falcon in favour of the larger Starship, and industry executives worry that the transition could leave a gap, a "launch crunch" a few years out.

"Not being able to put your own satellite into orbit is a huge problem for Europe," Kargieman said. "China has its own launch capacity and Europe still doesn't have a high-cadence, low-cost launch capacity, similar to SpaceX."

One breakthrough, four days old

Europe did arrive in Paris with something new. On Saturday, September 5, the Munich-based startup Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in Arctic Norway at 22:12 local time, carrying five CubeSats and a technology experiment into orbit. It was the first time a commercial European company delivered satellites to orbit, and the first orbital launch from continental Europe.

It was Spectrum's second flight. The first, in March 2025, crashed roughly 30 seconds after liftoff.

"Launch capability is right now the biggest bottleneck in the entire industry," Isar co-founder and chief executive Daniel Metzler told reporters. The company has raised around €870 million, is building a production facility designed for up to 40 rockets a year, and is constructing a second launch complex in Nova Scotia, Canada.

What comes next

The United States remains well ahead. NASA runs the Artemis programme aimed at a sustained human presence on the Moon. SpaceX made reusable rockets routine, cutting costs and raising launch frequency. Amazon launched its first internet satellites in 2025 and plans to deploy more than 3,200 for global broadband.

Aschbacher used the summit to raise a further question for European governments: whether the continent should develop its own crewed spaceflight capability. "That means bringing our own astronauts, with our own rockets or our own crew vehicle, to lower orbit and eventually beyond," he said.

The answers will be shaped by three deadlines. ESA holds an intermediate ministerial meeting in Rome in December, the EU is negotiating its next Multiannual Financial Framework, and ESA's next full ministerial council falls in 2028.

(With inputs from AP)