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Paolo Ferri, Today’s Space Pro

How can Europe balance cooperation and independence in space exploration? Paolo Ferri — former Head of Mission Operations at ESA and author of Ai confini dell’universo — shares his expert insights on NASA’s latest discovery, ESA’s evolving role, and the lessons learned from decades at the frontier of space missions.

How do you think European public opinion and political support affect ESA’s ability to take bold steps — for example, leading its own sample-return mission one day?

The difficulty with the European public opinion (partially reflected in the European politicians and their views), is that ESA has to merge the views of 23 Member states. Public opinion in each Member state is often quite specific, and the political directions can be extremely different. This makes it for ESA extremely difficult – and sometimes inefficient – to create a unique direction to follow in space. But the Agency has over 50 years experience in this game, and it has done very well until now. Yes, in this half century there has never been such a difficult political situation in Europe as the one we live today. But if there is an organization that can cope with it in a proper way in Europe it is ESA.

As far as “taking bold steps” is concerned, however, I am not sure Europe’s public opinion today is ready to support ESA in the field of space exploration. Unfortunately today the public opinion is steered in different directions, in particular towards weapons and war. It is not the right moment to dream about big science and exploration projects, I am afraid. All ESA can and should do, is not give up and keep the flame of science, cooperation and peace burning in the background, continue implementing interesting projects even at low pace. Until better times come back.

How do you see the ExoMars mission and similar ones in the next future?

I consider the ExoMars rover as an important step from the scientific point of view. Its drilling capabilities up to 2 m under the surface would allow to reach layers of Martian ground that are not sterilized by the harsh surface conditions. Also technically it would show that Europe can successfully land on another planet. However I am very concerned and not extremely optimistic about its immediate future, given the difficulties and instabilities in NASA, which is unfortunately still an essential partner for the realization of the mission.

Only when NASA will be out of the current chaotic situation we will be in a position to judge about the future of Exomars and of the other cooperation programmes on Mars.

Looking ahead, how do you envision Europe’s strategic role in Mars exploration by 2040?
Should ESA aim to lead a human-precursor mission, double down on sample-return operations, or focus on niche scientific capabilities?

Read the answer to this question and the others on our website:

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