“It is a great pleasure to be here,” Aschbacher said. “Luxembourg is a great country in the field of space. Of course you can't compare it with Nasa, China or Russia, but for the size of the population, Luxembourg is doing a lot. I wish many countries would recognise the importance of space for society, but also as an economic opportunity, as Luxembourg does!”

Aschbacher wrapped up a working meeting with the minister of the economy Franz Fayot(LSAP), the CEO of the Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA), Marc Serres, and the Director of the European Space Innovation Centre (Esric), Mathias Link.

“What I expect in the medium term is that an economy will develop on the moon. Really, companies that work in the field of resources to build infrastructure. The moon will be a future base for further space exploration. We know very well that the next goal will be Mars,” said the Austrian national, in the preamble to a press conference.

“Taking advantage of 3D to build what we need on the moon and for this exploration seems essential. I talked about Moonlight to create a communication system on the moon, where there will be people, infrastructure, robots, which will have to communicate and navigate. In 10 to 20 years, there will be life on the moon. The investments for this must be long term.”

Aschbacher during the press conference also spoke about commercialisation, accelerating space startups and fostering new talent:

At the last space summit, young entrepreneurs announced the creation of a union to try to gain better access to public space contracts, particularly those of the ESA. They are having a hard time convincing customers of the added value of their solutions. What is your position on this issue?

Josef Aschbacher: Commercialisation is a top priority in the coming years for me as head of ESA and for all member states. We think that becoming a customer of these companies is a key point, obviously in areas where the technologies are quite mature, where companies can deliver products like data that you can buy. I want to develop this support. And also these accelerators which have two advantages.

On the one hand, if I am a key customer, I should not be just another customer. We want to test properly what companies offer, how they work, that they have products of a certain quality and meet certain conditions. But if we are customers, we also give companies the means to develop very quickly. And they are trying to do that, by being very dynamic.

I really want to see this entrepreneurial power develop. Let us be intelligent customers! We will not just be customers, we will continue to develop very complicated machines that no company would want to invest in. It is not a commercial issue, but commercial companies will also be able to benefit from these developments. We will play both roles.

Could you go as far as sandboxing technologies? Take them in at an early stage to allow them to test their ideas against reality?

We could. It's something we need to look at. I have just created a new marketing directorate within the ESA. This directorate will have to develop this whole commercial side. There is a long list of things we want to look at, one by one, to make sure that we change and that we play our role as a public entity to develop the commercial side. If we don't do it in Europe, we will lose time and opportunities. The environment is right for that.

When you talk about creating accelerators, are you using the word in the sense that it is used in the startup world?

There are probably coincidences if we use the same word, like the minister. It's not quite what it means in the startup world. But I'd like to use some of what it means to accelerate the development of some of the startups in the space, to get them on track for more market-ready products, and more quickly.

The way I define accelerators in the context of the ESA is something where we want to go fast because we are responding to an urgent need in society, in terms of climate change or protecting our assets. We have to move fast and we have to join forces to do this, creating new ways of working. We want to bring together blocks from different countries and have them work towards the same goal.

In the parallel with a startup, if it wants to launch a constellation of nanosatellites, it will go through a financing round, a seed round. They don’t know how to get to their constellation. They secure some funding to start with, to build their first elements, and then they look for new funding to continue developing their products. Today, we know that we want to use space to help Europe accelerate the decarbonisation of the economy.

We have some basic ideas, like observing the Earth from space, like connectivity, like creating digital twins, but we don’t have today what our product will be in 10 years. So we’re going to go through a series of phases to build the first blocks and so on.

Another key subject is talent, particularly in research. The subject was discussed at the conference with the idea of addressing children at an early stage.

We have to work on Stem development of course, to have engineers. And give them inspiring role models. The idea that we could find life on another planet in the solar system is fascinating! The subject goes from religion to medicine, in many fields. It is very inspiring to be part of these developments. Although using astronauts is another very inspiring way.

To imagine an astronaut talking to classes of children from the International Space Station is also very positive. In Europe, on the other hand, we have a lot of talent. We can be proud of that. What I don’t want any more is for this talent to leave Europe for lack of opportunities. This is also the purpose of accelerators, to offer a framework in which talents feel they have the place to develop and do exciting things. And even attracting talent from outside Europe who are attracted by our project.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.