Ministers Bankroll European Space Agency's Ambitions

摘要

Europe's space scientists are breathing a collective sigh of relief because the member governments of the European Space Agency last week gave ESA more or less everything it had asked for in funding for the next few years-a total of nearly €10 billion. At a key ESA budget meeting, European politicians approved a request from the agency's science program for modest annual increases and gave an ambitious environmental monitoring system the green light. Questions still hang over the troubled ExoMars mission slated for 2016, but researchers are now confident that it will survive. The United Kingdom alsornsigned a deal to host an ESA facility, which will end the embarrassment of the U.K. being the only major funder of the agency without a facility on its soil. "People are very happy indeed. It seems a win, win, win situation," says George Fraser, director of the Space Research Centre at Leicester University in the U.K.