Europe is in deep water addressing a global health crisis and its member states trying to avoid from drowning by closing terrestrial and political borders and imposing a lockdown. If anyone were asked what the Union after this emergency would be, whether would be still accounting as a Union perhaps, the common answer would be empty, isolated, alone, still existing? In a time where solidarity and cooperation should be the priorities for Governments to make it right together, the outer space could be a complementary answer to make it right for the future.

Outer space includes the satellites orbiting around the earth, delivering data with vital information for the European Union. Ranging from land, climate change, security and marine, these data are paramount for the implementation of European programmes that automatically have an impact for the European citizens.

It is the case for the Paris Climate Agreement in the international framework of the 2030 Development Agenda, or of the Common Agricultural Policy supporting the European Green Deal policies, making the European Union carbon-neutral by 2050; or else a renewed EU strategy for the Arctic, and a biodiversity strategy by 2030.

Crisis makes things happen, the most famous now start ups and companies were born it is said in the immediate post-wars. It is not a post-war, but it is a fertile period to adapt and improving services and ideas to help the world. To rethink the world future is also to consider more the space sector and its mindset, creating synergies and business models. It is to see that the main challenges for the current and future generations are water access and climate change adaptation, as well as the global ecosystem protection.

More health crisis due to pollution and environment resources deprivation will come. Technology hopefully will be always the support to the existence of the human population. Technology will always be connected to the outer space, innovating satellite data imagery, and the infrastructure behind improving the space programmes and by reaching new users that make use of these data, who are the real innovators.

Data but also investments don’t lie:  During the period 2017 – 2035, Copernicus is expected to generate €67 to €131 billion in benefits to the European society. The European Space Agency is developing satellites to measure CO2 at very high resolutions and for high-resolution imagery for soil contributing to the EU’s biodiversity and sustainable targets.[1]

Banking on the EU research & development guiding the EU programme Horizon 2020, together with its successor Horizon Europe, plus the new Copernicus Sentinel satellites, will pave the way for further research useful for space and technology.[2]

[1] https://www.friendsofeurope.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/11-19-CLEN-PMD-Space.pdf

[2] See supra note