Since the summer of 2026, Europe has faced a new source of concern: Will it have full and autonomous access to space by 2030? In anticipation of the rise of its super-heavy Starship rocket – whose commercial life began on September 28 – SpaceX, the company founded by American billionaire Elon Musk, stopped selling flights aboard its standard Falcon-9 launcher beyond 2028. As a result, many European companies and institutions that thought they could rely on this rocket, capable of launching every two days, wondered whether they would have a solution to place their satellites in orbit.

This question has become even more pressing because, by 2030, European needs are expected to rise sharply. These include the sovereign IRIS² telecom constellation, which will comprise 330 satellites in low Earth orbit and 18 in medium orbit; the German military constellation (initially over 100 satellites); 12 new satellites for Galileo (Europe's satellite navigation system), six for Copernicus (Earth observation network); and many other private projects.

"If all these launches take place simultaneously in 2029, we will not have enough capacity," admitted Christophe Bruneau, executive chairman of ArianeGroup – the prime contractor for the Ariane-6 rocket, Europe's main launcher in service alongside the smaller Italian Vega-C – in Le Figaro on October 21. The shortage of rockets could be damaging: It might delay the launch of IRIS² or the modernization of Galileo, forcing Europe to remain dependent on American services such as Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite telecom constellation.