Science News
Germany likely to complain it pays too much for space race
By DPA
Dec 4, 2005, 16:28 GMT

Berlin - Germany is likely to tell European partners at a conference this week on space exploration that it is contributing too much and getting too little of the work, an editor at an authoritative industry journal said Sunday.

Ministers from 17 European Space Agency nations meet in Berlin on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the future of Europe's space programme.

They will decide whether to give the go-ahead to a series of space missions proposed for the next decade, with a robotic Mars probe, a replacement for the lost Cryosat ice mission and a satellite network to monitor the Earth all competing for funding.

Matthias Gruender, who heads the space desk at the Bonn magazine Flugrevue, said, 'The big issue will be the financial contributions of the different countries.'

He said Germany had cut back on its own investment in European space exploration, bringing cuts for industry and research bodies.

'The principle of recycling the money back into the industry has got skewed,' said Gruender. 'Germany is paying more into ESA than it is getting in the way of contracts.' Germany is paying 1.88 billion euros (2.2 billion dollars) of ESA's current 2002-2005 budget of 9.77 billion euros.

In investment however, Germany had already been replaced by Italy in second place behind France, Gruender said in an interview.

ESA is reportedly seeking from its 17 European members and Canada 8.8 billion euros for mandatory and optional space programmes.