Understanding the remarkable inspirational value of space exploration • Sep 2025
Space exploration is the single largest space expenditure by governments worldwide. Global public investment in space exploration is estimated to have grown by more than 50% in the past decade, and to increase by almost 30% in the next decade (Novaspace).
ESA’s European Exploration Envelope Programme, Terrae Novae, was created in 2016 to deliver Europe’s space exploration strategy. The mission of Terrae Novae is to lead Europe’s human journey into the Solar system using robots as precursors and scouts, and to return the benefits of exploration back to society.
As presented in ESA CM22 Economic Impact Report, implementing Terrae Novae activities subscribed to at ESA Ministerial Council in 2022 contributes to Europe’s economy and employment, supporting more than 34,000 job-years, approximately €2.8 billion of GDP and €900 million of tax contributions to ESA Member States, Associate Members and Canada, not accounting for the additional value generated from the use of the assets developed through the programme.
Terrae Novae programme also primarily impacts:
- Europe’s strategic autonomy in the field of space exploration, ensuring European access to the benefits of robotic and human space exploration missions and destinations.
- Europe’s innovation and research, stimulating multi-disciplinary scientific research, leading the introduction of state-of-the-art technological innovations, and enabling remarkable terrestrial applications.
- Europe’s competitiveness, through the support of higher productivity and reduced costs, enabling more competitive products.
- Europe's education: in 2024, a total of 568 education activities using Terrae Novae related material or activities trained 86,000 teachers and educators, reaching 1.9 million students.
A public survey on how Europe, the US, Japan and India perceive space exploration was conducted end of 2024 by Harris Interactive.
Results showed the inspirational value of European space exploration in supporting STEM-qualified workforce and public attitude towards science, research and global cooperation.
Some selected key findings are summarised below:
- Almost 9 out of 10 Europeans say they have a positive view of space exploration activities, including 1/3 who say they have a very positive view.
- Europeans see several benefits in the development of space exploration, in particular the ability to improve scientific progress (88%), get the younger generations interested in science (86%) and develop useful technologies for life on Earth (84%).
- 85% Europeans believe that sending astronauts from their country into space helps to motivate the younger generations to study science and technology and creates a positive view of technological cooperation between countries.
- The majority of Europeans say they would like Europe to play a greater role in the field of space exploration.
- Europeans attach great importance to Europe’s capacity to send European astronauts into space (78%), but also to the ability to send cargo ships and return them to Earth without depending on other space powers (77%).
- The majority of non-European respondents are in favour of greater collaboration with Europe on space exploration (63%).
The full report is available here.
ESA Explore2040, Europe’s exploration strategy, is available here.
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