Europe's space chief raises need for the region to coordinate its satellite plans

Europe must ensure its countries' competing satellite programmes can work together effectively and do not duplicate each other, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher said on Thursday.

He was speaking at a space summit in Paris, where new contracts for the European Union's IRIS² planned communications constellation were announced, bolstering efforts to create an alternative to non-European actors, most notably Elon Musk's SpaceX SPCX.O.

Referring to separate national programmes, Aschbacher told Reuters on the sidelines of the summit that it was important to avoid them becoming silos.

"If we are able to connect them, then it is actually a very powerful system," he said. "Under the condition that interoperability is implemented and is materialised. And this, of course, has yet to be done."