Am not sure I like this. Musk overcharges like a mofo for launching anything and ESA is more than capable of launching anything. Probably another case of geopolitics at work.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The European Union on Tuesday signed off on the terms of a security deal with the United States that will allow it to pay Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch its satellites.

Two diplomats told POLITICO that a deal allowing EU and European Space Agency (ESA) staff constant access to the launchpad and the first right to retrieve and store debris in the U.S. should the SpaceX rocket fail was approved Tuesday by national general affairs ministers.

As first reported by POLITICO, the European Commission agreed a €180 million deal with SpaceX last year to launch four of the Galileo satellites because of delays to the Ariane 6 rocket being built by ArianeGroup on behalf of the ESA.

After years of delays, Ariane 6 should launch this summer from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, but a first commercial mission won’t be scheduled until after that.

The security deal is due to be formally signed with the U.S. next week and the plan is to ship the Galileo satellites, each weighing roughly 700 kilograms, to the U.S. on March 27, one diplomat said.

Should the launch fail, the ESA would have clearance to retrieve any debris, store the remains and ship it back to Europe, according to the agreed text.

The original article contains 462 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

spacex and starlink need to die.

no government bodies should contact with them.

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !space@lemmy.world