January 8, 2019

Science, industry and international partnerships driving CNES’s actions

Tuesday 8 January, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall presented his New Year wishes to the French and international press at the agency’s Head Office in Paris Les Halles, where he hailed the unstinting efforts of journalists working to raise space’s profile and bring its everyday real-world applications to the attention of citizens. The traditional gathering provided the opportunity to review the highlights of 2018, another stellar year for CNES, and to chart prospects for the year ahead.

2018 brought many successes throughout the year in CNES’s five domains of activity. In the field of launchers, Ariane 5 reached the milestone of its 100th flight, while development work continued on Ariane 6 and Vega C and Europe made the commitment to use European launchers to orbit its institutional satellites. Science was to the fore with the Hayabusa2-MASCOT mission to asteroid Ryugu, the launch of BepiColombo to Mercury and of course the landing of the InSight-SEIS mission on Mars. Earth observation registered a string of successes with the launches of the CFOSat mission developed with China and MetOp-C carrying the IASI instrument. In telecommunications, the launch of four new Galileo satellites means that Europe’s positioning system is now reaching more than 500 million users, while the Konnect project got underway to bring Internet services to all French citizens by 2021. And in defence, the year closed with the launch and start of operations on the CSO-1 military observation satellite.

Building on these remarkable successes, CNES will continue to play a pivotal role in 2019. At national level, work is being pursued in the field of defence and the agency will be organizing its next Science Survey Seminar from 8 to 10 October in Le Havre. At European level, preparations are underway for the ESA Ministerial Council meeting in Seville on 27 and 28 November. And at international level, CNES is a prime partner of all of the world’s space powers.

In the three key sectors of launchers, satellites and applications, CNES is busily embracing change. For launchers, it is developing Ariane 6 and Vega-C and conceiving future systems around the Prometheus low-cost engine and the Callisto demonstrator. For satellites, it is pursuing the Taranis, ANGELS and KINEIS projects. And for applications, it is leveraging Galileo and Copernicus for the benefit of users outside the space sector. The agency is thus meeting the global challenges of digital technologies, miniaturization and international development, which are defining a new space order focused on innovation, climate and exploration.

To assure the success of its missions, CNES, backed by its partnerships with the scientific community, in industry and around the world, will have a budget in 2019 of €2,423 million, of which €1,892 million (up 14%) is the funding provided by government, a testament to the overseeing authorities’ faith in the agency and their strong commitment to sustaining the ‘spirit of space’.

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CONTACTS
Pascale Bresson    Press Officer    Tel: +33 (0)1 44 76 75 39    pascale.bresson@cnes.fr
Raphaël Sart    Press Officer    Tel: +33 (0)1 44 76 74 51    raphael.sart@cnes.fr
Sébastien Martignac    Press Officer    Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 78 35    sebastien.martignac@cnes.fr

cp001-2019_-_voeux_presse_2019_va.pdf (pdf - 209.15 KB)
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