The first Spanish Space Agency has been up and running for just six months and Miguel Belló (Puertollano, 1961) is its first director. Also commissioner of the Aerospace Ministry, the positions and plans are piling up, and looking at his office in Madrid, a space with only an office, an open meeting room and another administration room, everything seems to be done even though the plans they advance at the pace of the AVE, he explains.
Is launching the Spanish Space Agency a dream come true?
The truth is that it was needed. In months we are involved in things we were not involved in before. It has been the G-20, but a month earlier it was the G-20 on space and Spain had never been there because it did not have a space agency. We have been there this year, and being in Bangalore (in India) it was very good to talk to their space agency and see what we can collaborate on, now that it is fashionable.
If Spain is in the European Space Agency (ESA, by its acronym in English), why found one of its own?
It’s just that there are many more things apart from the ESA. The EU has its space agency, Euspa, with its own decision-making committees, and now the Agency will centralize our position. And, apart from that, there are many more actors: we have signed an agreement directly with NASA, with Mexico and we are starting with Argentina. And then there is also all the security and defense of space, which is not part of the ESA, and is a civil project.
Everything is to be done. What is most important?
Each of us deals with 200 satellites every day and our lives would be miserable without space: no weather forecasts, no tuning the navigator, no news or photos that usually arrive by satellite. The Agency wants to make sure that the Spanish citizen has these services and will open a new program so that broadband communication reaches the rural areas of Spain just like in a city and at the same price. In addition, we will do space science and industry and this translates into high quality jobs and wealth generation. Then there are more things on a second level after seeing how India sends a mission to the moon and the whole of India feels proud of this technological capability.
Will Spain reach the moon?
It is possible, it is a matter of making the decision. Right now Spain has the technology to be able to afford it.
And why doesn’t it come?
Because there are priorities. We have limited budgets, priorities are generated and now we have given it to Earth observation, climate change and natural disasters. There is probably a scientific interest in the physicists of Spain for the Moon, but it is not to go there for the sake of going there, which is free, but because we will have a scientific return or in another way. And at the moment when this is a priority, we will be able to do it perfectly.
In space, everything looks like a geopolitical game between powers…
And Europe has no way of putting a man in space. Only the United States, Russia and China can. Soon, India. Europe is being the last and for the first time in many decades does not have launchers to put satellites. How did we mitigate it before? With the Russian Soyuz. But with the war in Ukraine we can’t. We are organizing a great space summit in Seville where one of the topics to be discussed will be this capacity.
Will Spain be one of the protagonists here?
In the space industry we have 5,000 people in Spain, but we need more. It’s a bottleneck. There are Spanish companies that have hundreds of open vacancies that they cannot fill and the consequence is that we do not grow at the rate we could grow and we lose. Right now, with Perte aerospace, we are investing, and if we want to play a role, we need more people from engineering, physicists, mathematicians or lawyers, because space is becoming more and more legal.
Does Spain want to be in the world of space what it is to the automotive world, the factory, and then will it export?
The space industry will be more like the automobile industry than it seemed, but it is changing, and that is why we want Spain to be able to develop satellites in series, which is a paradigm shift.
The Spanish Space Agency has projects for drones, satellites, electric and hydrogen aircraft… Of all the projects, of which there are many, which is the most groundbreaking?
There are three of them. One is the Atlantic constellation that we will make with Portugal and which Greece now wants to join, because getting an image every three days or a week, like now, is not worth it, and yes a satellite image every few minutes, although be without such quality. It will have a unique revisit frequency. Another is to develop a system to distribute quantum security keys: quantum computers are coming, traditional keys won’t stand up to their attack, and for the security of banking transactions and more, this would be a world first. The third is a micro-launcher. SpaceX is a monster that launches tons, but launchers are needed for small things when what is sent into space is getting smaller and smaller.
Perte aeroespacial is trying to mobilize around 4.5 billion euros in private and public collaboration. The deadline is 2025 because, if not, European funds are at risk. How much progress has been made?
80-90% have already gone out to tender and contracting and close to 60% are in execution. We are doing reasonably well.
The fact that the headquarters of the Agency is in Seville is an example of the decentralization of state institutions. Communities such as Catalonia, Euskadi, Galicia and Andalusia, however, have promoted space projects and now the Agency is trying to unify voices. Has there been any reluctance?
On the contrary, it collaborates, because the Agency is there to help and provide technical support. In no territory, and we have had meetings with all, has there been any reluctance to collaborate. And as the Spanish Space Agency we do not see them as competition. What we do want is to create a territorial committee to inform each other and coordinate, even to carry out joint missions. By bringing together four territories with their budgets, perhaps we can do a mission to the Moon that gives scientific return to each territory.
