Strategy 2040: Europe’s Vision for Exploration Beyond Artemis

Four years ago, the European Space Agency surveyed its place in a rapidly-changing world, and laid out a vision to ride the wave. In 2025, the space landscape has continued to evolve, and political uncertainty in the United States has thrown Europe’s position as a valued partner into question. Now, the agency has refined that early vision into Strategy 2040, a roadmap for ESA to reclaim its autonomy on the world stage. Nestled within its far-reaching scope are plans for European exploration at the Moon and Mars, which give us a glimpse into the role ESA might play sending humans to other worlds in the coming decade.

ESA’s latest vision began with a policy document called Agenda 2025, which outlined some of the wild cards the agency faced in 2021. Chief among them were falling launch costs in a growing commercial sector, global threats to safety and security like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, and a new, diverse generation of untapped talent. While other powers like SpaceX and the China National Space Administration enjoyed a meteoric rise, ESA, in its own words, needed “to get its act together.” Progress has certainly been made since then: New launchers Ariane 6 and Vega C have flown, more European astronauts have reached space through commercial partnerships, and European private companies have taken root in the LEO market.

But ESA now faces new challenges. In Agenda 2025, ESA stated its intent to negotiate for a European astronaut to land on the Moon by 2030 through the Artemis Program. This seems a fair exchange for the European Service Modules that power every Orion spacecraft, or the Moon-orbiting Gateway space station built in large part by Europe. Yet the Trump Administration has brashly attempted to abandon these commitments with ESA, narrowly failing—for now—to outright cancel Orion and Gateway, as well as other partnerships like Mars Sample Return. Simply put, Europe needs autonomy in space now more than ever, and Strategy 2040 is its game plan.

The Strategy

Strategy 2040 builds on the foundation laid by Agenda 2025; each of the issues originally raised in 2021 is only more relevant today, while technologies like AI have disrupted the playing field even further. However, while Agenda 2025 stuck to a narrative establishing broad priorities for Europe, Strategy 2040 presents a structured approach with detailed objectives and action items for each of its focus areas. There are five main goals for Europe to achieve by 2040:

1. Protect Our Planet and Climate, combating the threat of climate change, asteroids, and space debris.
2. Explore and Discover, by establishing lunar and Martian infrastructure, continuing the search for life in the solar system, and bolstering astrophysics.
3. Strengthen European Autonomy and Resilience, a throughline that emphasizes modern and competitive launchers, as well as connectivity, navigation, and remote sensing to power safety and security on Earth.
4. Boost European Growth and Competitiveness, by investing in new technologies, Europe’s industrial base, public-private partnerships, and STEM engagement.
5. Inspire Europe, by fostering international relationships that can extend beyond space exploration.

These themes all speak to Europe’s desire to elevate its global standing and go toe-to-toe with powers like the USA and China, prioritizing domestic capabilities over foreign dependencies. But insight into Europe’s plans for the Moon and Mars lies primarily under Goal 2, Objective 2.2: “Expand ESA’s unique capabilities and roles in the new space exploration era in low Earth orbit, around and on the Moon, and towards Mars.” This section also reinforces and expands on concepts first outlined in an earlier publication, ESA’s Explore 2040 policy.

The first strategic action, strengthening European access to and presence in LEO, is already well underway, as European entities such as Airbus and The Exploration Company have invested themselves in future commercial space station projects, including commercial cargo. But Strategy 2040 takes this a step further: work on life support and habitation for these next-generation crew platforms should be made extensible to future Mars transit habitats. Although Europe is gaining similar experience through its contributions to Gateway, a true deep space habitat will necessarily feature larger volumes comparable to stations like Starlab. Commercial platforms may also offer greater flexibility for testing; compare the ISS, where a crowded arena of stakeholder needs ultimately precluded expansions like TransHab from being realized. Greater European investment in these stations therefore enables ESA to literally go beyond LEO.

At the Moon, the Strategy invokes ESA’s upcoming Argonaut Moon lander to support science and logistics for the Artemis campaign. ESA would also focus on lunar habitation, communications, navigation, power, and mobility, particularly through the Italian Space Agency’s Multi-Purpose Habitat. Explore 2040 characterizes these “European-led capabilities” as a departure from Europe’s role as a dependent collaborator. Indeed, both MPH and Argonaut have recently been incorporated as elements in NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture, a tangible example of a “step up” for European autonomy. Consider that Europe’s contributions to Artemis to date have only been components of elements, like Orion’s ESM or Gateway’s Lunar View. Meanwhile, Argonaut and MPH are wholly European and complete elements in their own right, putting them on equal standing to SLS or HLS. ESA’s pursuit of these systems brings them a step closer to independent crewed lunar exploration.

Finally, there is Mars. Robotic missions like the Rosalind Franklin rover and Earth Return Orbiter exemplify the perils of ESA’s dependency on the United States: both missions rely on an American element, subject to the often short-sighted whims of American politics. As a result, ESA’s discussion of sending humans to Mars makes one thing clear: this is not a domain where Europe plans to follow, but to lead. These policy documents assert that Europe intends to develop fully independent capabilities to enable crewed missions to Mars. Strategy 2040 envisions European investment in communications and navigation infrastructure, like at the Moon, but also landing site reconnaissance, advanced propulsion strategies, and especially precision landing of heavy payloads. These are not just identified needs—they are targets for technology development programs that are now in early formulation. The nascent LightShip and MEDaL programs, designed to address Mars orbit infrastructure and landing needs, exemplify ESA’s commitment to acting quickly on these objectives.

Although Strategy 2040 is not the first place ESA has expressed many of these goals, it is notable among recent policy statements for its structure. The breakdown of goals into smaller action items creates traceability, allowing policymakers to follow individual programs up the chain to see how they contribute to high-level objectives.The logic is similar to some recent NASA publications, such as its 2022 Strategic Plan, as well as the Moon to Mars Architecture, which takes a narrower focus on lunar and Martian exploration. However, ESA’s strategy for sending humans to Mars differs from NASA’s. The Moon to Mars Architecture attacks Mars “from the top down,” prioritizing high-level decisions about the broad shape of a Mars mission, and usually defers the selection of specific technologies. The strategic actions described in Strategy 2040 focus instead on building out individual capabilities “from the bottom up,” providing systems that can be assembled into a complete architecture when needed. This is more similar to the way NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate supports a variety of its own technology demonstrations. But many of those programs, such as LOFTID and cryogenic fluid management, are tested closer to home, or integrated as payloads on other missions. Conversely, MEDaL and LightShip are meant to progress into operational flights to Mars, and could ultimately evolve smoothly towards supporting human exploration.

As Space Scout has explored in other articles, the journey to Mars will be long, intricate, and unlikely for any single party to undertake successfully. For humans to walk safely on the Red Planet, international collaboration will be a necessity. As the United States, the longtime leader in human spaceflight, is turning increasingly towards nationalism and isolationism, ESA sees its continent-spanning identity as an intrinsic strength, and an opportunity to surge forward. The agency has not historically enjoyed similar funding to NASA, but must nevertheless present equivalent value on the world stage.

Even if the United States scraps its prior commitments and pivots towards an aggressive Mars campaign, Europe’s pursuit of immediately transferable technology programs as outlined in Strategy 2040 ensures it will have something tangible and meaningful to bring to the table. And if Europe finds itself embarking alone, a strong international vision and these new domestic exploration capabilities will suit it well to make the journey. Systems like Mars orbit infrastructure and EDL for heavy payloads will be necessary regardless of what a crewed Mars architecture ultimately looks like, making ESA’s new strategy a critical step in the right direction.