An open secret: ESA's new head

On December 17, 2020, the European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed the appointment of Josef Aschbacher as its next director general for a period of four years. ESA said Aschbacher will succeed Jan Wörner, whose term of office ends on June 30, 2021. The article that follows was published earlier, on December 15, 2020.

We've known since late November that Josef Aschbacher, the European Space Agency's director of Earth Observation, will replace Jan Wörner as ESA's director general by June 2021.

All that's needed now is a rubber stamp at a Ministerial Council meeting later this week (December 16-17). Anything could still happen, of course, but given the social/media fanfare, it's hard to see an alternative outcome.

The job was announced publicly in June. Candidates either applied or were nominated. And a committee, chaired by Anna Rathsman, director general at the Swedish National Space Agency, chose their man — and we stress man. Then someone leaked the news. There's no other way of putting it, the news must have been leaked, and everyone who cared promptly lauded the winner on social media.

The congratulations started most notably with Aschbacher's one true competitor, Christian Hauglie-Hanssen, the director general of the Norwegian Space Agency.

Hauglie-Hanssen was Aschbacher's "one true competitor" because he's about the only challenger whose nomination was seemingly made public and transparent to all.

Other candidates: a mystery

There was also talk of Simonetta Di Pippo, director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, but our efforts to confirm her nomination have failed so far.

Equally, there was talk of Spain's Minister of Science and Innovation and former Astronaut Pedro Duque Duque going for the job, but, alas, his people wouldn't confirm or deny that either.

When we asked ESA for a full list of nominees, we got this by email (December 1):

"The application process should lead to the selection of the Agency's new Director General on decision of the ESA Council by second half of Dec. The process is still ongoing, so ESA will not disclose any information until it will be closed." [sic]

And yet, as we say, someone blabbed, and the winner made few efforts to dispute it.

In fact, he confirmed it. Note: In his reply to @CSkidmoreUK on November 26, Aschbacher says, "… and I look forward to an excellent cooperation." 

Far from us wanting to comment or express an opinion, the affair smacks of a cloak n' dagger style ascension of the current DG's right-hand man. 

The number of national organizations or research institutes who told us they wouldn't comment on ESA's internal affairs, and those that could not even say whether their countries had nominated a candidate, is staggering.

You afraid of ESA?

Whenever we raised the lack of transparency in the selection process, or the apparent lack of diversity among the nominees, suddenly, promising contacts declined to speak. The latter is a specific reference to Denmark's Minster for Higher Education and Science, Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen. 

Those who did speak (or write), meanwhile, were very careful not to offend.

"I am in no position to comment on the new ESA DG other than to say that we will work trustfully with whoever is appointed to the post," Tilman Spohn, executive director of the International Space Science Institute, wrote in an email.

The ISSI is part-funded by ESA and the Swiss government.

"We have a history of very fruitful cooperation with Mr. Aschbacher. We at ISSI value equal opportunities — as does ESA — but we have no knowledge of who was a candidate considered by the ESA authorities," said Spohn.

Rathsman, meanwhile, said she would speak but only after the official announcement on December 17... Until those plans were nobbled by ESA. 

As for the deafening silence we received from Pascale Ehrenfreund, president of the International Astronautical Federation and former head of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) — this writer's not quite sure what to make of that. 

Suffice to say, Ehrenfreund's departure from DLR earlier this year was shrouded in a similar amount of confusion and conspiracy as Wörner's upcoming departure from ESA — one speaks of a "lack of support" but not much more. 

Dark matter

All this makes such processes virtually impossible to understand.

Indeed, sources within the European space community agreed that it is difficult to understand the process by which ESA's director general is appointed.

However, they also said that the appointment was first and foremost a political question, and that in this case Aschbacher and Hanssen were clear frontrunners.

Perhaps it was felt that a representative from a smaller ESA member state should get a chance to run the organization after Jan Wörner of Germany, and Jean-Jacques Dordain of France before him — France and Germany being two of ESA's largest financial and, as a result, influential contributors.

It's been suggested elsewhere, but our requests for comment from the relevant ministries and/or agencies in France and Germany went unanswered. So, who can say?

Some equal opportunities are more equal than others

And is it a problem?

It may be, if you're concerned about how your tax money is spent. It is said that every €1 spent returns up to €6 to the European economy. The figures often vary. But the question is: Do you feel that return in your pocket?

Then, it may also be a problem when you scan the list of 11 top jobs at ESA — the director general and their ten most senior managers. Currently, only one is held by a woman: Elodie Viau, who heads ESA's Telecommunications and Integrated Applications.

A male bias at ESA? Could be. Might not be. We simply don't know.

"Could ESA have done more to secure a female candidate onto the short list [for its next DG]? Perhaps," wrote Malcom Macdonald, a professor of satellite engineering at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and an expert whose opinion this writer trusts. "Should that have been done at any expense… if we don't know the full list, it could be that the female candidates were simply not as good. We cannot know."

Macdonald is not saying that the female candidates, if any existed, were less qualified than the men. He's simply saying that "we don't know." What we take that to mean could be that ESA is shielding itself from any criticism, but by the very same token we simply don't know. 

Founding "fathers" 

Article XII of ESA's founding convention states that "the Council shall, by a two-thirds majority of all Member States, appoint a Director General for a defined period and may, by the same majority, terminate his appointment."

So, we know that it's a majority vote. And with ESA's 22 full member states — it has three additional "participating" states — that means at least 14.652 states will want Aschbacher in the job. Who those nations are? Who knows?

After that, we can indulge in a bit of cynical sport, counting the number of references to "he shall do this," or "he shall do that" — as opposed to a non-gender-specific characterization of the DG. But one doesn't want to be churlish, does one?

So, finally, who is HE? This Aschbacher.

• Born in Austria
• Studied at the University of Innsbruck
• Master's and a Doctoral Degree in Natural Sciences
• Began his career at ESA in 1990
• Seconded as ESA Representative to Southeast Asia to the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand
• Scientific Assistant to the Director of the Space Applications Institute, European Commission Joint Research Centre from 1994 to 2001
• Returned to ESA in 2001 as program coordinator, responsible for advancing Copernicus activities within the agency
• Since 2016, Director of Earth Observation Programs

And who is he really?

On a trip to witness the launch of a Copernicus satellite from Europe's launch center in French Guiana in 2017, we spoke to Aschbacher. Or rather, we watched Aschbacher as Wörner spoke in his stead. Perhaps that was to be expected. Wörner was very much the architect of ESA's new found leading edge in Earth observation and public-private collaboration in the "New Space" era.

It was a strange sight, though, the image of a protégé, waiting awkwardly for his mentor to finish… before he would dare a few words of his own. 

Well, it won't be long now and Wörner will be gone. 

Wörner, the unorthodox, say-it-like-it-is type seems to have cleverly pulled up his man Aschbacher, the careful-as-he-goes type to continue what he started. 

"I've heard some people say Aschbacher will take ESA closer to the European Union, due to his experience of developing the Copernicus programme with the EU," wrote Macdonald. "But I see it the opposite way. He knows how to work with the EU, so he should know how to defend ESA from the EU." 

And that may well be necessary, as the EU's recently cut its space budget.

We'll soon find out, no doubt.