ESA ISS News: France Ready To Back ISS Extension

The French government stands ready to endorse extending the operational life of the international space station to 2020 and beyond but is insisting on new ways of financing the work with its European partners, the head of the French space agency, CNES reported.

In a briefing on CNES priorities for the coming year, CNES President Yannick d’Escatha did not spell out the mechanism France would like to see adopted to determine how much of the station’s annual operating charges each European nation would pay.

Among the members of the European Space Agency (ESA), France has been second only to Germany in its financing of the station’s assembly and initial operations. Germany, which remains committed to using the station as fully as possible now that it is built, had proposed spending 3.8 billion euros ($5.2 billion) between 2011 and 2020 for station work.

That figure would include Europe’s obligatory contribution to the station’s annual maintenance, as well as the cost of building and operating experiments at the station.

France rejected that figure as too high, and the two nations, along with Italy and the other ESA governments taking part in the station, are now negotiating both a figure and a formula for payment.