Future space missions and services - A road map for future technology development

Thanks to the unique global capabilities that it brings, space technology will be a major strategic tool in the next century, In addition to their broad economic potential, space technology will help society overcome several threats to the quality of life on Earth or even to human life itself, In that sense, space technology is fundamental to sustaining security in all its forms - political, economic, military and ecological - in a truly global approach. At the current time, however, space initiatives are going through a transition period and are gradually settling into a mature industrial and commercial sector where the basic technologies exist, where market forces determine major developments (which ave influenced by many global and regional players), and where public budgets remain constant or are even diminishing, Private investment is therefore becoming increasingly more important for financing application-oriented and commercially-driven space activities.