The European Space Agency unveiled measures on Thursday to speed up payments to the space industry in the face of mounting job cuts, while imposing greater scrutiny following a raft of cost overruns and delays.
Director General Josef Aschbacher announced the plan after a council meeting of the 22-nation agency, a week after Airbus (AIR.PA) announced 2,500 job cuts mainly in its satellites business.
"Profitability has been raised as a major issue," Aschbacher said, citing recent announcements at Airbus Defence and Space and Franco-Italian rival Thales Alenia Space (TCFP.PA)(LDOF.MI).
The proposed support will include increasing the level of downpayments on new contracts and releasing progress payments more quickly without waiting for all development milestones to be completed, "which of course takes much longer," he added.
But the proposal also comes with greater oversight.
Aschbacher said a newly formed Independent Project Management Authority would be tasked with scrutinising new programmes for cost, schedule and content to ensure they are "realistically prepared".
"We are working in space technology where we are always expecting the unexpected... We will have to do deal with this, but at least from a cost and schedule perspective, we would like more of a conservative manner to make sure that the planning is going very well," Aschbacher said.
Airbus has taken a total of 1.5 billion euros of charges on satellite manufacturing losses in recent quarters. Airbus and Thales did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
