Small missions: exploiting the opportunities

This is an edited part of a report by the European consortium Eurospace on the potential for the continent of small missions. A growing feature of the space market for communications, Earth observations and science and technology development, they represent both a threat of missing an important future market and an opportunity to develop a new capability offering better value for money and increasing the effectiveness of European space endeavours. A new pump-priming programme, the European Small Space Missions Initiative (ESSMI), is put forward to avoid the present vicious circle in which small missions are not proposed because of the lack of launch opportunities and launch vehicles are not developed because of lack of demand.