MADRID, May 17. /TASS/. Director general of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, believes that low Earth orbit and the Moon will become new economic zones in the future.

"Europe shows great excellence in space fields such as Earth observation, science, telecommunications, satellite navigation," the ESA chief said in an interview with El Pais on Wednesday. "In these fields we are in the first level along with the United States or China. However, in other respects we are nowhere near this level. One of them is that of rockets. We were leaders in this industry 10 years ago, but the launcher market has completely changed," he lamented.

"Nor are we up to par in human and robotic space exploration, where we are far from the United States, China and India," Aschbacher continued, pointing to what he termed as "enormous geopolitical potential" of human exploration of space. "Imagine that we could be like the United States, launching its astronauts and also inviting other nations to collaborate, now on the space station and in the coming years, also on the Moon," the ESA director general added. "This is a clear display of power and it is something that Europe does not have," he maintained.

Aschbacher also mentioned another important variable. "Low Earth orbit and the Moon are to become new economic zones," he told the Spanish daily. "There are resources to exploit on the Moon and it will be the largest center of human exploration in the coming years," he said.

"When I say future economic zone it is not for the next year, but for the next decade and beyond," he explained. "How can Europe, with so much space excellence, so much economic power and so many brilliant engineers and scientists, be left out? If we want to remain an economic power, we have to become a space power," he insisted.

According to Aschbacher, "China has declared that by 2049 they want to be a superpower, if not the greatest, and they use space as one more way to achieve it." "The United States has followed this strategy since the 1960s. Also Russia continues to do so," he concluded.