NEW YORK, July 13. /TASS/. European nations are falling behind their main competitors in the space race due to a significant shortage of launch vehicles, Bloomberg reports.

According to the agency, Russia, China, and the United States have launched hundreds of satellites into orbit over the past five years, tested new systems, and actively deployed so-called satellite inspectors capable of approaching objects in orbit and monitoring their activity. The agency estimates that the three countries have invested $200 billion in developing defense and intelligence capabilities in space during this period.

"Missing from this intensifying race is Europe, hobbled by misaligned interests, limited national budgets and the lack of a crucial piece of space technology: enough heavy launchers to make scores of trips to orbit each year," the agency writes.

In 2025, the European Space Agency launched just four heavy Ariane 6 rockets, with a load capacity of just under 22 tons. Due to production and infrastructure limitations, the ESA can only launch 10 such rockets per year. By contrast, the United States conducts 15 launches per month, while the payload capacity of the largest American-made rocket, the Falcon Heavy, stands at 64 tons -- nearly three times that of the Ariane 6. It will cost Europe billions of euros to close the gap with the US, the agency reports.

"If Europe is serious about being a sovereign space power, it should be able to meet its satellite needs by itself. That is the fundamental plank of being a space power of any kind," Bleddyn Bowen, Associate professor of Astropolitics at Durham University in the UK, told the agency.