Europe juggled expanding ambitions in space with fears of recession today by approving a research and development budget that caps costs for a mission to Mars.
The deal to spend just under 10 billion euros ($12.96 billion) in coming years for space projects including the unmanned ExoMars rover mission followed two days of political haggling at the 18-nation European Space Agency.
Germany clashed at the talks with other countries over ExoMars, led by Italy, and funding for the International Space Station, which is a bigger industrial priority for Berlin.
ExoMars would involve landing a rover on the planet's surface and drilling down 2 metres (6.6 feet) to take soil soundings. The cost has roughly doubled since an earlier plan.
ESA ministers capped their contribution to ExoMars at 1 billion euros, leaving another 200 million euros to be funded through co-operation with NASA of the United States or Russia.
The compromise allows an ExoMars launch to go ahead in 2016, without new German contributions for the time being, while Berlin secured pledges that Europe's 1.4 billion euro, 5-year space station budget could be reviewed if more money is needed.
"The ISS is our biggest technological project and tremendous efforts have been made. Now is the time to reap the benefits of our work," Germany's junior minister for economics and technology Peter Hintze told a news conference.
Ministers from ESA countries and Canada meet every three years to agree funding for the agency, which exists to pool resources in a domain dominated since the Cold War by the United States and Russia and now generating an Asian space race.
China has carried out its first space walk while India sent a probe to the moon and has ambitions for manned space flight.
The meeting coincided with the global economic crisis, a double-edged sword for the ESA since it tightens purse strings while making it more attractive to boost high-tech jobs.
"These are investments which can help the economy. This is the right time invest in the future," ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dodain told a news conference.
SPACE STATION DEAL
The ESA said member states had agreed to put up 9.9 billion euros for scientific research that includes Europe's share of the Hubble telescope as well as other projects like the space station, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last week.
The compromise allows ESA to seek up to an extra 400 million euros for the orbital outpost if needed to pay industry on time. Germany had expressed concerns that any funding shortfall would mean penalties for late payment and penalise German plants.
"The real question is the future of the ISS after 2015 when the United States has said it will stop using it," an ESA delegate said, adding that this date was still in flux.
Backers of the project want to get the most benefit out of the station before 2010 when NASA plans to stop flying Shuttle missions, relying solely on Russia's Soyuz to transport crew and leaving few options for returning significant amounts of cargo.
Europe this year successfully docked an unmanned freighter called the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) with the station.
ESA wants to develop a new version of the ATV that would return cargo from the space station to earth without burning up in the atmosphere but won less funding than it had hoped.
ESA nations agreed to study development of a new version of the Ariane space rocket, fund a project to help satellites dodge space debris and spend 820 million euros on telecommunications projects, including a plan to bounce data between satellites to speed up its path to earth without building new ground stations.
"I didn't feel it was easy to get the money but it...includes communications technology, which has real economic value as there is a commercial market behind it," Dordain said.