He is about to address journalists and fans at an event organized by ESA at the Paris Airshow ahead of his trip to the International Space Station. Despite the ESA logo on his chest, he is technically more of a commercial flyer than an actual ESA astronaut. The Polish Government bought his orbital trip with ESA’s assistance from commercial spaceflight provider Axiom Space, which, in turn, bought a crewed launch from SpaceX for its Axiom-4 mission. Both are American companies.

The Polish Space Agency (POLSA) hails Uznanski’s mission “a huge success” and “distinction for Poland” and its “civilization progress.” The 41-year-old former CERN physicist is the first Pole in history to visit the International Space Station and only the second Polish citizen to fly to space. The first Polish astronaut, or rather cosmonaut, Mirosław Hermaszewski, spent a week on the Soviet Salyut 6 space station in 1978 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos program. Within the Interkosmos framework, the Soviets flew 18 cosmonauts, primarily nationals from countries under the USSR’s influence (although the program later accepted westerners too) to space between 1978 and 1994.

According to available information, Hermaszewski’s mission was the Soviet government’s treat to Poland and other eastern bloc countries. Although the mission was conducted using USSR’s domestic Soyuz space transportation system, the visiting space fliers were not deemed ROSCOSMOS cosmonauts, wearing the yellow and blue Interkosmos patches on their space suits instead.

A clear distinction was made during those Soviet-era missions. Today, public relations and marketing play a huge role in how space missions are presented and shaped in the public eye. Language and endorsements impact financial and geopolitical maneuvering. ESA’s arrangement with Poland and other nations to send their astronauts to the ISS with Axiom Space should come under scrutiny, especially when flyers are adorned with ESA mission patches to represent the agency on an international stage.

Before Poland’s decision to fund the 65-million-euro ($74 million) Axiom Space ticket, Uznanski wasn’t even an ESA employee. He was one of 22,000 hopefuls who submitted applications in ESA’s latest astronaut recruitment round in 2021. Five “career” astronauts emerged from the selection process who joined ESA staff in 2023. Uznanski wasn’t one of them. He was considered fit and skilled enough to train as an astronaut, but the agency didn’t really need him. Instead, it designated him a “reserve astronaut,” an invention spawned during that latest astronaut recruitment drive, and placed him, together with 11 others into its astronaut reserve pool. There he was to wait until “a flight opportunity has been identified,” still working for his existing employer.

Interestingly, the reserve astronauts began making it to space — on Axiom missions funded by their respective governments — before the new batch of full-time “career” astronauts completed their basic training. Swedish fighter pilot Marcus Wandt flew to space in January 2024 with the Axiom-3 mission. Poland signed an agreement with Axiom Space “with support from the European Space Agency” to send Uznanski to space in August 2023. 

Through the astronaut reserve pool, ESA created what appears to be an incentive for its member states to pay for commercial missions facilitated by a private American company (Axiom) and executed by a private American spaceflight firm (SpaceX), which could be contradictory to the agency’s purpose.

ESA’s mission, in its own words, is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability. Its industrial policy is guided by a principal of geo-return, which requires that money invested by a member state into ESA’s budget return to that member state’s industry in the value of participations in ESA’s space projects. Yet, in case of the small member states, which have so far been the main takers, the cost of the Axiom mission frequently exceeds the nation’s yearly ESA budget contributions. 

Poland’s fellow post-communist country Czechia announced in June this year its intention to send its ESA reserve astronaut Ales Svoboda to space with Axiom by 2028. The nation’s government will, according to media reports, pay 2 billion Czech Crowns (about 80 million Euro or $90 million) for the trip. The Czech government thinks the investment in the Axiom mission will deliver an eight-fold return for the Czech economy, although it is not clear, what this estimation is based on (the service providers SpaceX and Axiom are more likely seeing the return on their investment here).

The war in Ukraine and the recent worsening of relationships between Europe and the U.S. administration exposed glaring gaps in European defense and strategic space capabilities. Ukraine’s defense forces largely depend on satellite imagery from the U.S. government and commercial American providers such as Maxar, Planet and BlackSky. Starlink has been indispensable for the embattled nation since the earliest days of the war.

For Poland and Czechia — both post-communist countries who aren't too far out of sight of Vladimir Putin’s imperialist vision — this dependency on American space assets at a time of crumbling international relations should be a source of existential dread.

It is true that the cost of Axiom Space missions pales in comparison with the needed increases in Europe’s defense spending, and that both countries, Poland in particular, have stepped up to the plate (Poland is currently the lead defense spender per capita in Europe, investing 4.7% of its GDP into military technology).

Europe, in both space and warfare, wants to be self-reliant community. A Ukraine-led Eastern European defense initiative has recently introduced an ambition to build a dedicated Earth-observing constellation that would cover regions along the Russian border from as far north as Finland to as far south as Bulgaria. The project, an emerging cooperation of Eastern and Northern European states, would comprise 70 satellites and is currently seeking funding of about 100 million euros. 

ESA itself is in a near constant need to plug budget holes, its Director General, Josef Aschbacher, making frequent pleas for increased funding. In the past five years, ESA has taken a series of budget blows. First, it had to persuade its member states to find some 360 million euros to rescue the agency’s flagship ExoMars mission when it had to withdraw from a partnership with ROSCOSMOS after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia was to provide a launcher and built a landing platform for the life-seeking space robot. It also provided a few other mission-critical components that Europe doesn’t have. 

ExoMars, Europe’s first ever attempt to place a rover on the surface of the Red Planet, is in a crisis again, as NASA, which stepped in to help after the Russian fiasco, may be forced to withdraw as well. ExoMars is one of a multitude of NASA-co-funded space science projects intended for a chop in the Trump administration’s controversial budget proposal. If ESA were to go it alone and place the beleaguered rover on the Red Planet as per the current launch plan, it would likely have to find another few hundred million euros to build those missing components. NASA, as the plan stands, is to provide a launcher, braking retrorockets to slow down the lander during descent and radio-isotope heaters to protect it against the biting cold of the Martian night.

None of these technologies is currently available in Europe in a space-ready form.

China has already beaten Europe to Mars and India is targeting the early 2030s for its own Mars lander launch.

As Supercluster reported earlier, Europe has been ostentatiously missing from the renewed moon race too. It hasn’t placed a satellite into the moon’s orbit since 2006 and has never attempted a lunar landing. In the meantime, ambitious upstarts including countries such as India, Japan and a bunch of fledgling commercial providers have kept the space around the moon busier than it had been since the end of the Apollo era. 

But back to the ESA patch on Uznanski’s chest, and what it actually means in this current climate. Post-communist countries such as Poland and Czechia, indeed, do have a right to purchase Axiom space flights if they feel so inclined. In fact, among Uznanski’s crew mates is a fellow Eastern European — Hungary’s Tibor Kapu. Hungary, although an ESA member state like Poland, announced plans to launch its national to the ISS in 2022 without the ESA. Kapu was selected in a domestic selection process and his spacesuit is only adorned by the patch of his HUNOR mission.

ESA’s involvement in the Polish, Swedish and other Axiom Space missions raises questions whether (even if indirectly) facilitating the sale of services of two American entities is what a European taxpayer-funded institution tasked with developing the European space tech scene should be doing. This, of course, is merely this author’s opinion.