After the Paris summit on orbital debris, the European autumn plays out on Mercury and on Didymos

The Sommet international sur l’espace was held at the Grand Palais in Paris on September 9 and 10, 2026. France was expecting around 120 foreign delegations, alongside representatives from international organizations, businesses, the research world, defense and civil society. The proceedings covered space debris, in-orbit activities, security, innovation and access to space services. The European Commission was represented by the president and several commissioners; astronaut Thomas Pesquet took part as special envoy of the President of the French Republic.

On September 9, in parallel, the OECD published the Space Economy Outlook 2026. News of the summit and the report currently comes from a single source (the agenda of European institutions and the OECD published by Toute l’Europe); no independent confirmation is available.

Why debris became the first item on the agenda

That an intergovernmental summit should open with fragments in orbit rather than exploration missions says something about where the center of gravity of space policy has shifted: from launching to managing what is already up there. The topics listed — debris, in-orbit activities, security, access to services — describe infrastructure, not adventure. The available material reports no operational conclusions or commitments signed at the end of the two days, and we do not assume any: what is documented is the composition of the table and the agenda of the proceedings.

The autumn’s two operational deadlines

On the mission front, the calendar of the European Space Agency with Italian contribution has two closely spaced appointments.

In November 2026 the probe BepiColombo is expected to enter orbit around Mercury, an ESA mission for which Italy is responsible for 4 of the 11 experiments on board. This is the phase in which a probe stops being an object in transit and becomes an instrument of continuous observation: the orbital capture maneuver is the critical passage of the entire mission.

At the end of 2026 the planetary defense mission Hera will reach the Didymos asteroid system to study the effects of the impact of the NASA probe DART. Italy’s contribution includes ASI, OHB Italia and Avio. Hera does not hit anything: it measures. It serves to turn a successful experiment — deflecting an asteroid through an impact — into a quantitative model, that is, to know how much mass is needed, at what speed, to achieve what deflection.

In the background remains Plato, ESA’s exoplanet hunter, also with Italian input: launch is expected in early 2027 and the final part of 2026 is taken up by the activities preceding it. The program’s stated goal is to identify Earth-sized planets around other stars.

The mission calendar too currently comes from a single source (Global Science, on ESA and Italian Space Agency programs); no independent confirmation is available in this dossier.

What we don’t know

We do not know the exact date of BepiColombo’s orbital insertion maneuver, indicated by the material only as “November 2026.” We do not have the content of the OECD Outlook — only its publication date — and therefore we report no figures on the space economy. We do not know whether the Paris summit produced a final document.

The next two verifications are material and dated: entry into orbit around Mercury by November, Hera’s arrival at Didymos by the end of the year.

Sources: Toute l’Europe (official agenda of European institutions and OECD); Global Science / ASI (ESA and Italian Space Agency programs).