Europe is a major global player in Space with a budget of around seven billion dollars a year. The 12th annual European Space Conference in Brussels brought together hundreds of the continent's major players: from the European Space Agency (ESA), to the industries and research centres involved as well as the governments and European Union who finance it.

This year's theme was "New Decade, Global Ambitions" with keynote seminars on ESA's role in addressing climate change along with defence and security.

Among those attending the conference were a number of senior European military officers, defence officials from various countries and the European Defence Agency. But according to the head of the European Space Agency, Johann-Dietrich Wörner, ESA is not about to become involved in the militarization of space.

"In our convention it says ESA is for exclusively peaceful purposes. We are in favour of safety and security, cyber resilience we call it, but we are not looking at any military activities of ESA." Mr. Wörner told me.

ESA has received funding to develop what is called 'quantum key distribution', a secure method of ensuring that digital communications are not compromized.

On defence the organization is also involved in early warning monitoring of possible asteroid collisions with earth.

At the heart of the space agency's climate change work are its string of European built 'Sentinel' satellites which are now circling the earth. Their high-resolution cameras and instruments are gathering data on the state of the planet. It's part of ESA's one point seven billion dollar a year programme helping monitor the effects of climate change.

Josef Aschbacher is Director of ESA's Earth Observation Programmes.

"We are taking the pulse of our planet we measure the earth's atmosphere, the land service, the oceans the combination of how they interact. To better understand how the earth's system function and therefore how it changes over time."

Most of the data retrieved by Copernicus is shared with scientists around the world who can analyse the results. This is one area where ESA has found a willingness of the other major space players, from the USA to China, to work together on climate change.

Mr Aschbacher was in China a week ago and says he was impressed with how fast their earth observation programme is growing.

"We have to work together. I now want to intensify this cooperation with China, in addition to the excellent co-operations we already have with Japan and with many other partners." Aschbacher said.

Europe and others are providing the science and details of how the earth is changing, but getting countries to agree on how to act on it remains a major challenge.

David Southwood is a former ESA director and now a Senior Research Investigator at the London School of Economics.

"All Copernicus can tell us is what's going on, why the climate is changing, what is happening to our planet. It is us human beings who have to get together and act to make sure that the planet we have in the future is the one we had in the past."

While the European Space Agency is playing its part in monitoring climate change and pollution on earth, the space industry is now under growing pressure to clean up its own mess.

On Earth, plastic waste has become a major problem. So too has space junk. ESA estimates there are almost million objects a centimetre or larger floating around the Earth. Europe is funding a clean-up project with the first trials set for 2025.

But Mr. Wörner, head of the European Space Agency, has been unable to get other nations to agree to an international approach.

"For years I have been trying to convince other agencies worldwide also to join forces. I was not successful so I went to the space 19 + ministerial (meeting) of ESA last year and said OK,  now ESA has to start and we got the support. We got the full financial support for a mission to de-orbit space debris."

ESA is not part of the European Union. Seventy percent of its incomes comes from the twenty-two participating states with the EU contributing 23 percent and industry makes up the rest. In return, the scale of research and manufacturing projects in each country are allocated roughly on the percentage of their budget contributions. Despite Brexit, Britain remains a member of ESA.