At a summit held beneath the vaulted ceilings of the Grand Palais, Greek astrophysicist Athena Coustenis delivered a quiet but urgent argument: that Europe's place among the stars cannot be borrowed from others. Speaking in Paris in mid-September 2026, she called for the continent to build genuine space autonomy — not out of ambition alone, but as a considered response to a world increasingly defined by fracture and instability. Her voice carried the weight of someone who has spent decades asking whether life exists beyond Earth, and who now insists that humanity's answer to that question must