Appearing at a briefing after a two-day meeting of the agency's member governments, ESA Director-General Jann Woerner did his utmost to cast the effect on the agency's five-year science budget in the best possible light, but in the end accepted that planned future science missions might need to be delayed.

The budget adopted by the ministers calls for spending 508 million euros ($552 million) per year on science missions between 2017 and 2022. Starting in 2018, that figure will rise by 1 percent per year, with no accounting for inflation.

Woerner said he tried to get the agency's member states to incorporate an inflation metric into the accounts, and to add a 1 percent per year increase on top of that.

It didn't work.The result, as European government officials agreed after the conference, will be a decrease in science purchasing power in the coming years. One or more Medium-class missions still not selected will need to be delayed. Any hope that the Lisa gravity-wave observatory could be completed earlier than 2034 — a launch date of 2029 had been cited as feasible, budget permitting — has now almost certainly been lost.