02.11.2021
ESA opens doors to space for European industry
ESA boosts the ambitions of European industry in the space sector. It provides expert advice and funding to help them succeed and opens doors to stimulate the growing space economy.
Last week at the International Astronautical Congress 2021 event in Dubai, ESA gave ten promising start-ups and SMEs the opportunity to pitch their company, find customers and create potential business partnerships.
Géraldine Naja, ESA’s newly appointed director of Commercialisation, Industry and Procurement, introduced the winner of the Agency’s 2020 start-up competition and gave an award speech during the Global Networking Forum (GNF) session ‘2020s – The decade of the start-up companies’.
As part of a technical session she also discussed with Mohsen Al Awadhi from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) and six ESA and UAESA start-up companies, the main stages and challenges in a startup’s journey.
Winners of ESA’s 2020 start-up competition and the Agency’s 2021 Global Space Markets Challenge pitched at the ESA booth and received their awards during two sessions. All of them met the ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and had exchanges with him. Both groups also pitched at the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) booth.
Cassi Welling, COO at ConstellR, Germany which shared third place in ESA’s start-up competition 2020 commented: “The opportunity to meet with suppliers whom we haven’t yet met in person was fantastic – a real chance to consolidate and strengthen our relationship. In addition, the chance for us to get in touch with the whole space value chain, starting with ESA, enables us to plan better our future growth; giving us contacts that we might not need now but can draw on again in 1, 3 or even 5 years’ time. The in-depth exchanges with core decision-makers, movers and shakers at ESA gave us a real insight into how seriously ESA takes the concerns and challenges of startups; various commitments for regular dialogue and exchange mean we have a really concrete channel for ongoing exchange which we see as critical for driving the sector further.”
Dr. George Lampropoulos, CEO and President at A.U.G. Signals from Canada, in third place in the downstream category of the Global Space Markets Challenge, added: “As one of the winners of the Global Space Market Challenge, we really appreciate the effort that ESA and EURISY put together to give us the opportunity to be present at IAC 2021. The publicity and recognition provided by ESA and A.U.G. Signals’ participation at IAC have assisted us to advance three business opportunities and we expect more to come in the future.”
Juan Peña Ibañez, CEO of Orbital EOS, Spain shared third place in the ESA start-up competition 2020, also commented: “On behalf of Orbital EOS I can say the experience has been great, we had conversations with current partners and potential ones and four commercial conversations with UAE stakeholders that might be clients in the near future.”
Further opportunities for some of these winners include presenting at ESA’s Industry Space Days on 7–8 December. This will be held online and will focus on commercialisation and the need to stimulate a vibrant and dynamic commercial space ecosystem to realise green and digital transformations.
According to external estimates, huge opportunities in commercialisation lie ahead within a space economy worth about US $1 trillion by 2040. ESA is making moves towards accelerating the use of space in Europe as outlined in ESA’s Agenda 2025.