Bringing Space and Society Together

A three-month series of events in different European cities, held as part of the Space and Society project, came to a close on June 29 with a conference in Brussels entitled “Towards a European Space Community”. The meeting coincided with the opening of an exhibition of photographs called “Space girls, space women”, a selection of which was on display at the conference. 

The Space and Society project was organised by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), with support from GSA and other leading European space organisations.

Raising Awareness

“Space systems and technologies play an important part in the everyday lives of European citizens, but they may not be aware of it,” explains Alice Tétu, Administrator of the Single Market, Production and Consumption (INT) section at EESC. “The idea behind the Space and Society initiative was to help raise awareness of the advantages and services that these technologies bring them.” 

Another important objective of the project was to generate interest by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in what satellite technologies like Copernicus and Galileo can offer. “In addition, we also wanted to use the project as a way of generating and maintaining political support for current and future space programmes at EU and national levels,” adds Tétu.

A Behind the Scenes Look

Speaking at the conference in Brussels, GSA Head of Market Development Gian-Gherardo Calini reminded participants how ubiquitous satellite-based location technology has become, often behind the scenes. “There are 3.6 billion GNSS devices in operation today and there are expected to be 7 billion by 2019– that’s one device per person on Earth,” he said, “This is the only market that is growing today, along with radio-frequency identification (RFID) and the internet.”

He noted that the European Union has already invested EUR 12 billion in Galileo, with the expectation that it will lead to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs.

Satellite positioning can have a considerable social and regional impact, with applications such as tracking vehicles carrying dangerous goods - for example delivering inflammable fuel to a small town. As an example, Calini cited the value-added SCUTUM project, which can lower the time to intervention in the case of an incident. Other emerging applications include navigating driverless cars and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as the remote seeding, watering and harvesting of farm crops.

All Around Europe

In total, six Space and Society events were organised, each in a different Member State and according to the experience and interests of members.

On May 20, a conference in Kaunas (Lithuania) aimed to boost the space industry in the Baltic region, focusing on SMEs, the integration of satellite data, nanosatellites, regional cooperation, and funding opportunities at EU and national level. Shortly afterwards, on May 29, participants were able to visit the French national space research centre (CNES) and the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse to meet with SMEs and discuss new job opportunities in the space sector.

On June 3, Space and Society moved on to Rome, bringing together representatives from industry, SMEs and national and European authorities to discuss current and future legislation in the space sector. On June 25, participants were able to visit a school laboratory in the German aerospace centre (DLR) in Cologne, with the aim of promoting space in schools and universities. Also in June, a meeting held at NSO headquarters in The Hague (Netherlands) focused on the needs of the space industry, the role of business incubators and private-public collaboration, to get more SMEs into the space market.

The full programme of events in the Space and Society project, with the list of members and supporting agencies is available online here.

More Information

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).