Opinion

This is the second part of an op-end article reflecting the EuroDefense network ongoing work from several national chapters with the objective to recommend a common ambitious high-level vision for European advancement in the Space Domain as it proves critical to Europe’s prosperity, security and defence.   Europe should build a space strategic culture that accentuates its strengths, minimizes its weaknesses and articulates and justifies its goals to the world and to itself.

Space systems have become critical enablers for a wide variety of applications which are of paramount importance to the functioning of national and regionally/globally integrated economies, as well as the operations of Armed Forces.

The least we can say is that 2022 has been an eventful year on the world stage, and with no doubt, space took a major part in the headlines. From global environmental challenges to the sudden perception of a war fought Europe's backyard, the space domain and its technology have suddenly reached a level of public awareness and public utility never experienced before. What have we learned from the year that has just gone by, and what still needs to be addressed?

Space Technology for Earth Applications (STEA) is a rapidly growing project group of the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC). As of today, the group consists of 376 members from 78 countries worldwide. The mission of the group is to provide a platform for space enthusiasts to discuss various topics related to the usage of space-related technology to monitor the Earth such as climate change adaptation, disaster management, environmental monitoring, urban planning, and pollution mapping. This year, two of our most active projects are related to flood assessments through the usage of satellite imagery and social media data.

The entrepreneurial support process in the space sector follows often the same development path starting with the ideation process, going to incubation, and then followed by acceleration and scale-up. While the sequence is clear, each step along this chain of entrepreneurship has its dynamic set of actors as well as key characteristics. For these reasons, there is not a single approach that would apply to all contexts to successfully launch a space business, but one element is clear: the ideation phase is critical because this is where the new concepts emerge.

Trevor Paglen is an American artist, geographer, and author, known for his artwork in the field of mass surveillance and data collection. His work was exhibited in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Barbican in London. In 2018, Trevor turned his interest to Space. He launched the Orbital Reflector, a 1.5 million dollars,

This year the 23rd AMOS (Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies) Conference, held in Hawaii from the 27th to the 30th of September 2022, hosted 1212 in-person attendees at the Wailea Beach Resort and 259 guests virtually. The conference sold-out way in advance. Maybe a sign of a post-Covid desire to travel, or maybe a sign that Hawaii never loses its exotic allure, nevertheless the enthusiastic attendance also reflected a growing interest in space sustainability and space commerce initiatives across all sectors, from national governments to private companies, from non-governmental entities to the science community.

The space sector has completely changed in the past few years. France is now the driving force behind the European space sector (albeit more for its purposes rather than for shared European goals), and Germany, apparently distracted by national rearmament, is still determined to defend its ambitions, so as not to completely leave the ground to Paris. In the face of all this, what is Italy’s position? Further apart, it appears.

The very existence of human life on earth today is dependent on space-based services. From banking and money transfers to streaming online content and using maps, the internet and other technological capabilities are being widely used by everyone across the world. From the individual level to the international level, space-based services play a crucial role. However, there are still many challenges and threats within the space domain, that need to be addressed at the national, regional, and global levels. All these imply the fact that space is both a competent and vulnerable domain in the contemporary world.

ISU Space Studies Program (SSP) offers an intensive nine-week course hosted each year in the timeframe June-August in different locations in our planet earth since 1988. The SSP provides courses in all space disciplines, as well as hands-on education through workshops and professional visits for people working in space-related fields who wish to broaden their knowledge base. Particularly, participants spend more than 3 weeks to work on 4 team projects to address current and future challenges in the space sector.