Horizon 2020 Space Information Day 2016

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“Horizon 2020” is about to take the next step: The updated Work Programme for the 2017 Space call will be presented at the Horizon 2020 Space Information Day 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal.

You shouldn’t miss this opportunity if you are interested in:

– meeting other motivated Space actors from all over Europe

– receiving first-hand information on the next Space call.

On 14 and 15 September 2016 you will have a second chance to meet the authors of the call text. Make the most of this chance to network with other participants on potential future projects.

The information day will be organised by the Space NCP network COSMOS2020.

Participation is free of charge, registration will be possible until 11 September.

More detailed information on the event can be found on the webpage.

 

 

The latest NEREUS-Position Paper: “Recommendations on adding a regional dimension to the European Space Strategy”

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NEREUS, Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies, is an initiative by regions from all over Europe, which share as Full Members its governance. Emphasis is placed on the use of space technologies. The network aims to explore the benefits of space technologies for Regions and their citizens and to spread their applications.

NEREUS is a strong voice for the regional dimension of European Space Policy and programs as well as end-user needs.

Stressing the regional dimension of a new strategic approach, the latest NEREUS-Position Paper: “Recommendations on adding a regional dimension to the European Space Strategy”, has been compiled as an interregional effort based on a broad consultation process across member regions. As a next step we are promoting it at EU-level, in particular towards the European Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP), in order to present the paper and highlight the regional perspective.

NEREUS participated also in meetings with representatives of the EP to explain the rationale of a closer involvement of regions.

DOWNLOAD THE DOCUMENT

 

 

SPACE APP CAMP. Wanted: Mobile Apps to Handle Big Data from Space

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There are thousands of ways to enrich apps with data from space – what’s yours? Enter the challenge!

For the fifth time, ESA will be inviting 20 developers to its ESRIN location in Frascati (including travel expenses and accommodation).

The Space App Camp is an opportunity to spend a week with like-minded people, gaining insight into the European Space Programmes, and learning how to enrich mobile applications with satellite data. Especially with the recently launched radar and high-res image satellites from the Sentinel fleet, of the Copernicus programme doors will be open to countless potential mobile applications.

The winning team will be rewarded with a cash prize worth EUR 2,500.

Sign-up 1june-22july

All information is also available at the website www.app-camp.eu

 

 

The European Strategic Cluster Partnership SPACE2ID at the European Innovation Week in Taiwan

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Under the European Commission’s top priority of driving economic growth by fostering innovation and, in particular, the SME’s innovation capacity and their ability to compete on a global scale, the European Strategic Cluster Partnership SPACE2ID dealing with the promotion of European Space Applications for Global Emerging Industries and Societal Challenges, was represented at the European Innovation Week and Computex Taipei in Taiwan.

The European Innovation Week featured a series of seminars on smart health, smart mobility, smart industry, 5G, nano-electronics and Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The delegation followed many B2B, B2C and C2C (C as clusters) matchmaking meetings, examined business and investment opportunities and managed to establish contacts with local associations government agencies and companies. During the European Innovation Week, Taiwanese and European clusters came together for business and research cooperation talks.

The SPACE2ID delegation attended also Computex Taipei, Asia’s largest and world’s second-largest ICT show and the world’s leading platform for ICT procurement, new product launches and important technology development announcements. During this influential and important global ICT event, which attracted more than 40,000 international ICT professionals, the European delegation focused on connecting the European and Taiwanese ICT ecosystems.

The European Innovation Week was a joint initiative of the European Commission (comprising DG GROW, DG CONNECT and DG RTD) in collaboration with Silicon Europe Worldwide, GNSS.asia, the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT), the Department of Industrial Technology (DOIT) of Taiwan, EEN Taiwan (coordinated by TAITRA), the European Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan (ECCT), the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), and the European Cluster Collaboration Platform.

ESA Earth Observation Entrepreneurship Initiative. Call open – deadline 19 June 2016

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The European Space Agency (ESA) is now inviting entrepreneurs to submit innovative ideas to the Earth Observation Entrepreneurship Initiative (EOEI) Call until 19 June 2016 12:00 CET.

 

Space Solutions conference: bringing space to Earth

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A major European space conference is taking place in the Netherlands at the end of this month, highlighting the vital role that space technology plays in all our lives, and helping European industry to explore its business potential.

The European Space Solutions conference will take place at the World Forum Convention Centre from 30 May to 3 June. This is the fourth such conference, hosted in The Hague in conjunction with the 2016 Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Following the theme of Bringing Space to Earth, the conference will include discussions on space for economic growth, sessions on how space can benefit businesses across different sectors and an exhibition showcasing more than 50 innovative space technologies.

Space systems form an invisible – but increasingly indispensable – infrastructure in everyday life, enabling environmental monitoring of our air, land and seas, instantaneous worldwide communications and precision navigation and timing.

Europe’s Galileo satnav system

Space is a continuing source of innovation, encouraging the development of novel technologies and materials. And technologies used to keep astronauts comfortable and healthy in orbit have broader applications across the terrestrial healthcare sector.

The Space Solutions conference is co-organised by the European Commission and the European Global Navigation Satellite System Agency (GSA).

Working with ESA, the EC is overseeing the Copernicus programme for environmental monitoring, while the GSA is implementing the Galileo programme for satellite navigation, along with the already operational ESA-designed European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, sharpening the performance of satnav signals across our continent.

ESA at the Space Solutions conference

ESA will have a high profile during the Space Solutions conference; attendees will be greeted by a video wall highlighting Europe’s Sentinel family of Earth observing missions and the Galileo constellation.

An exhibition area will introduce attendees to ESA and its activities, plus a separate booth on the first floor Business Support Area will highlight ESA’s work in Technology Transfer and Business Incubation.

ESA Director General Jan Woerner will participate in the opening of the conference on Monday afternoon, together with Elżbieta Bieńkowska, European Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, and Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp. Dutch ESA astronaut André Kuipers will also be on hand, giving an opening speech.

The following day will see Magali Vaissiere, ESA’s Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications addressing a session on Space and the Digital Economy, Paul Verhoef, ESA’s Director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities, speaking at a session on Space Industry, as well as Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation addressing a session on Energy and Climate.

On Thursday ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme Office will be contributing to a side event on Space of Innovation and Entrepreneurs, while ESA Earth observation expert Claus Zehner will be speaking about air quality. And on Friday ESA navigation specialist Marco Lisi will talk about satellite navigation.

On Thursday evening attendees will be taken on a guided tour of ESA’s nearby ESTEC facility, the technical heart of the Agency.

From 27 May to 5 June a European Space Expo dome will be located in front of the Netherlands Parliament, letting the public learn more about European space activities.

Source: http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Space_Solutions_conference_bringing_space_to_Earth

 

Launch of Galileo satellites 13/14

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The latest satellites in Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system will be launched together on 24 May.

Galileos 13 and 14 are scheduled to lift off at 08:48:43 GMT (05:48:43 local time, 10:48:43 CEST) on 24 May from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana atop a Soyuz launcher. They are expected to become operational, after initial in-orbit testing, later in the year.

Further Galileo satellites are currently taking shape: their payloads are being built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in Guildford, UK, while their platforms and overall integration are the responsibility of OHB in Bremen, Germany. The satellites are exhaustively tested at ESA’s ESTEC centre in the Netherlands before being transported across the Atlantic to Europe’s Spaceport.

This will be the seventh Galileo launch, set to bring the number of satellites in space up to 14. Four more Galileo satellites are planned to take flight in the autumn, launched for the first time on a customised Ariane 5 to bring the total number of satellites in the constellation to 18.

Source: http://www.esa.int/For_Media/Press_Releases/Call_for_Media_Briefing_on_launch_of_Galileo_satellites_13_14

Sentinel-3 and the ocean carbon conundrum

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Each year, about a quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere ends up in the ocean, but how it happens is still not fully understood. The Sentinel-3A satellite is poised to play an important role in shedding new light on this exchange.

Initially, the fact that the oceans are absorbing a significant amount of the carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere by burning biomass and fossil fuels would appear to be a good thing. However, as more carbon dioxide dissolves into the oceans, it leads to ocean acidification, making it difficult for some marine life to survive.

Monitoring and understanding the carbon cycle is important because carbon is the fundamental building block of all living organisms. Also, the process of carbon moving between the oceans, atmosphere, land and ecosystems helps to control our climate.

Over the last four years an international team of scientists and engineers have been using satellites along with measurements from ships and pioneering cloud computing techniques to study how carbon dioxide is transferred from the atmosphere into the oceans.
Their new work, published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, reveals that the seas around Europe absorb an astonishing 24 million tonnes of carbon each year. This is equivalent in weight to two million double decker buses or 72 000 Boeing 747s.

The team are making their data and cloud computing tools, the ‘FluxEngine’, available to the international scientific community so that other groups can analyse the data for themselves.

They hope that making tools like this available to everyone will improve the transparency and traceability of climate studies. It should also help to accelerate scientific advancement in this important area.

Jamie Shutler from the University of Exeter said, “The information we are gathering using satellites is essential for monitoring our climate, but these observations are not always easily available for other scientists to use.

“This new development means that anyone can use our cloud tools and data to support their own research.”

They are also now looking to Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel satellites to provide vital information for this area of research.

Sentinel-3A was launched on 16 February and once commissioned for service it will measure the temperature of the sea surface, currents, winds, waves and other biochemical factors.

The unique aspect of Sentinel-3A is that its instruments make simultaneous measurements, providing overlapping data products that carry vital information to estimate carbon dioxide ‘fluxes’.

To calculate the flux of gases between the ocean and the atmosphere, it is necessary to know the solubility of carbon dioxide in the seawater, together with the speed of gas transfer.

Importantly, the solubility is determined by a combination of sea-surface temperature and salinity, while the ocean surface wind and wave environment govern the speed at which carbon dioxide is transferred.

All this information from just one satellite makes the Sentinel-3 mission a near-perfect tool to estimate the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the global ocean, as well as seasonal, year-to-year and regional patterns in the exchange.

ESA’s Sentinel-3 mission scientist, Craig Donlon, said, “The use of satellite data to provide a more informed and complete set of baseline data is helping to improve our understanding of carbon cycling.

“The ability for individual scientists to run and rerun their own flux calculations is a new and powerful way of working together in an open science world.”

While satellites enable us to monitor the global oceans easily, shipboard measurements remain essential because we can’t monitor everything from space.

Andy Watson, also from the University of Exeter, commented, “Good knowledge of the ocean uptake and release of carbon dioxide is essential for predicting climate change. Eventually, most of the carbon dioxide we release will find its way into the oceans.

“This project will provide the most accurate estimates that we have and is accessible to anyone.”

Source: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-3/Sentinel-3_and_the_ocean_carbon_conundrum

ESA in partnership with Europe’s railways

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Europe’s railway network plays a vital role in keeping our continent on the move. A new ESA initiative is considering the ways that space can add value to the network as it enters its third century of operations.

Space4Rail aims to support the railway community by raising awareness of the added value that space systems can deliver, and highlighting ESA funding programmes with the potential to support their use.

Plenty of work has already been done through these programmes, including the use of satellite navigation both to monitor trains and check the integrity of rail infrastructure, provide broadband to train passengers via satellite and harness Earth-observing satellite data to help predict landslides or subsidence.

Space technologies offer multiple means of boosting the capacity, safety and competitiveness of the rail network – and ESA, as a research and development agency, has various programmes dedicated to supporting such activities.

As it can sometimes be difficult for potential partners to find their way around the ESA organisation, Space4Rail has been set up as a one-stop shop for the rail industry to learn about the Agency and submit proposals for partnerships in a simple, streamlined way.

ESA can offer financial and technical support to projects – including access to its specialists and Agency laboratories – while acting as a broker between the space industry, the railway industry and service providers.

ESA is already contributing to the Next Generation Train Control (NGTC) project through a satellite expert group, providing technical expertise on integrating satnav into future railway signalling systems.

Coordinated by the European rail manufacturing industry association UNIFE and supported through the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme, NGTC is a consortium made up of all the main rail system signalling suppliers, together with mainline operators and infrastructure managers as well as urban rail operators.

Source: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/ESA_in_partnership_with_Europe_s_railways

 

Third Sentinel satellite launched for Copernicus

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The third ESA-developed satellite carrying four Earth-observing instruments was launched today, ready to provide a ‘bigger picture’ for Europe’s Copernicus environment programme.

The 1150 kg Sentinel-3A satellite was carried into orbit on a Rockot launcher from Plesetsk, Russia, at 17:57 GMT (18:57 CET; 20:57 local time) on 16 February.

After a first burn starting about five minutes after liftoff and a second about 70 min later, Rockot’s upper stage delivered Sentinel-3A into its planned orbit, 817.5 km above Earth. The satellite separated 79 min into the flight.

The first signal from Sentinel-3A was received after 92 min by the Kiruna station in Sweden. Telemetry links and attitude control were then established by controllers at ESA’s ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, allowing them to monitor the health of the satellite.

After the launch and the early orbit phase of three days, controllers will begin checking that all the satellite elements are working and subsequently calibrate the instruments to commission the satellite. The mission is expected to begin operations in five months.

“With the successful launch of Sentinel-3 we are now looking forward to how our teams of experts will steer this mission into its operational life – like they have done the first two satellites of the series,” said ESA Director General Jan Woerner.

“This is another demonstration of the broad range of competence we have at ESA from the early design phase until the operational mission in orbit.”

The mission is the third of six families of dedicated missions that make up the core of Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network. Copernicus relies on the Sentinels and contributing missions to provide data for monitoring the environment and supporting civil security activities. Sentinel-3 carries a series of cutting-edge sensors to do just that.

Over oceans, it measures the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice. These measurements will be used, for example, to monitor changes in Earth’s climate and for more hands-on applications such as marine pollution and biological productivity.

Over land, this innovative mission will monitor wildfires, map the way land is used, check vegetation health and measure the height of rivers and lakes.

“This is the third of the Sentinel satellites launched in the less than two years – and it is certainly a special moment. It also marks a new era for the Copernicus Services, with Sentinel-3 providing a whole range of new data with unprecedented coverage of the oceans,” said the Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes, Volker Liebig.

Sentinel-3B, its twin satellite, is scheduled for launch next year.

Data from all the Sentinels are used worldwide and are free of charge for all users.

Source: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-3/Third_Sentinel_satellite_launched_for_Copernicus