Watch the replay of the high-level conference organised in cooperation with the Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria to discuss the geo-political, economic and societal potential of Europe’s future role in space exploration endeavours.

The aim of the conference is to open the debate in Europe following the release of the High Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on the future of human and robotic space exploration for Europe.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and the Chancellor of Austria Karl Nehammer take part, as well as Ministers, heads of space agencies and other prominent guests.

The plenary conference is followed by

Innovation is triggered by many drivers. One of these is the constant need for ESA to develop innovative solutions, such as unique spacecraft technologies.

In this first video, Nicolas recalls how he and his team had to think outside the box to find a solution for ESA to communicate with Ulysses. The spacecraft was flying around the north pole of the Sun, which is much farther in deep space than satellites had been launched up to that point.

The success of this solution motivated the decision to build ESA’s first deep-space communications antennas in New Norcia, in Australia, thus enabling many ESA scientific firsts in deep-space exploration.

The antennas would, some decades after,

ESA is reaching out to members of the industrial space sector, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to take part in a survey on lessons learned in the space industry.

The first satellite developed under the Triton-X multi-mission platform programme for low Earth orbit is on its way to be integrated onto the launcher for its inaugural flight.