HaDEA’s Success Stories for World Space Week: Discover how EU funding gives space entrepreneurs and industry a boost

World Space Week, held annually from October 4-10, is an international celebration of space science and technology. The theme of this year’s edition is ‘Space and Entrepreneurship’, recognising the growing importance of start-ups and New Space companies in areas such as space exploration, satellite miniaturisation and Earth observation.

HaDEA is managing a broad portfolio of EU-funded space research and innovation projects, aimed at fostering the competitiveness of the European space industry in many areas.

Discover three projects and their contributions to Europe’s space sector:

  • Space Hubs Network (SUN) successfully boosted the commercialisation of space-enabled solutions and the growth of European space start-ups and scale-ups. The project  provided 77 European space companies with a range of tailored acceleration services, including mentoring, matchmaking, webinars, and hackathons.
  • InnOrbit aimed to empower innovation intermediaries in Eastern Europe to set up local space capacity building and business support programmesThe project mobilised regional ecosystems to support over 1200 start-ups, scale-ups, and SMEs, and offered a variety of business support services including a digital toolbox, trainings and access to funding support. In addition, InnOrbit produced policy recommendations to enhance space innovation ecosystems across Europe.
  • ASTRAIOS is mapping and analysing the current space-related education and training in Europe and identifying future skills required by the European space industry. The project is developing concrete recommendations to better meet the industry’s needs and enhance career pathways into Europe’s space sector.

Background

Horizon 2020 (H2020) was the EU’s research and innovation funding programme between 2014 and 2020. Horizon Europe is the current research and innovation programme of the EU for the period 2021-2027. Horizon Europe Cluster 4 – Space is supporting the evolution of the operational EU Space Programme components and fosters the competitiveness of the European Space sector as a whole.

Source: European Commission | European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) (https://shorturl.at/egCGQ)