Jan Wörner, ESA Director General, and Étienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister, accompanied by Marc Serres, LSA CEO;
Credit: LSA
The Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) today confirmed their strategic partnership for the European Space Resources Innovation Centre.
On Wednesday, Luxembourg's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Étienne Schneider, and ESA Director General Jan Wörner signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to further commit to strengthening cooperation in the field of space resources and innovation.
Following the establishment of the SpaceResources.lu initiative in 2016 to promote and develop the research, economic and legal aspects of space resources, the LSA and the ESA have been working together to explore opportunities for cooperation and have identified common objectives for research and development. For its part, the LSA is establishing the European Space Resources Innovation Centre to create additional opportunities for European and international innovation. Its initial focus is on space resource extraction, processing and manufacturing to advance sustainable space exploration. The Memorandum signed today at the ESA's Ministerial Council Space19+ in Seville, Spain, sees ESA join the Space Resources Innovation Centre as a strategic partner, broadening the scope of the activities started under the spaceresources.lu initiative and giving it a more European character.
The cost of launching people and materials into space and the lack of an established, affordable means of resupplying essentials such as fuel and life support is currently a major barrier to sustainable space exploration. Overcoming these challenges, by developing technology that turns resources found in space into oxygen and water, fuel or building materials is hoped to open up new opportunities for Europe's exploration of the Solar System and provide new business opportunities, as well as benefits for communities on Earth.
The ESA is focussed on in-situ resource utilisation to support sustainable exploration of the Solar System. As humans look to take the next steps to the Moon and Mars, the ESA sees in situ resource utilisation as an enabling capability for sustaining human operations. The agency has already made significant progress in this area by developing the ESA Strategy for Space Resources that implements a number of ground-based research, technology and mission definition activities, using in situ resources for sustainable space exploration. Together with the ESA, the LSA will set up the facilities that will allow ground-based research on space resources for both public and private researchers from all over Europe, establishing a key European centre for space resources utilisation.
The scope of the cooperation will include research, business support and incubation, knowledge management and competence concentration and community management.
