Business and space: Pioneers wanted

A vast progress in observing the Earth from space has taken place in the last 30 years.

Our globe is circumnavigated by hundreds of man-made satellites that provide various types of data. A well-known practical use of satellite-based technologies is your GPS navigation. Another technology offers satellites for detailed imaging of the Earth’s surface. Perhaps every one of us has discovered these on online Google maps, having switched to “Earth view”. The use of this data, however, goes far beyond online entertainment, as it is the foundation for an array of applications ranging from meteorological to military, and finds an increasingly widespread use in agriculture and forestry, urban and spatial planning, and many other fields. Future applications are still waiting to be discovered and marketed.

“The European Space Agency, which Poland joined a number of years ago, provides a large share of satellite data free of charge. Europe has invested a great deal of money into space research, and Poland should join in as quickly as is only possible,” Krzysztof Krzysztofiak, Director of the Technology Park Division at the Kraków Technology Park (KPT), has emphasised.

Satellite images are available in Europe through Copernicus: a system that provides free and exhaustive open source data from three sets of satellites hovering above the Earth, each entrusted with a unique mission. Combined with other data, they provide new opportunities for business.

One of the initiatives that focus on finding and using the new potential is BalticSatApps, a project operating as part of Interreg. Its purpose is to speed up the marketing of services based on satellite data access and processing of satellite data around the Baltic Sea. This will help to cover social needs and challenges, and galvanise acceleration of new start-ups. The project will improve available knowledge and access to data originating within Copernicus, as well as increasing the awareness, demand, and innovation in the field of satellite data. Programme participants include Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Russia, and Poland. In Poland, the BalticSatApps programme is run by the Kraków University of Technology, Kraków Technology Park, and the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography.

The programme is currently launched in Poland with the motto Space 4.0 Satellite Data Info Day. Join the Pioneers in the Sector. Over a hundred students, doctoral students, and owners of start-ups that are already involved in this and related fields have met representatives of businesses and institutions that use satellite data and are eager to share their knowledge and experience to speed up the development of the entire industry. The conference was organised at the Kraków University of Technology on Tuesday 10 April.

The following stage of the programme will be held on 25 and 26 May. Focused on business aspects, the conference will be combined with hands-on experience during a two-day hackathon.

The first round of acceleration for selected companies is slated in June, before the holidays, to be completed in November.

“The Kraków Technology Park is the location designed to help start-ups. We have appropriate tools including incubator, accelerator, and technology park. We are ready to take up the challenge of helping the pioneers eager to open up successive areas of innovation and to develop space technologies”, Wojciech Przybylski, CEO of the KPT, said.

We are looking for ambitious young people and committed companies who find fervour and zeal to open the earthbound, everyday economic life to limitless space.

Agenda of the 1st phase of acceleration:

25 May 2018 – conference: Space 4.0: Solution from the Sky

25th and 26th of May 2018 – Hackathon #ActInSpace: Satellite Data

6 June 2018 – deadline for submitting proposals to Acceleration Programme

June–November – acceleration programme

November/December – Demo Day