Dear Φ-lab community,
In its Agenda 2025, ESA has set out strategies for maintaining and growing Europe’s role in the space economy, including the objective of boosting commercialisation for a green and digital Europe. Innovative commercial space companies have a crucial role to play in moving the green agenda forward, particularly in Earth observation, and the value of AI-derived data analytics and knowledge-based services in achieving this cannot be underestimated.
But investment in the EO sector in Europe continues to trail behind the US, making the work of the ESA InCubed programme all the more important. InCubed stimulates and develops European commercial Earth observation by providing investment opportunities, together with technical and business mentoring, for both start-ups and established companies. 2023 was once again a fruitful year for the programme, which now boasts a €200 million fund size and a membership of 21 countries.
InCubed is fully aligned with the Agenda 2025 commercialisation strategy, and has a number of activities under its belt that dovetail perfectly with the green agenda. In this edition of the newsletter, we’re reporting on recently completed InCubed activities, and three of the six are directly related to the environment and sustainability, covering solutions for water management and the monitoring of pipelines and offshore wind farms.
With around 140 further activities ongoing or about to start, 2024 is already shaping up to be another seminal year for InCubed and its contribution to European competitiveness in EO.
The Φ-lab team
