First kick-off Network & Drinks - 25 March

On Thursday 25 March the first kick-off of the online NL Space Campus network & drinks took place. All together there were 66 participants at this first get-together, which was mostly a try out session with a ‘modest’ program. Esther Peters, Director of NL Space Campus welcomed all participants and emphasized the ambition to develop a campus into an active and vibrant ecosystem where innovative companies, knowledge institutes, scientific institutes, students and young professionals can meet, inspire and stimulate each other to make a difference. Stimulating and facilitating accidental encounters like this network event are therefore essential.

The introduction was followed up by a few words of some of our important partners, with whom we organise the NL Space Campus Network & Drinks, such as Jeroen Rotteveel from SpaceNed on the expansion of SpaceNed organisation and the lobby, Martijn Leinweber from SBIC highlighted some workshops, competitions and upcoming hackathons and Ton de Marree from NVR about their 70 year anniversary.

In the invitation there was also an opportunity to submit an idea for a pitch. In total four pitches were selected. Coco Antonissen from NSO spoke about the use of space data and in particular the SBIR programme ‘Climate mitigation and climate adaptation’ (more info ). Marco Morales from Smartlander spoke about the high altitude cube sat Nausolaris. Marc Heemskerk spoke about the EuroMoonMars initiative and the chill-ICE project. Kartik Kumar from Satsearch spoke about their global marketplace for space, they help engineers source products & services from global suppliers for ground, launch, and space.

"I spoke to a lot of people after the presentations that were interested in what we are doing, I'm looking forward to discussing some of the ideas further and perhaps eventually working together with them. The network event is a great opportunity to pitch your ideas, share knowledge and get to know people within the space community in the Netherlands", says Kartik Kumar, CEO at Satsearch.