Ministry of Infrastructure and Watermanagement visited NL Space Campus and discussed current space industry developments

We have so many growth opportunities to better reach and find each other. “When we build a new satellite, there is no industry attending the meeting. We truly have a gap between parties who should be communicating”. This was one of the findings from the discussion with the team concerning space at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. The team of 6 came to visit the NL Space Campus on Tuesday 4 October. 

“It was a very valuable visit to NL Space Campus last week. Gained a lot of good new contacts, inspiration and new ideas. Together, we are in a wonderful domain with many opportunities and possibilities. There is also much room for improvement! I am looking forward to shaping this together with NL Space Campus, Netherlands Space Office and the departments and knowledge institutes. We need each other!”, says Minne Boelens, Senior policy officer European Space and Satellite data.

In the lively discussion we found that the industry most of the time has no direct access to, for example, the actual design of satellites. We discussed topics such as what are opportunities and possibilities that arise from collaborating? What does our facilitative role as space platform offer for different parties, such as students, startups, industry and governance? 

“It was fascinating to discuss with the Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat how space technologies, especially earth observations, can bring valuable insights into monitoring critical infrastructure”, says Pierre Blanchet, founder of Meteory. “The need for high precision, high frequency, and accurate environmental monitoring is there.”

Thanks so much Rike Van Hattem, Jim Bos, Lianne Mooldijk, Minne Boelens, Hans G. Scholten and Marian Massaar for joining us on Campus at Space Business Innovation Centre Noordwijk! We are excited to show what you can do with, amongst others, space data in current real-life solutions, about security with drones from Mapture.ai, security of structures from Survey Intelligence & Analytics, measuring CO2 with Meteory, and what the benefits are to invest and support growing space data solutions in the Netherlands.